"Society of Illustrators Special Edition." This is one of 250 deluxe editions signed by Walt Reed, containing an original drawing by Frederic Rodrigo Gruger (1871-1953), in a special binding, with all the edges gilded, and housed in a matching black cloth bound slipcase.
This copy has a particularly nice original by Gruger of a female lying on a bed. The Wolff pencil drawing measures 4 inches by 7 inches on a 5 by 8.5 inch tan paper sheet and is estate-stamped.
A survey of American illustrators, decade by decade, 1880 to 1980, by two of the foremost historians of American illustration, Walt and Roger Reed, owners of the gallery Illustration House. Illustrations and biographies of 460 artists. "Early masters such as Howard Pyle, Charles Dana Gibson, A. B. Frost.followed by Frederic Remington, Howard Chandler Christy, Maxfield Parrish, James Montgomery Flagg, John Held, Jr., Norman Rockwell, Stevan Dohanos, Albert Dorne and more contemporarily, by Bernard Fuchs, Austin Briggs, Mark English, Bob Peak, Brad Holland, and Milton Glaser."
The Illustrator in America was revised and updated in 2000 with entirely different illustrations.