‘BB’ [D. J. WATKINS-PITCHFORD] ~ The Wizard of Boland

FIRST UK PRINTING. Edmund Ward (Publishers) Limited, London: 1959

8vo., bright blue linson boards lettered in red vertically along the backstrip; together in the original unclipped pictorial dustwrapper illustrated by the author (9s. 6d. net); coloured frontis, along with numerous other black and white illustrations throughout the text, including title vignette, full-page captioned plates, chapter headings and tailpieces; THE BOOK a very good copy, some light markings to boards and sunning to spine tips; endpapers faintly offset and spotted, previous ownership inscription in blue biro to the front free endpaper; spotting to edges, sometimes extending into the margins of pages; lightly cracked at gutter of title page, with webbing beneath beginning to show; THE WRAPPER lightly and evenly toned, rubbed, creased and nicked along folds and most so to spine, with chips to head and some long surface creases; several closed tears (max 2.5cm in length) internally repaired with tape. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition, first UK printing. A story of good and evil, The Wizard of Boland centres around a group of gnomes who one day discover a dragon sleeping on a pile of gold in a cave near their village. While they are horrified by the discovery, the wizard Homm is delighted - he requires dragon’s blood for his spells. Overcome by greed, he sets out to get his prize. Denys Watkins-Pitchford first found fame with The Little Grey Men (1942), a work which first features the appearance of gnomes (there named Sneezewort, Baldmoney and Dodder). The author was first inspired to write about these ‘little people’ at the age of four, when he was profoundly changed after looking out of his nursery window to see, incontrovertibly, a gnome in his garden. From that day forward he maintained a belief in fairy-folk, and over the course of his life he published a huge number of children’s stories on the theme of fantasy, many featuring witches and wizards along with his own charming illustrations. He was also a lifetime lover of the countryside, and his stories, combined with an intimate and unsentimental knowledge of animals, birds and plants, remain popular today. Very scarce with the wrapper.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Good