‘BB’ [Denys Watkins-Pitchford] ~ The Little Grey Men. A Story for the Young in Heart

First UK Printing : Eyre and Spottiswoode, London: 1942

8vo., olive-green boards lettered with titles and decorative oval border in red to upper board; lettered in red to backstrip; in the original unclipped pictorial dust wrapper showing an image of three gnomes around a campfire; captioned frontis, along with numerous other striking black and white illustrations throughout, including headpieces, tailpieces, decorative initials, full-page captioned illustrations, and one page of sheet music showing ‘The Folly Brook Song’, with music by Walter Pitchford, towards the end of the text; THE BOOK a very good copy, lightly sunned at backstrip with minor bruising to spine tips; edges and endpapers a little spotted; one or two more sporadically throughout; first few pages a little creased and warped; contemporary ownership inscription in blue ink to the front free endpaper; the good only WRAPPER rubbed along folds, with chips at edges, particularly the ends of folds and one or two larger to the spine ends, with some loss of colour; rubbed and creased with some closed tears (longest 3cm); beginning to split along spine, but otherwise unrestored and in original condition. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition, correct first issue of BB’s most famous work. Printed on War Economy Standard paper. The Little Grey Men was BB’s sixth published work, but remains his best-loved. It is the story of three gnomes, imaginatively named Sneezewort, Baldmoney and Dodder, who set out in search of their missing brother, Cloudberry (lost in his search for the source of Folly Brook). Aboard their boat, they travel the length of the stream, braving such perils along the way as Grum, the giant, who kills anyone who dares invade the sanctuary of his preserves. Denys Watkins-Pitchford was born in the Northamptonshire Village of Lamport in 1905 but, unlike his twin brother Roger, was educated at home due to a series of health issues. It was during his early years that he had an experience which was to shape the rest of his life: at the age of four, one a bright summer day, he looked out of his nursery window to see, incontrovertibly, a gnome in his garden. From that day forward he maintained a belief in the “little people”, and it was this which inspired The Little Grey Men, which was published when he was 36 years old. After studying at the Northampton School of Art, he won a travelling scholarship to Paris, and afterwards taught Art at Rugby School before devoting himself full-time to his art and writing. In all, he wrote some 60 books over the course of his life, and illustrated more than 30 others. His books are characterised by the inclusion of the following lines, taken from a Cumbrian Gravestone, here found as an afterword to the last page: The wonder of the world The beauty and the power The shapes of things, Their colours, light and shades These I saw, Look ye also while life lasts. For The Little Grey Men, Watkins-Pitchford won the Carnegie Medal in the year of publication. “Warwickshire is one of the last English counties where one might meet with a fairy; surely William Shakespeare knew this when he wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Good