Carnegie Medal Prize Winner

Garfield, Leon & Blishen, Edward : Keeping, Charles (Illus.) ~ The God Beneath the Sea : Signed By All Three Contributors

FIRST UK PRINTING : Longman, London : 1970

The First UK printing published by Longman, London in 1970. 8vo., dark green publisher's cloth, lined in white and lettered in gilt to spine; pale blue endpapers; in the unclipped illustrated dustwrapper (£1.75p/35s net); pale blue endpapers; frontis plus 14 other black and white illustrations throughout by Charles Keeping; The BOOK is essentially a near Fine copy, mildly bumped at corners; the near-Fine WRAPPER with a hint of fading to the spine, the acetate ever-so-slightly beginning to lift. The Carnegie Medal sticker to the front panel. A wonderful example. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. This copy triple signed (without dedication) by both authors, as well as the illustrator, to the half-title. A reworking of the Greek Myths, where characters such as Persephone, Prometheus and Sisyphus are brought together under one narrative. Divided into three sections, the book begins with the first fall of the infant Hephaestus, from the heights of Olympus to the seas below, with part two covering Prometheus and Pandora, and the final section devoted to stories of gods interacting with mortals. Using E. V. Rieu's translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Metamorphoses, and Robert Graves' The Greek Myths as source material, the author's were attempting to "write the stories for today's children" and remove the "upholstered Victorian quality" of their previous iterations. For this work, the authors won the Carnegie Medal in the year of publication, and Charles Keeping was commended for the companion Greenaway Medal for his contributions to the world of illustration. Extremely scarce with such attributes.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Near Fine