Description

VERY RARE FIRST EDITION OF JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, INSCRIBED BY DAHL

DAHL, Roald. James and the Giant Peach. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, (1961). Large octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in custom slipcase.

Scarce first edition of Dahl’s “little classic,” with beautiful illustrations (many full-page and in color) by Nancy Burkert, boldly inscribed by the author, “To all The Wilsons with love, x, Roald Dahl.” Exceptionally scarce inscribed.

“In 1953 Dahl married the actress Patricia Neal; they had three children, to whom he began to tell bedtime stories. James and the Giant Peach, the first of these to reach print, is a comic fantasy about a small boy who travels the world inside a huge peach, in company with several giant insects. Like most of Dahl’s children’s books, it first appeared in print” in the United States (Carpenter & Prichard, 139). When editor Virginie Fowler first read the work, she wrote to the author, “If this doesn’t become a little classic, I can only say that I think you will not have been dealt with justly” (Treglown, 134). “When Tim Burton approached Roald Dahl’s widow about his plan to make a film of James and the Giant Peach, she asked him why he wanted to do it. Burton’s answer clinched the deal: ‘It’s the only book that ever gave me any hope when I was a child” (D is for Dahl, 68). First edition, with H. Wolff credited as binder in the colophon.

Book with minor faint soiling to cloth. Dust jacket with mild toning and minor vertical crease to spine, shallow chipping to spine ends. A near-fine inscribed copy, most scarce inscribed.