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First edition in English, US issue, using the same sheets as the British edition with a cancel title page. The US issue is uncommon, likely because the publisher was soon declared insolvent. "Almost nothing else in children's literature equals [the story]. for wildness of invention" (Carpenter & Prichard) "The choice of an American distributor proved poor. Cassell (New York) had arranged to bind and market the Fisher Unwin printed sheets under its own name, and they released the novel in October 1892. Then, due to embezzlement by its president, Cassell was declared insolvent just eight months later" (Wunderlich, "Tribulations"). The story is "one of the best known fantasies, and the most popular children's book to come out of Italy. The story was written for a Rome children's magazine, the Giornale dei bambini, where the first instalment appeared on 7 July 1881. It was published as a book in 1883 under the title Le Avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino (History of a Puppet), and quickly became a best-seller. Lorenzini's publisher is said to have made a fortune out of it, but Lorenzini himself died too early [in 1890] to witness its international success" (Carpenter & Prichard). "What is the cruellest fate a literary classic might suffer? To be neglected, forgotten, or lost? No, crueller still is when it is debased and trivialized and then remembered. Such is the fate of Pinocchio in the United States" (Wunderlich & Morrissey). Wunderlich, 1892a. cf. Grolier Children's 100, 46. Humphrey Carpenter & Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, 1984; Richard Wunderlich, "The Tribulations of Pinocchio: How Social Change Can Wreck a Good Story", Poetics Today, Spring, 1992, pp. 197-219; Richard Wunderluch & Thomas J. Morrissey, "The Desecration of Pinocchio in the United States", Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 1981, pp. 106-118. Small octavo. Half-title and title printed in red and black, frontispiece with tissue-guard and illustrations throughout by C. Mazzanti. Original patterned cloth printed in blue, spine and front cover lettered in blue, patterned edges and endpapers. Housed in a custom blue morocco folding box. Book label of one H. Bates on front pastedown, with ownership inscription on preliminary blank. Extremities a little bumped and rubbed, spine a little toned and sunned: a very good copy.
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