FRIEND MONKEY

First impression of the true first edition. Colour jacket design and colour full-page frontispiece by Charles Keeping. ***Very good in lime green-mustard-buff cloth-covered boards with brown titles to spine. Lime green-mustard-buff-coloured front and rear free endpapers and pastedowns. Top edge of text-block foxed not affecting interior pages. Pages clean and bright. No inscriptions. Spine tight. ***In a very good price-clipped colour illustrated dustwrapper. Head and tail of spine and edges of dustwrapper slightly rubbed and creased. Rear panel of dustwrapper slightly rubbed and discoloured (being matt white background). Front panel and spine of dustwrapper bright. 284 pages. 216 x 142 mm. ***'A new book by P. L. Travers creator of the classic Mary Poppins stories is an event, and "Friend Monkey" has for a long time been eagerly awaited. ***"Who is Monkey?" One might as well ask, "What is the wind?" for Monkey is the kind of character that cannot be explained except in terms of the book he inhabits. The story tells of his departure from the jungle, his arrival in England in 1897, the people he befriends - Mr. Linnet, Miss Brown-Potter, the one and only Professor McWhirter, Louis the cockatoo - and what happens to them as a result of this befriending. ***"You could say," says P. L. Travers, "that the book is the result of a long brooding on the idea of Hanuman, the monkey lord of the Hindu myths, who could never do anything by halves." But this monkey is anything but a myth. He is utterly tangible and real, and the story, with its masterly mixture of fact and imagination, sweeps us through a series of adventures to a conclusion as inevitable as it is unexpected. Funny and touching by turns, full of disciplined wit and wisdom, the book is a commentary, at once wry and poetic, on the verb "to love". It is not only a book for children but for all ages.' (Quote taken from inside front flap of jacket blurb). ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.…