The Puffin Book of Improbable Records

The Puffin Book of Improbable Records. Compiled by Quentin Blake and John Yeoman. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. Harmondsworth: Puffin Books / Penguin Books Ltd, 1975. First edition, first printing. Softcover, stapled. ISBN 0 14 03.0855 5 / 9780140308556. Approximately 18 × 19.5 cm (small square quarto, about 195 × 180 mm). Unpaginated, about 32 pages, printed in colour throughout. Complete. A bright, intact copy of the scarce original Puffin paperback, the first appearance of this celebrated spoof record book. Later reissued, revised, as The World’s Laziest Duck. The cover price printed on the flap is United Kingdom 40p, New Zealand $1.15, Canada $1.50. No reprint line. Text copyright Quentin Blake and John Yeoman, 1975; illustrations copyright Quentin Blake, 1975. Printed in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, Aylesbury. Condition: Very good plus. Original colour-printed card covers, unclipped in the sense that the 40p price remains. Light handling only: mild creasing and a little rubbing to the extremities and along the spine fold, with faint surface marks consistent with careful use. The staples hold firmly; the book opens flat and the gatherings are sound. No ownership inscription, bookplate, library stamp or bookseller’s label seen. Interior clean and fresh, the colour plates unfaded, with only the lightest age tone to the paper. No tears, losses, tape repairs or significant soiling. A superior copy of a paperback that is usually found tired. Quentin Blake (born 1932) is the most widely recognised British illustrator of the late twentieth century. He studied at Downing College, Cambridge, and the Chelsea School of Art, taught for many years at the Royal College of Art, where he was head of illustration, and was appointed the first Children’s Laureate in 1999. He was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal for Mr Magnolia and a CBE, later a knighthood, for services to illustration. His scratchy, animated line, here washed in clear colour, is inseparable from the work of Roald Dahl, but the books made with John Yeoman are among his earliest and most personal collaborations. John Yeoman (born 1934) is a writer and former teacher, educated at Oxford, whose long partnership with Blake began in the 1960s. Together they produced A Drink of Water, The Bear’s Winter House, Mouse Trouble, The Wild Washerwoman, Our Village and Rumbelow’s Dance, among others. Yeoman’s deadpan prose is the perfect foil to Blake’s drawing: the joke is always in the gap between the solemn record-book voice and the impossibility of the feat. This 1975 Puffin is the true first edition of that joke. It is a small colour-printed paperback in the Young Puffin manner, issued as a humorous alternative to the Guinness Book of Records, and it remains one of the most attractive of the Blake–Yeoman books to handle. Complete, and in very good plus condition.…