Octavo. Original black boards, spine lettered in silver. With dust jacket. A bright, square copy, light foxing to edges, contents clean. A very good copy in price-clipped jacket, spine sunned, extremities lightly rubbed, minor creasing and couple of short closed tears to top edge. ¶ Lucy Pearson, “The Right to Read: Children’s Rights and Children’s Publishing in Britain”, Strenæ , available online. £750 [149834] 141 WHISTLER, Rex. “A Merrie Christmas”. 1923 Apparently unpublished original artwork This double-sided card, featuring a fine original watercolour, appears to have been a Christmas gift to an unknown recipient. A tear-off calendar for 1924, which is still intact, was mounted below the image and is now laid down on the reverse. A ribbon is still attached for the original hanging of the item. Horne notes that Rex Whistler’s book illustrations were “mostly in a style evocative of the eighteenth century” (p. 441), and this drawing conforms to this appearance. Whistler’s most famous book illustrations are for a 1930 edition of Gulliver’s Travels which, as stated by Horne, “at first look like etchings, but in fact they are pen drawings” (p. 441). The artist has playfully added a signature “Rex J. Whistler pinxit” below the present illustration and this example of a pinxit recalls the signature of an etched plate. Original drawing (225 × 152 mm) on card (241 × 162 mm), laid down on artist’s board (276 × 203 mm), ink and watercolour, signed and dated (“Rex J. Whistler 1923”) lower right and additionally signed “Rex J. Whistler pinxit” lower left, titled “A merrie Christmas” and “19 Xmas 23”, blue ribbon to head, with “1923. Wishing you a very happy Christmas with love from Rex Whistler. 1923. Dec 25th” and ink vignettes of mistletoe and holly on reverse, 1924 tear-off calendar laid down on reverse, mounted, framed, and glazed both sides (framed size 396 × 312 mm). Watercolour strong and unfaded, ribbon slightly faded. ¶ Alan Horne, The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators , 1994. £5,000 [155005]
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140 WESTALL, Robert. The Machine Gunners. London: Macmillan Ltd, 1975 First edition, first impression, of this Carnegie Medal winner. Named one of the top ten Medal-winning works for the 70th anniversary celebration in 2007, this work, with “its desire to reflect working-class life authentically, and in its concern with questions of children’s agency, access to space, and community” marked a progressive move in children’s literature (Pearson). Though well-represented institutionally, it is uncommon in commerce. Pearson notes that “a growing emphasis on the cultural needs of working-class and other underprivileged groups had been evident in the Newsom Report (1963) which had addressed the issue of education for ‘pupils aged 13 to 16 of average and less than average ability’, taking the view that ‘each is an individual whose spirit needs education as much as his body needs nourishment’. This emphasis on children’s rights movement continued into 1970s, with the Other Award launched in 1975, ‘to celebrate books which offered ‘a wider and more accurate representation of human experience and situations’. These developments were not confined to specialist publishing but were increasingly present in the literary mainstream: the same year that the Other Award was established, the winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal was Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners (1975). The Machine Gunners , which was published by the main children’s imprint at Macmillan, depicts working-class children who not only speak in dialect and swear, but whose ‘bad behavior’ extends to concealing both a machine gun and a German pilot”. It was dramatized as a BBC television series in 1983; adapted as a drama for BBC Radio 4 in 2002; and a stage version was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum and performed in 2011.
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
CHILDREN’S BOOKS & ORIGINAL ARTWORK
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