First edition, first printing. Original blue cloth with silver decorations and lettering to the spine, front and rear panels, in dustwrapper. Vivid blue endpapers, bound-in emerald-green ribbon bookmark. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Complete with the near fine dustwrapper, designed and illustrated by the author, showing a little wear to upper edges. Not price-clipped and correctly priced (£15.99 net) to the front flap. A lovely copy.
As ever with Gray's first editions, the boards of this volume of stories are finely decorated, front and rear, in this case with a silver lattice, a spider suspended from its lower edge, surrounding a framed yew tree stump sprouting a single branch bearing leaves and a seed cone. The central caption reads, "TRY AGAIN". The volume itself is characteristically filled with a wealth of typographic and illustrative curiosities. (Moores A4a).
Stock code: 24835
£20
London: Bloomsbury.
1993