B a u m a n R a r e B o o k s A p r i l 2 0 2 3 33 “I’ll Stay Till The Wind Changes”: Scarce First Edition Of Mary Poppins, In Rare Original Dust Jacket 27. TRAVERS, P.L. Mary Poppins. London, 1934. Small octavo, original yellow cloth, dust jacket, custom clamshell box. $15,000. Scarce first edition of the beloved children’s classic, illustrated with 27 line cuts (13 full-page) and chapter tailpieces by Mary Shepard, in rare original dust jacket. “There is no such thing as a children’s book,” Pamela Lyndon Travers once declared. “There are simply books of many kinds and some of them children read” (Haviland, 155). Since the first of an eventual eight books about the Banks family’s mysterious and magical nanny appeared in 1934, innumerable children have chosen to read them. “Travers was extremely lucky in her illustrator, Mary Shepard [daughter of Winnie-the-Pooh illustrator Ernest Shepard], who caught to perfection the turned-up nose and consequential air that distinguish Mary Poppins from most other magical personalities” (Eyre, 70). As a result, Mary Poppins is one of the most endearing, enduring characters in children’s literature. She “has lasted because she is as peculiar as she is kind, as threatening as she is comforting, as stern as she is sensual, as elusive as she is matter of fact… Mary Poppins is unique” (Lawson, xii, 136). Book very nearly fine, scarce dust jacket with a few shallow chips and light wear to extremities. An attractive copy.
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