BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 44 62BROWN, Margaret Wise; HURD, Clement, illustrator. The Runaway Bunny. New York and London, 1942. Oblong octavo, original green cloth, dust jacket, custom clamshell box. $32,000 First edition of Brown and Hurd’s perennial favorite about a little bunny who wanted to run away, a lovely copy in the scarce original dust jacket. Brown’s “goal, which she certainly achieved, was ‘to make a child laugh or feel clear and happy headed… to lift him for a few moments from his own problems of shoe laces that won’t tie and busy parents and mysterious clock time into the world of a bug or a bear or a bee or a boy living in the timeless world of a story” (DAB). Brown “served as a bridge between the worlds of publishing, progressive education, and the experimental arts of the 1930s and 1940s; and did much to make children’s literature a vital creative enterprise” (Silvey, 95). The work "was based on a medieval Provençal ballad... The original included the lines: ‘If you pursue me I shall become a fish in the water and I shall escape you./ If you become a fish I shall become an eel./ If you become an eel I shall become a fox and I shall escape you.’ Brown’s fresh interpretation, which has since sold four million copies, gave readers ‘a little bunny who wanted to run away.’ ‘If you run after me,’ said the little bunny, ‘I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.’ ‘If you become a fish in a trout stream,’ said his mother, ‘I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you’… ‘If you become… I will become’ is the book’s gentle, reassuring refrain” (Vanity Fair, December 2000, pp. 176-78). Book beautiful and about-fine, with one small bunny colored in; rare unrestored dust jacket with wear to spine, including loss of most of title lettering, toning to rear panel, front panel particularly bright and fresh. An excellent and desirable copy of this children’s classic. “Once There Was A Little Bunny Who Wanted To Run Away”
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