“COME RIGHT UP CLOSE TO ME AND I WILL SHOW YOU SOMETHING WONDERFUL”: SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH
DAHL, Roald. James and The Giant Peach. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, (1961). Large octavo, original red cloth gilt, original dust jacket.
Scarce first edition of Dahl’s “little classic,” with beautiful illustrations, many full-page and in color, by Nancy Burkert.
"In 1953 Dahl married the actress Patricia Neal; they had three children, to whom he began to tell bedtime stories. James and the Giant Peach, the first of these to reach print, is a comic fantasy about a small boy who travels the world inside a huge peach, in company with several giant insects. Like most of Dahl's children's books, it first appeared in print" in the United States (Carpenter & Prichard, 139). When editor Virginie Fowler first read the work, she wrote to the author, "If this doesn't become a little classic, I can only say that I think you will not have been dealt with justly" (Treglown, 134). "When Tim Burton approached Roald Dahl's widow about his plan to make a film of James and the Giant Peach, she asked him why he wanted to do it. Burton's answer clinched the deal: 'It's the only book that ever gave me any hope when I was a child" (D is for Dahl, 68). First edition, with H. Wolff credited as binder in the colophon.
Book fine, dust jacket near-fine, with only light rubbing and toning to extremities. A lovely copy.