Description
The first edition of The Gremlins by Roald Dahl, in the publisher’s scarce illustrated dust jacket.
Quarto, [52pp]. Red cloth spine, title in black on spine. Vibrant pictorial boards and illustrated endpapers. No additional printings mentioned. Solid text block, light rubbing to corners, a near fine example. In the publisher’s dust jacket, $1.00 retail price on front flap, sunned spine, short closed tears along top edge. Archival tissue repair to verso to stabilize the hinge at the spine. A bright example of a scarce dust jacket. Complete with twelve full-page color illustrations and a color frontispiece.
The Gremlins was Roald Dahl’s debut novel, and his only one to be initially published by Random House. The story describes the experience of a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot whose plane is damaged by a gremlin – a folkloric creature imagined by 20th century military members to explain odd faults in machinery. The RAF pilot convinces the gremlins to unite against the common enemy of Hitler and the Nazis. This book was originally designed by Walt Disney Productions to be released in tandem with a full-length animated film of the same story, but the film was never made.
