Description

8vo., First Edition, with a frontispiece (original tissue guard present); original terracotta cloth, gilt back, a remarkably well-preserved, bright, crisp, clean copy with no sign of the usual toning at front and rear. With 2pp of publisher's advertisements at rear, and 2 small items of related ephemera loosely inserted. First edition in book form of fifty of Ransome's angling essays from the Manchester Guardian, together with extracts from the works of Aksakov. Hammond records that 2000 copies were printed. 'In his autobiography Ransome recalled a party at which he spoke with the publisher Jonathan Cape, whose firm not long before had taken over Racundra's First Cruise from Allen & Unwin. Cape 'had seen the articles that I was writing for the Guardian and made a remark that was prophetic in way he did not expect…Isn't it time that you were putting together some books to support you when you grow old?' See Hammond, pp, 69-72. Very scarce in anything like this condition. Hammond A24; Hampton, p.233.