The Overloaded Ark
( Sabine BAUR, illus. ) DURRELL, Gerald
With Illustrations by Sabine Baur.
THE AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK
Published: Faber, [1953]
Stock code: 44505
Price: £124.00
8vo., First Edition, with title-vignette and numerous illustrations in the text, small neat contemporary signature on front free endpaper; green cloth, backstrip lettered in blue, a very good, bright, clean copy in unclipped dustwrapper.
With striking dustwrapper artwork by Ley Kenyon. Bright copy of the author's first book, an account of his animal-collecting expedition to the British Cameroons. It is the only book written as Gerald M. Durrell, the only one published by Faber and the only one with Baur as illustrator. Its success brought a change of publisher (to his friend Rupert Hart-Davis) and the start of his memorable collaboration with illustrator Ralph Thompson. During the following decade they produced a delightful and highly popular series of titles based on Durrell's idiosyncratic combination of travel, animal-collecting and natural history - some of the funniest and most charming titles of their kind ever written. INCREASINGLY SCARCE IN ANYTHING LIKE THIS CONDITION.