DAHL, Roald. James and the Giant Peach. A Children’s Story. Illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
First edition, first printing, first issue. Quarto. Original red cloth, gilt titles to spine, blind-stamped vignette to upper board, green endpapers, top edge yellow. Colour frontispiece and four further colour plates, with black-and-white illustrations throughout by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. In the original pictorial dust jacket.
The true first edition of Dahl’s first novel for children, published in America six years before the first British edition. This copy has the identifying first-issue five-line colophon at the rear, including “Bound by H. Wolff, New York.” The original first-issue dust jacket is present, without an ISBN statement and retaining the printed $3.95 price on the front flap.
A central work in Dahl’s career, James and the Giant Peach established the distinctive mixture of danger, mischief, fantasy and escape that would characterise his later children’s books. The illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert, created for this first American edition, give the book its original visual form and are very different from those used in subsequent British editions.
Very good in a very good original dust jacket. Cloth bright overall, with fading to spine and gilt lettering, and a few scattered minor marks to boards. Internally clean, with a closed tear to the lower inner margin of page 106. Jacket not price-clipped, retaining the $3.95 price, with toning and fading, principally to spine and folds, minor rubbing, small marks and light edgewear. An attractive first-issue copy in the original priced dust jacket.
