The Reluctant Dragon

62pp. Numerous line drawings in text by Ernest H Shepard. Brown cloth boards (very gently rounded at corners). Colour matching endpapers. Internally neat, clean, crisp and bright. In its original dust jacket, lightly bumped along upper edge and a couple of tiny indentations on verso. Jacket fitted with archival-quality mylar wrapper to protect & prolong its life. It is not adhered to the book or to the jacket. This is the tale of The Boy, whose reading of natural history and fairy tales ‘in a sandwichy sort of way’ prepared him to meet a Dragon on the Downs. First published as a chapter in Dream Days in 1898, Kenneth Grahame’s classic and timeless story is one that each generation of children should know. This edition has illustrations by E H Shepard, drawn for the story for separate US publication in 1938. They are published here for the first time outside that edition, and complemented with the full-colour painting he later made, which adorns the dust jacket. Lovely volume – gift and collectors’ quality.