EDITH [Edith Simon]. Somersaults and Strange Company. London: Lawrence and Wishart. 1937. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s red cloth with wonderful illustration by the author affixed to front board as called for, and in the matching dust jacket. A very good copy. The boards clean and bright, slightly bumped at corners and some edges. The binding tight and gently rolled, the contents with a few handling marks, else fine without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped (3/6 net), with several small nicks and chips to extremities, closed tears and light rubbing, some of which obscured by the matching board design.
A curious children’s story with elements of political satire—hence the publisher, Lawrence and Wishart, the leading left-wing publisher of the day. The author’s first work, an endearing tale about two children aboard White Misery, ‘an over-sensitive little horse with a decimated tail and a heart-breaking look in his large eyes’. Together with Cunning, a lamb, Red, a grey cat, and Quick-As-Lightning, a tortoise, the band overcome an invading army from Earwigland, are imprisoned in Bureaucracia, and return via the freak-inhabited Scribbleria. Born in Germany, Simon’s family fled their homeland for England in the early 1930s due to the impending Nazi threat, for they were Jewish. She was a prodigious artist, having published illustrations in Berlin newspapers from the age of ten, and she attended Slade and Central Schools of Art when the family arrived in England. Writing, illustrating, and painting, she eventually settled in Edinburgh where she lived for the rest of her life, and it is here she immersed herself in the art scene, exhibiting solo, her home host to many a party. A scarce book.
EDITH [Edith Simon]. Somersaults and Strange Company. London: Lawrence and Wishart. 1937. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s red cloth with wonderful illustration by the author affixed to front board as called for, and in the matching dust jacket. A very good copy. The boards clean and bright, slightly bumped at corners and some edges. The binding tight and gently rolled, the contents with a few handling marks, else fine without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped (3/6 net), with several small nicks and chips to extremities, closed tears and light rubbing, some of which obscured by the matching board design.
A curious children’s story with elements of political satire—hence the publisher, Lawrence and Wishart, the leading left-wing publisher of the day. The author’s first work, an endearing tale about two children aboard White Misery, ‘an over-sensitive little horse with a decimated tail and a heart-breaking look in his large eyes’. Together with Cunning, a lamb, Red, a grey cat, and Quick-As-Lightning, a tortoise, the band overcome an invading army from Earwigland, are imprisoned in Bureaucracia, and return via the freak-inhabited Scribbleria. Born in Germany, Simon’s family fled their homeland for England in the early 1930s due to the impending Nazi threat, for they were Jewish. She was a prodigious artist, having published illustrations in Berlin newspapers from the age of ten, and she attended Slade and Central Schools of Art when the family arrived in England. Writing, illustrating, and painting, she eventually settled in Edinburgh where she lived for the rest of her life, and it is here she immersed herself in the art scene, exhibiting solo, her home host to many a party. A scarce book.
