Title: Stuart Little
Author: E. B. White, Garth Williams (illus)
Publisher: Harper & Brothers, 1945
Condition: Stated first edition, 1st printing of this famous children’s book. Dust jacket missing, some wear to covers and inscription on front page. Text clean, no foxing, binding tight. Unfortunately, one page has a child’s scribble on it, though all text is legible. Priced according to faults. Extremely scarce.
About the Book (from Wikipedia):
Stuart Little is a 1945 children’s novel by E. B. White, his first book for children, and is widely recognized as a classic in children’s literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children. It is a realistic fantasy about a talking mouse, Stuart Little, born to human parents in New York.
The story is episodic. First we learn of Stuart’s birth to a family in New York City and how the family adapts, socially and structurally, to having such a small son. He has an adventure in which he gets caught in a window-blind while exercising, and Snowbell, the family cat, places Stuart’s hat and cane outside a rat hole and panicking the family. He is accidentally released by his brother George. Then two chapters describe Stuart’s participation in a boat race in Central Park. A bird named Margalo is adopted by the Little family, and Stuart protects her from their malevolent cat. The bird repays his kindness by saving Stuart when he is trapped in a garbage can and shipped out for disposal at sea.
Margalo flees when she is warned that one of Snowbell’s friends intends to eat her, and Stuart strikes out to find her. A friendly dentist, who is also the owner of the boat Stuart had raced in Central Park, gives him use of a gasoline-powered model car, and Stuart departs to see the country. He works for a while as a substitute teacher and comes to the town of Ames Crossing, where he meets a girl named Harriet Ames who is no taller than he is. They go on one date, and then Stuart leaves town. As the book ends, he has not yet found Margalo, but feels confident he will do so.
About E. B. White (from Wikipedia):
Elwyn Brooks “E. B.” White (July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985) was an American writer. He was a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English language style guide, The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as “Strunk & White”. He also wrote books for children, including Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. Charlotte’s Web was voted the top children’s novel in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, not for the first time
