The Book of Lyonne – Burgess Drake, Mervyn Peake (1952) (1st ed)

S$124.00

The Book of Lyonne – Burgess Drake, Mervyn Peake (1952) (1st ed)

S$124.00

Title: The Book of Lyonne

Author: Burgess Drake, Mervyn Peake (illus.)

Publisher: The Falcon Press, 1952. First edition, 2nd issue.

Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Very good. Tanning and foxing to top edge, slight tanning to ffep. With 8 colour plates and line drawings by Mervyn Peake. Text clean. 260pp. App. 7.5″ by 5″.

From the dust jacket:

Lyonne arrived on Christmas morning. He has a zip-fastener down his stomach, and a curious taste for pyjamas by day and hot water bottles by night. But Pip wasn’t deceived. When Pip let Lyonne loose on the nursery it was by his magic tummy that he rid the nursery so dramatically of its monsters, Ba-Ha, the Witch and Grilla the Outlaw, who had held the animals in terror.

There is an invigorating freshness about this book. It moves in a race of anecdote, with zest and frolic, brimming with new characters and new situations. And the reason is that – like Mervyn Peake’s hilarious illustrations – it catches the very tone and quality of a child’s imagination. The author has a number of books already to his credit, the best known being Shinju – a novel on Japan, Chinese White and Hush-a-by Baby, recently published by the Falcon Press.