THE STORY OF BABAR THE LITTLE ELEPHANT

First UK edition, first printing. Folio. Publisher's original illustrated boards with a blue cloth spine. The endpapers and every page illustrated in colour by the author. A very good copy, the binding firm, the corners bumped and worn with small nicks and the odd small mark at the edges. The contents, with a contemporary gift inscription to the upper edge of the title page and the occasional mark to the margins (primarily to the earlier pages), are otherwise clean. A decent example of a book that rarely turns up so.

Jean de Brunhoff based Babar the Elephant on a bedtime story about an elephant that runs way to the big city that his wife Cecile told his young sons while they were sick in in 1930. 'The Story of Babar' was first published in France in 1931 to great success, and, championed by A. A. Milne, it was first published in English by Methuen in 1934. Six more Babar stories followed, and after de Brunhoff's death in 1937 his son Laurent continued the series which has grown to include over 40 books and has become an intergenerational, global hit that has inspired a number of television series, films and video games.