LINDSAY, Norman

The Magic Pudding: The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle & Sam Sawnoff

First edition, first issue, with green "A&R" endpapers and maroon cloth spine titled in gilt. Illustrated by the author. Slight offsetting on the front board (from the applied illustration on the jacket) else fine in a lovely, fine example of the rare dustwrapper with some tiny nicks at the corners. The author, best known for his naughty paintings and drawings of nudes (and whose frolicsome lifestyle inspired the splendid independent film Sirens) wrote and illustrated this children's book, hands down acknowledged as the most famous Australian book for children. It follows a koala bear, chagrined at his bewhiskered uncle's attempts to eat soup, gone walkabout, and his adventures in the bush, accompanied by a sailor and a penguin, protecting a magic "cut-an'-come again puddin'" that replenishes itself after every bite, and in any flavor that the eater desires. They protect the pudding from the depredations and kidnapping attempts of two professional pudding thieves, a wombat and a possum. The book gained new life when it was reprinted in the United States during the Depression, when a replenishing pudding probably sounded like a good idea. An absolutely superior copy, probably the nicest we will ever see, of a charming and amusing tale, and a classic which has never been out of print. If you don't buy it, you should get one of the many reprints and read it.

[BTC #86130]