Sale 2683 - Lot 311
Additional Images
Dahl, Roald (1916-1990)
The Gremlins. From the Walt Disney Production. A Royal Air Force Story, Inscribed First Edition.
New York: Random House, 1943.
First edition, quarto; inscribed by Dahl on June 6, 1943 to Michael Biddle in black ink on half-title; full-page color illustrations and black-and-white scenes and smaller vignettes throughout; bound in the publisher's red cloth-backed pictorial boards, yellow and red pictorial endpapers (thumbed, a few small, closed tears to margins, one page with faint blue crayon markings, Croton High School Library stamp in two places; board corners exposed, minor edge wear, back board rubbed); 11 x 8 1/2 in.
Dahl wrote his first book while piloting a Hawker Hurricane for the Royal Air Force during WWII. The work is inspired by a story from RAF folklore, which attributes various mechanical and unexplained operational failures to a mythical group of "gremlins." Written for Walt Disney Productions with a feature-length film in mind, Dahl developed his gremlin cast of characters. Unfortunately, the film project was abandoned.
