Books

BRADBURY, Ray. Dandelion Wine. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. 1957. 8vo. First British edition. Publisher's burgundy cloth lettered in silver gilt to the spine, in the excellent dust jacket designed by Jeffery Lies. Inscribed with a sketch of a dandelion by the author to the full page of the front endpaper. 'This dandelion is for John Melville // Ray Bradbury', and dated Oct. 12 '86. A very good example, the cloth clean but for some minor tape marks from some haphazard mylar (by the inscription's recipient, regrettably), to corners of boards and around spine foot. Some spotting to the textblock edges, but the contents fine throughout, a trifle browned at gutters of endpapers. The dust jacket unclipped (16s net) and complete, with a tear along the spine head seeping into the front panel top corner, the spine a little spotted, the flaps with some very faint spots. A few minor scuffs, else clean. A respectable copy, scarce inscribed. Robert Melville was a notable collector of science fiction and fantasy based in Edinburgh. Bradbury's generally acclaimed coming of age novel that is perhaps his most personal and lyrical, unusual at its core since it is without SF devices. The British edition arguably more desirable than the US counterpart--the jacket certainly outmuscles it. Inscribed copies of the British naturally scarcer.

Dandelion Wine is a 1957 novel by Ray Bradbury, taking place in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, based upon Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. The novel developed from the short story 'Dandelion Wine' which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine. The book is essentially a series of loosely related, nostalgic vignettes about the protagonist Douglas Spaulding and his family and friends, and their experiences over the course of the summer.