Bandersnatch by T.E. Ryves - 1950

Grey Walls, 1950. Hardcover. Acceptable. 1950. First Edition. 299 pages. No dust jacket. Red cloth covered boards. Pages are moderately tanned and foxed throughout, heavier at end-papers, paste-downs and text-block edges. Minor pencil marking to front free end-paper. Some occasional mild cracking to gutters throughout however binding remains reasonably firm. Boards have moderate edge-wear with bumping to corners and rubbing to surfaces. Mild crushing to spine ends. Book has a slight forward lean. Sunning to spine and tops of boards. Gilt lettering is darkened.

London: The Grey Walls Press, 1950. FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. [viii], 299, [1]. Original red boards (without flyleaf as issued), spine lettered in gilt, dustjacket printed in pink and black. Some offsetting to title-page. Spine gilt tarnished, dustjacket a little rubbed to extremities. There seem to be two issues of this dystopian fantasy novel, with no established precedence: this one, in red boards, bound without flyleaf or half-title and with a Falcon Press colophon to the spine, and a variant in grey boards, with flyleaf and half-title and with ‘Grey Walls Press’ to the foot of the spine. Falcon and Grey Walls were partner presses from 1948, sharing resources (and debts, with both presses folding in 1954), and Falcon Press are listed as Canadian distributors to the verso of the title-page. This variant was perhaps bound for export but issued domestically - the dustjacket is priced in shillings on the flap.