THE MAGIC PUDDING; Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle & Sam Sawnoff / by Norman Lindsay / Illustrations by the Author by Lindsay, Norman - 1936

New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Incorporated, 1936. Early American Edition. Cloth. Very Good/Good +. Norman Lindsay. Royal 8vo, red cloth with black lettering on spine and front cover, Mylar-pictorial dust jacket (unclipped) depicting Bunyip Bluegum, Bill Barnacle, and Sam Sawnoff against a blue & red background, [158] unnumbered pages. Norman Lindsay (1879-1969), artist, cartoonist, and writer, came from a family that produced five artists. Lindsay left home when he was sixteen to live with his brother in Melbourne. In 1901 he moved north to make his permanent home in the Blue Mountains, working for the Bulletin in an association that lasted almost to his death. His first novel was published in 1913, and by the 1920s he was both proficient and prolific in pen and ink drawing, etching, woodcuts, watercolours and sculpture. The Magic Pudding is an Australian children's book written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay. It is a comic fantasy, and a classic of Australian children's literature. Listed by Dutton as being one of Australia"s Greatest Books and certainly the most famous and beloved Australian children"s book. The story is set in Australia with humans mixing with anthropomorphic animals. It tells of a magic pudding which, no matter how often it is eaten, always reforms in order to be eaten again. Sometimes it is a plum pudding; at other times steak and kidney pie. It is owned by three companions who must defend it against Pudding Thieves who want it for themselves. The book is divided into four "slices" instead of chapters. There are many short songs interspersed throughout the text, varying from stories told in rhyme to descriptions of a character's mood or behaviour, and verses of an ongoing sea song.--Wikipedia & other sources. SCARCE Children's and Australian Classic first published in 1918 by Angus & Robertson. The First Edition now commands prices of several thousand dollars. The first American edition was published in 1936 by Farrar & Rinehart. Our copy by that publisher is undated but in the same dust jacket and seems to be a near identical reprint of the '36 F&R edition. Lindsay's other self-illustrated children's book Flyaway Highway was also published in 1936. Noted Australian artist Norman Lindsay's best known children's book is The Magic Pudding. He wrote it in 1917, partly to settle an argument with his friend Bertram Stevens of The Bulletin and Art in Australia, who maintained that children liked to read about fairies, whereas Lindsay said they liked to read about food and fighting. Illustrated by noted Australian artist, Norman Lindsay with B&W line drawings throughout. Some soil to cloth and dj; light age-toning as is typical to otherwise clean pages, pages 36-40 have clean cuts--closed--at their center tops. Dust jacket preserves Norman Lindsay's charming central characters but has some soil; also wear and chipping and a 1 1/2" chip lost top center (see illustration). One image we depict shows a man--a self-caricature of lusty Norman himself--kissing a woman.