Very good, corners bumped with some chipping to paper covers, spine and top edge faded, but internally bright and clean with only minimal offsetting, three sets of dropped type on page beginning ‘Quarry’ underlined in red, quite possibly at the press. Inscribed ‘For Joanna’s Son & Daughter, fr. John, Christmas 1948’ on ffep.
One of the final works printed by the Pear Tree Press, Eleanor Farjeon’s brief and charming poems on the Sussex landscape furnish this scarce alphabet book, such that we learn:
“Mister Belloc lives in Sussex,
And don’t you dare to doubt it!
He makes good cheer and drinks
good beer,
And tells us all about it.“
A close friend of Edward Thomas, Farjeon was a successful children’s author, now remembered primarily as the author of the hymn ‘Morning has Broken’, and recalled being profoundly influenced by the Sussex landscape where she moved with her family during the First World War. Writing in a letter to George Earle, she described the impact that the Downs had on her: “They are so much beyond human beings to me that I almost cannot talk of it… I am theirs and if ever I vanish from the face of the earth, it will be because they have drawn me in… They’ve healed me more and given me more strength and certainty and peace than any other living thing.” Thompson’s linocut illustrations are the ideal accompaniment to Farjeon’s poems, and the bold use of colour epitomises the playful style of James Guthrie’s press, whose guiding principle was that ‘the artist at the press is, before everything, an explorer’.
