SIGNED BY ATTENBOROUGH.

ATTENBOROUGH, David ~ Life on Earth. Signed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Collins, London: 1979.

8vo., light brown publisher's boards, lettered in gilt to spine with publisher's name to foot; together in the unclipped photographic dustwrapper (with overlaid Collins price sticker £7.95 to front flap), the front panel featuring a Tree Frog from Panama, taken by the author; the rear panel showing Attenborough with sea lions on location in the Galapagos by John Sparkes; proliferated throughout with numerous full and double-page photographs in full colour; THE BOOK essentially fine, a couple of tiny dents, bumps and spots the only defects; THE WRAPPER very good to near-fine, though sunned to the backstrip, as is common, with a couple of creases and tiny nicks to edges. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, this copy signed by Attenborough in blue ink to the title page. 'Life on Earth' was first transmitted on the 16th January 1979 on the BBC. Divided into 13 hour-long programs, the series reportedly took over three years to make, during which time the crew travelled to over one hundred countries in order to film a series of animals including a Darwin's frog, a mole rat, and slow motion imagery of a bat's wings in flight. Helped by over 500 scientists, the series was also the first to include footage of a Coelacanth, an ancient fish which had previously been thought to have become extinct. Perhaps one of the most famous moments in the series was when Attenborough, in the presence of a group of mountain gorilla's, discarded his script and ad-libbed: "There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know. Their sight, their hearing, their sense of smell are so similar to ours that they see the world in much the same way as we do." "It seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolise everything that is aggressive and violent, when that is the one thing that the gorilla is not—and that we are", he concluded. Attenborough later described the encounter as one of the most meaningful in his life. This book was released shortly after the series aired. A near-fine copy of this landmark title, which forms the first book in the naturalist's acclaimed 'Life' series. It was followed by The Living Planet, The Trials of Life, The Private Life of Plants, The Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, Life in the Undergrowth and Life in Cold Blood, the last of which was published in 2008.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Fine
JACKET: Near Fine