SIGNED BY AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR, AND INSCRIBED BY FRANCIS ROSE WITH A DOODLE.

CARRINGTON, Dorothy; Francis ROSE [Illus.] ~ The Mouse and the Mermaid. Signed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. The Pilot Press Ltd., London: 1948

8vo., green cloth lettered in black to spine; with frontis and several other full page illustrations in black and white by Francis Rose; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (7/6 net to front flap) printed in yellow, green and black; THE BOOK a little toned to endpapers, and some small spots to the fore-edge, else fine; THE WRAPPER very good, retaining much of its original colour, with some small nicks and a 2cm closed tear to the head of spine, a little shelf darkening to the lower panel and flap. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. FIRST UK EDITION. This copy is warmly inscribed from the illustrator and his wife 'Frederica' [pseudonymn for Dorothy Carrington] to the front free endpaper, below which is a hand drawn pen and ink sketch of a mouse with an umbrella and note next to a basket of flowers. Francis Rose has also signed the book to the title page, along with Carrington, who provides her signature above her crossed-out name. One of the earliest works by Dorothy Carrington (born Frederica Dorothy Violet Carrington) the writer and foremost authority on Corsican culture and history, who lived on the island for over fifty years. A prolific writer, her contributions to the world of literature mostly revolved around her travel writing, although she also wrote several books on Napoleon, and as a journalist contributed articles to the Daily Mail and Time Magazine. 'The Mouse and the Mermaid' marked a departure from most of her other writing, being a children's detective story which revolves around the theft of a collection of jewelry, and the hunt for the missing treasure by a young girl, Angelina, with the help of her talking mouse. The book is wonderfully accompanied by the illustrations by Francis Rose, the English painter whom Carrington would marry in 1942. The couple had previously traveled together in the 1930s in France, Italy, and North Africa. The divorced in 1966. Scarce with these wonderful attributes.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good