The Gremlins - A Royal Air Force Story by Roald Dahl - 1944

London: Collins, 1944. First British Edition . Decorative Cloth. Good/No Jacket. 28 x 22 Cms (11" x 8.5"). PUBLISHING DETAILS: A rare first UK edition of Roald Dahl's first book, written, supposedly "from the Walt Disney production", to aid the RAF Royal Benevolent Fund when he was Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl. Published by Collins of London in 1944. 46 pages, unpaginated. Size; 28 x 22 cms (11" x 8.5"). Weight; 430g (15 ozs). CONDITION: I would rate this notoriously fragile bookas good only. The original UK covers, with coloured illustration to the front only, are lightly age-soiled, with wear to all extremities, especially the corners (see photo) and some marks to the back. The binding remains secure and tight, save that the staples used in this binding are visible at the back pastedown. The text is generally clean, with the odd finger-mark, and the wonderful full colour illustrations are particularly bright and vibrant. All in all, a still splendid copy of this highly collectable first from the great Roald Dahl. THE BOOK: 'The Gremlins' was written for Walt Disney, optioned for a film that was never made, in part because no one could establish exactly who owned the word "gremlin" and in part because they could not figure out how to make creatures who destroyed Allied aircraft lovable enough for a cartoon. The story concerns mischievous little mythical creatures, the gremlins of the title, that were often used by Royal Air Force pilots as an explanation for mid-air mechanical troubles and mishaps. In Dahl's book, the gremlins' motivation for sabotaging British planes is the destruction of their home, a forest, which was flattened to make way for an aircraft factory. The principal character in the book, Gus, has his plane destroyed over the English Channel by a gremlin, but is able to convince the gremlin as they parachute into the water that they should join forces against a common enemy - Hitler and the Nazis - rather than fight each other. Eventually, the gremlins are re-trained by the Royal Air Force to help repair, rather than sabotage, aircraft, and they also help restore Gus to active flight status after a particularly severe crash. This was a kind of autobiographical reference for Dahl, who had flown as a lieutenant in the RAF, and was barred from flying after serious injuries sustained in a crash landing in Libya. He later returned to flying. Used copies of the first edition book are highly prized and sought after by collectors of both Roald Dahl's works and Disney's. (Source: Wikipedia)