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Oswald Bastable

by NESBIT, Edith; BROCK, Charles, illustrator; MILLAR, H.R., illustrator

$250 · Offered by Biblio

First edition

London: WellsGardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., 1905. The Final Book in the Bastable Family Adventure Series NESBIT, Edith. Oswald Bastable and Others. Illustrated by Charles Brock and H.R. Millar. London: WellsGardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., [1905]. First edition of the final book in Nesbit’s much-loved Bastable family cycle., First state with number on page 96 transposed as 69. Octavo (8 x 5 5/8 inches; 203 x 143 mm.). x, 369, [1, blank] pp. [advertisements 9+1 blank]. Frontispiece and vignette title-page included in pagination. Twenty photogravure plates and one line drawing in the text on p. 103. Publisher's maroon cloth, front cover and spine pictorially decorated and lettered in gilt, neat ink inscription on front paste-down, spine faded. A very good copy. This concluding volume finds Oswald Bastable and his siblings once again plotting schemes and adventures in their quest for fortune and glory. Like its predecessors (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, 1899, and The Wouldbegoods, 1901), the tale is narrated in Oswald’s spirited first-person voice, with a mixture of comedy, mischief, and moral lessons. The Bastable stories were enormously influential on later children’s literature, shaping the voice and structure of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. Nesbit’s blend of realism, imagination, and anarchic humor helped establish the modern adventure story for children, and her Bastable books remain central to her enduring reputation.

  • Publisher: London: WellsGardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., 1905
  • Edition: First Edition
  • Printing: first
  • Binding: unknown

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