Mummy Laid an Egg!

£2,400 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

A charming set of original materials connected with the writing of this classic sex education picture book, winner of the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year. Included are the author's manuscript dummy, two pieces of original artwork, hand-written correspondence to the publisher, and a copy of the first edition. Cole's dummy comprises uncoloured pencil sketches of the complete book, with some erasing and over-writing, and contains noticeable differences from the finished work. At 32 pages it is the same length, and is in the same quarto format, measuring just a few centimetres larger. The boards are wrapped in white paper on which Cole has drawn the cover images, and these are covered in laminate, giving the impression of a published book. Along with it are two large, folded sheets of onion-skin paper. One is an uncoloured sketch for the spread of 'funny ways mummies and daddies join together!' and the other is a coloured design for the endpapers featuring 'blob babies' being squeezed out of a tube. Accompanying the dummy are four autograph letters and two greeting cards to Tom Maschler, the legendary head of Jonathan Cape and founder of the Booker Prize. The first, undated, letter reads, 'Dear Tom, very quickly, to get this in the post to you. This is a book about adult secrets (I must say they worried me when I was a child, that I would have to grow up and deal with them). Anyhow - it's a start.' This letter refers to a different work, for which photocopies of s

• Binding: Hardcover

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