Ralph Steadman Illustrator Mitchell Adrian (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Ralph Steadman (illustrator). 1st Edition. Not dated but , 1982. 8vo. Bound in black cloth with gilt text on spine. 262 pages. Illustrated by Ralph Steadman. Dust wrapper not clipped. Text paper has discoloured due to age else a very good clean copy. Size 20.5 x 13 cm (8 x 5.25 inches).

First edition, signed by the illustrator in pen to title page; containing around 100 in-text and full page illustrations and small flourishes by Ralph Steadman; publisher's black cloth, spine lettered in silver, a very good copy with original typographic dust-jacket in very good condition with price scribbled out in pen; 263pp. If the scrawled title on the dust jacket doesn't give it away, this edition throwing together Adrian Mitchell's poetry and Ralph Steadman's imagery is arresting, fast, irreverent, and, at times, messy. It comes at you from every angle. Available in first edition in very good condition with the illustrator's signature. Adrian Mitchell was well known for his anti-establishment poetry and as a noted figure in the British left. Ralph Steadman's images and scribbles are equally satirical, incorporating Christian, capitalist, and nationalist imagery in ways equally humorous as harrowing. The eponymous Beauty Douglas is the name of a Black South African girl who died before she turned one month old, buried in the children's graveyard in Dimbaza, South Africa, 'where women & children who are not needed by the white economy are sent'. The foreword describes her grave, littered with rubbish among hundreds of other young children's graves, featured in the film Last Grave at Dimbaza (1974).