SEARLE, Ronald (illustrator). The Predatory Bite of the Steel Nib. The Scrapbook Drawings of Ronald Searle. Church Hanborough, Oxford. Predatory Parrot Press. 2005 Signed

Large 8vo.; publisher’s pictorial tangerine card wrappers, pictorial endpapers; pp. [72]; with sketches throughout in line; a fine copy.

First edition, limited to only 296 numbered copies signed by Searle, with a 3-page Foreword by the artist and an Afterword by Wendy-Coates Smith, which is an appreciation of Searle’s mastery. Also signed by her at the rear. With the loosely inserted illustrated prospectus.

“If there is a common thread linking the jumble of images in this scrapbook, it is certainly that of the explorative, probing line, a line of much hesitation, sensual pleasure, exorcism and occasionally hate, lurking behind the predatory bite of the steel nib” (Searle. Preface).