SHIRLEY, Anne (author and illustrator). Eran’s Surprise. Leicester Edgar Backus, Cank Street; London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1933 Signed

Royal 8vo.; publisher’s donkey brown cloth-backed pictorial boards; pp. [viii], 9-41; with facsimile of the author’s manuscript as frontispiece and 7 full-page sketches by the young author, printed in colours; a very good clean copy throughout, without inscription.

First edition de luxe, printed on fine Nippon (or Japanese) vellum, number 19 of only 250 copies signed in ink by the child author.

Written by the authoress at the age of just seven and a half and published without alteration or addition, with all faults of spelling, punctuation and grammar. Very much in the mould of the famous “The Young Visiters or Mister Salteena’s Plan” penned in 1890 by Daisy Ashford when she was nine years of age and published in 1919.