MEGGENDORFER, Lothar. Travels of Little Lord Thumb and his Man Damian. A Movable Toybook. London; H Grevel & Co. [1891]

Landscape folio; publisher’s original red cloth-backed chromolithographed pictorial boards; [18]; with introductory leaf and 8 glorious full-page colour-printed plates, each with several movable components operated by pull-tabs to the fore-edge; externally dust-soiled and rubbed with some marks, fading to spine cloth, bruising to head, and fraying to tail, with a 4cm split to cloth at heel of lower joint and shelf-wear to edges and corners; internally very good and sound throughout with all mechanical plates in working order, with some expert attention paid to inner gutters which are neatly reinforced, to one lower text margin which has later reinforcement to lower edge, to tabs (one of which is worn and one sympathetically replaced), and to the living pictures which show minimal skilled intervention with one or two wire rivets cleverly replaced, one short tear repaired to the serpent’s tail, and the small face of the servant Damian sympathetically replaced in facsimile to final image; a very scarce survival in this condition.

First edition.  An engaging and ingenious mechanical pull-tab book created by the early master of the craft of the movable book.

The aristocratic Little Lord Thumb, who fancies himself an artist, and his loyal servant Damian, have several memorable encounters in the wilds of Africa where they fight with an Ourang-Outang, are interrupted by a tiger, come across a sleeping crocodile and a coiled serpent, baffle a brown bear with an umbrella. resist kidnapping by a giant eagle, and return homeward in a unsteady boat accompanied by their animal retinue.