“GOODBYE BRANCH LINE, I’M GOING WHERE THE GREAT EXPRESSES ARE”: THE LITTLE TRAIN, GRAHAME GREENE’S 1946 CHILDREN’S BOOK

[GREENE, Graham] CRAIGIE, Dorothy. The Little Train. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, [1946]. Slim, oblong quarto, original yellow pictorial cloth, cartographic endpapers, original dust jacket. $2000.

First edition of this collaboration between author Grahame Greene and illustrator Dorothy Glover, which appeared under the pseudonym “Dorothy Craigie.”

“Graham Greene and Dorothy Glover met in the spring of 1939 when he rented a studio from her in Mecklenburg Square for writing. At the time she was working as a theatre costume designer in London. They began an affair shortly after, Greene moving in with Glover as his family was in the countryside. During the Blitz of London in 1940-1941, Glover and Greene both served as neighborhood fire wardens. By 1946 his loyalty and interest in the affair was decreasing, but they continued to live together until the summer of 1948” (Dorothy Craigie Collection, Georgetown University). Greene would later acknowledge authorship of this children’s book on the title page of The Little Fire Engine, another collaboration with Glover. Brennan 18. Miller 23. Bookseller ticket.

Cloth bright and near-fine; light foxing to endpapers. Light wear to extremities of scarce price-clipped dust jacket with lettering on spine rubbed out. A near-fine copy, rare in dust jacket.