“AN ASTOUNDING, COLOSSAL PURPLE CRAYON EVENT!”

JOHNSON, Crockett. Harold's Circus. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959. 12mo, original half cloth, pictorial paper boards, original dust jacket. $1600.

First edition of the scarce fifth book in Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon series.

American author and illustrator Crockett Johnson was "a cartoonist whose simplest, sparest, and boldest outlines produced unforgettable, gently humorous, and always endearing caricatures in the world of American children's picture books. His natural gift for drawing and writing from a young child's viewpoint enabled him to craft more than twenty juvenile books," including the most popular among them, Harold and the Purple Crayon (Silvey, 355). This enormously successful book and its sequels recount the nighttime adventures of Harold, who creates his dreams as he draws them with his trusty purple crayon. Ink price stamp to price-clipped dust jacket, suggesting that this particular copy failed to sell and was re-priced to the early edition price of $1.75.

A fine, fresh copy.