A special signed & pre-publication dated deluxe cloth-bound low-numbered slipcased 1st edition of this acclaimed novel from multiple award-winning novelist, critic, poet and short-story writer Dame Antonia Susan Duffy A. Byatt, who died on 16 November 2023 aged 87. One of the leading writers of the past 60 years, she won the Booker Prize in 1990 for’ Possession’, and was often mentioned as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. This novel was shortlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize and won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2010. The Children’s Book’, published by Tuskar Rock Press in Dublin in May 2009, 1st edition, large clothbound hardback, [vi] + 617 pages. Flat hand signed by A. In very fine unread condition in a fine slipcase, no dustjacket as issued, a handful of light storage marks to the rear panel of the slipcase. A lovely copy of this low-run special signed deluxe edition, highly collectable given this scarcity, also being pre-publication dated and being a Booker Prize shortlisted title. Quite a heavy volume, weighing 1.2kg before being securely packed. WINNER OF THE 2010 JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE. Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world – but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries their own secrets. Into their world comes a young stranger, a working-class boy from the Potteries, drawn by the beauty of the Museum’s treasures. And in midsummer, a German puppeteer arrives, bringing dark dramas. The world seems full of promise but the calm is already rocked by political differences, by Fabian arguments about class and free love, by the idealism of anarchists from Russia and Germany. The sons rebel against their parents’ plans; the girls dream of independent futures, becoming doctors or fighting for the vote. This vivid, rich and moving saga is played out against the great, rippling tides of the day, taking us from the Kent marshes to Paris and Munich and the trenches of the Somme. Born at the end of the Victorian era, growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation grew up unaware of the darkness ahead. In their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them. In a profound sense, this novel is indeed the children’s book. Multiple items – Please review my other listings to see if there are any other items which are of interest to you. I will be regularly listing items for sale, please save me as one of your favourite sellers for the future, thanks.