Paddington at Work

By Michael Bond

First edition, first impression: London: Collins, 1966.

Octavo. Original red cloth, the spine lettered in silver. Line drawings throughout by Peggy Fortnum, who designed the dust jacket also; the jacket unclipped and priced 10s 6d net.

A very good copy: the binding square and firm, the cloth clean and unfaded across both boards and spine, the silver lettering bright, and the text block sound. A small dated stamp to the front free endpaper, and a few spots to the endpapers and to the edges; the boards and contents otherwise notably clean, and free of inscriptions.

The original and unclipped dust jacket a good example: repaired at the head of the spine panel, with a few chips and short tears to the edges, a crease to the upper flap, and spotting to the lower panel and to the verso, where there is some transfer of colour.

Accompanied by an autograph letter signed from the author, one page on his printed Little Venice letterhead, thanking his correspondent for a donation which he undertakes to "earmark ... for Paddington's favourite charity - Action Medical Research", and going on: "The Paddington books started out as a doodle to get my mind working & really have always been written to please myself in the hope that others will like them too."

The seventh of the Paddington books, opening with the bear's passage home from Peru and taking him by way of a ship's sweepstake into a share on the Stock Exchange and a barber's chair. Bond bought a lone teddy bear from a London shop on Christmas Eve 1956 as a present for his wife, and named the character for the station near which he was then living; A Bear Called Paddington followed in 1958, illustrated by Peggy Fortnum whose drawings established Paddington's classic look. His association with Action Medical Research, the charity named in the letter, began with a meeting with the charity's founder Duncan Guthrie in 1976 and continued for more than forty years, Paddington serving throughout as its mascot.