The Silver Brumby (First Edition, Association Copy)

MITCHELL, Elyne. The Silver Brumby. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1958.

Small Octavo. Original red cloth boards. Original pictorial dust jacket, illustrated by Ralph Thompson. 191 pp. First edition, first printing. Association copy, inscribed to the title page: "To Douglas Stewart from Elyne Mitchell."

The Silver Brumby, published in 1958, is the first and most celebrated volume in Elyne Mitchell's thirteen-book series recounting the life of Thowra, a pale palomino stallion running wild in the Snowy Mountains of the Australian Alps. Mitchell (1913–2002) wrote the book for her own daughter, Indi, who had grown frustrated with the lack of distinctly Australian content in the correspondence-school reading material available to children growing up on Towong Hill, the family's remote grazing property near Corryong. What began as a short story told at the typewriter grew, at Indi's insistence, into a full novel, and then into a series that would run for more than two decades, be commended for the Children's Book of the Year Award, and eventually form the basis of a 1993 feature film starring Russell Crowe. The book remains in print today, and Mitchell's own typewriter is held by the National Museum of Australia as a significant artefact of Australian literary and cultural history.

Provenance: This copy carries a presentation inscription from Mitchell to Douglas Stewart (1913–1985). Stewart was a New Zealand-born poet, playwright, and critic who, as literary editor of The Bulletin's influential Red Page for two decades and subsequently as a senior editor at Angus & Robertson, was among the single most consequential figures in twentieth-century Australian literary life, credited across his long career with discovering, nurturing, and championing a substantial portion of Australia's mid-century literary generation. Both Mitchell and Stewart were towering and formative figures in Australian letters during precisely this period, moving within closely overlapping literary circles.

Very good in like dust jacket. Dust jacket unclipped, some rubbing and creasing along edges. Binding sound. Foxing along edges. Contents very good. Some markings internally. Generally clean throughout.

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Catalogue Number: HH000709