The Gremlins: From the Walt Disney Production- A Royal Air Force Story

Dahl, Roald

Sydney: Ayres [sic] and James: Copyright 1943 by Walt Disney Productions) First Australian Edition. Printed in Australia by Shepherd and Newman, Sydney.

1st Australian edition, Sydney: Ayres [sic] and James: Copyright 1943 by Walt Disney Productions) Printed in Australia by Shepherd and Newman. Autographed by Roald Dahl.  Dahl's first book.  Illustrated with 13 full page (one double page) color plates and black and white drawings by the Walt Disney Studio throughout the text. 29 cm. Inscribed, "Love from Roald Dahl".  Roald Dahl Foundation book plate (established by Dahl's widow after her husband's death in 1990.  Housed in gorgeous custom made red leather clam shell case with inlaid Gremlins on front. Some restoration work done to binding. Lacking dust jacket. Roald Dahl served in the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot and Wing Commander. In 1940 Dahl's plane was hit by a machine gun fire and he was severely injured. He was sent to the United States as an attache while secretly working for British Secret Service to elicit American support for the British war effort.  "His wartime experiences led him to write The Gremlins, a fantasy about a race of tiny people who live in Air Force planes and cause all the technical troubles that pilots experience; the story was serialized in Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1942 and the film rights were bought by Disney, though filming never took place" (The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature). According to Penguin Press, the book "caught Eleanor Roosevelt's eye and Roald became a not infrequent guest at the White House and FDR's weekend retreat, Hyde Park.