Histoire de Babar, le petit Éléphant

Paris: Editions du Jardin des Modes, 1931 First edition, first issue, with no elephant logo to copyright page. Publisher's blue cloth backstrip, with orange and yellow paper-covered boards, an illustration of Babar to front board, and black lettering. Very good, with light rubbing to spine, wear to spine ends with heavy chipping to head of spine, some scratches to boards, corners rubbed to boards, and slightly shaken binding with reinforcement strips of paper to gutters of pp. 8-9 and 40-41. Overall, a decent copy of this classic children's picture book, with clean pages. Histoire de Babar originated from a bedtime story that Jean de Brunhoff's wife, Cécile, told their children, Mathieu and Laurent. In the book, Babar's mother is killed by hunters in the jungle and Babar escapes and winds up in Paris. There he purchases a dapper outfit and becomes civilized. He returns to the jungle just as the king of the elephants dies from eating a poisoned mushroom and is elected their new king. Jean de Brunhoff continued writing Babar books until his untimely death in 1937, at which point his son, Laurent, took up the mantle. Interestingly, Histoire de Babar was the first non-fashion book published by Editions du Jardin des Modes, a subsidiary of Condé Nast. . First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good.