The Peacock Party

The Peacock Party: A Sequel to The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast By Alan Aldridge. Illustrated in collaboration with Harry Willock. Verses written with George E. Ryder. First edition, first printing. London: Jonathan Cape, 1979. Hardcover. ISBN 0-224-01591-5. Approximately 22 × 28.5 cm (small quarto). Unpaginated (approximately 28 pages). Original glossy teal/turquoise pictorial boards, no dust jacket issued. Printed in Italy by A. Mondadori Editore, Verona. This is the official and highly regarded sequel to Alan Aldridge’s landmark 1973 picture book The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast. Where the earlier volume celebrated insects and other small creatures, The Peacock Party shifts the focus to the avian world. Sir Perceval Peacock, the aristocratic and flamboyant host, organises a grand gathering for all the birds who were excluded from the original Butterfly Ball. The text is a series of witty, rhythmic verses that introduce each character in turn, while the illustrations present them in elaborate, anthropomorphic costumes and settings. The book contains a sequence of full-page colour plates of exceptional detail and inventiveness, plus a large double-page fold-out panorama at the rear depicting the party itself. Subjects include the Tailor Bird at work in his studio, the Eagle as a mountain chieftain, Oswald Ostrich R.A. in his cluttered artist’s studio, the Dodo dreaming of flight, the Raven in a gothic laboratory, the Mighty Parrot Shel-em-Nazam, Madame Bella Donna the swan, L’Oiseau Orchestra, the magician Metamorpheus, and the amorous Colonel Ruddy-Fowl Stork. The endpapers carry a delicate silver-grey silhouette design of birds and animals. Alan Aldridge (1938–2017) was one of the most distinctive and influential British illustrators and graphic designers of the late twentieth century. He rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as art director at Penguin Books before becoming known for his psychedelic album covers (most famously for The Beatles’ Illustrated Lyrics and Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy). His children’s books, beginning with The Butterfly Ball, combined meticulous draftsmanship, saturated colour, and a playful, slightly surreal sensibility that appealed equally to children and adult collectors. The Peacock Party continues that style at its most refined. Harry Willock, with whom Aldridge collaborated on the illustrations, was a fellow British artist whose precise line and rich colouring complemented Aldridge’s vision. George E. Ryder contributed the verses, which maintain a light, rhythmic quality while nodding to the 1807 poem The Peacock “At Home” by “A Lady” (Catherine Ann Dorset) on which the book is loosely based. The Jonathan Cape 1979 edition is the true UK first. It was issued simultaneously with, or very close to, the American edition published by Viking/Studio, but the two are bibliographically distinct. The Cape printing carries the ISBN 0-224-01591-5, the original UK price of £3.50 net printed on the lower board, and the specific colophon noting printing in Verona by Mondadori. No dust jacket was ever issued; the pictorial boards were the intended binding. The book remains a favourite among collectors of Aldridge’s work, of 1970s illustrated children’s books, and of anthropomorphic or fantasy picture books more generally. Condition notes for this copy: very good+. Boards clean and bright with only the lightest fading and edge wear; corners sharp; spine square and unfaded; binding tight; pages clean and unmarked; fold-out intact and free of creases. A well-preserved example of an increasingly scarce first edition.…