In Aleppo Once
Amazon Publications, 2001.
Limited issue of 400 copies for subscribers. Original red cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the pictorial dustwrapper. Illustrated with previously unpublished photographic reproductions. A fine copy in a fine dustwrapper.
'In Aleppo Once' is Taqui Altounyan's memoir of her childhood and her family's life in Syria and holidays in the Lake District.
"It was in 1928, on a summer holiday at Coniston, that they met Arthur Ransome. Taqui was 11, Susan nine, Titty eight, Roger six and Brigit two... Two boats, Mavis and Swallow, were acquired and Ransome became their sailing instructor. "Write me something to make me smell the wind and water again," said Ernest to Ransome, as they set off back to the dusty heat of the Middle East and the children handed [Ransome] a pair of Turkish slippers as a keepsake.
"Ransome kept Swallow for himself and brooded. Soon he was tapping away so fast that he would "chuckle as if someone were telling me a story instead of writing one for other people". When Swallows and Amazons was published, less than two years later in the spring of 1930, it was a wonderful amalgam of experiences from his own childhood and with his new friends. He dedicated it "To the six for whom it was written, in return for a pair of slippers". Christina Hardyment (2001)
Ransome later visited the family at their home in Aleppo, and whilst staying there wrote parts of his third Swallows and Amazons book Peter Duck.
PROVENANCE: From the collection of John Cowen, Ransome collector and scholar.
Stock ID: 36762
Sold
We have sold this item, but similar items
may become available in the future
