Bib and Bub : their adventures.

Sydney : Cornstalk Publishing Company, 1925. First edition. Quarto (240 x 210 mm), publisher’s blue cloth decorated in black (boards discoloured and very slightly warped), pictorial endpapers (front endpaper with off-setting), half-title, title, pp. 79, (1), colour panelled (i.e. comic strip format) illustrations throughout; contents with occasional toning and scattered foxing (more pronounced on preliminaries and last few leaves).

‘Rare: the earliest publication of the Bib and Bub comic strips in book form, collecting May Gibbs’s contributions to the Sydney Sunday News that had begun in August 1925. Gibbs was one of the few ‘classic’ Australian children’s authors and illustrators to have published in this form, being quick to learn from the success of her contemporaries Jim Bancks and Syd Nicholls in this format and to see the commercial potential of her own unique Gumnut creations in the newspaper medium. The present two part collection was re-issued in one volume in 1926 and followed by four sequels, 1927 – 1932: Further Adventures of Bib and Bub, More Funny Stories about old Friends Bib and Bub, Bib and Bub in Gumnut Town, and Bib and Bub Painting Book‘ – Australian Book Auctions, Books and Documents, 17 November 2007, lot 53 (referring to the two volume edition published the same year).

Muir 2773

Provenance: Private collection, NSW