The Darkening Ecliptic by Ern Malley

Melbourne and Adelaide: Reed and Harris, 1944. Small quarto, original wrappers (upper wrapper with small loss at top corner, some light stains) illustrated with Sidney Nolan’s ‘The Arabian Tree’ from the ‘Malley’ poem Petit Testament (the illustration is further reproduced as a black and white frontispiece); 46 pp; water stain across bottom margin of most leaves, else good.

The first edition variant in illustrated wrappers; a plain, lettered version was also produced the same year. This separately issued volume was also reproduced in ‘Angry Penguins’ the same year, before the hoax was revealed. It is estimated 400 copies with the colour wrappers were produced and that they were intended for the overseas market (Cowley, Des. A checklist of Reed & Harris Publications, in The La Trobe Journal, No 64, Spring 1999, p. 50).