The Giant Alexander

The Giant Alexander Herrmann, Frank; illustrated by George Him. Paperback, pictorial wrappers. 32 pages. ISBN 0 14 050019 7 (cover code 14 050019 7). A sixty-foot giant who lives near Maldon in Essex, as tall as one telegraph pole stacked on another, uses a red tablecloth for a handkerchief and drinks his cocoa from a bucket. After a gale he wades out and pushes a Dutch ship off a sandbank, then is summoned by the Lord Mayor of London to spring-clean the pigeon-fouled Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. He later helps farmer Robin Bingo dig a hoard of ancient silver from the Six-Acre Sally. Colour plates alternate with line drawings. Printed price United Kingdom 17½p / 3/6, Australia $0.60, New Zealand $0.55, South Africa R0.45. “For copyright reasons this edition is not for sale in the U.S.A. or Canada.” Imprint: first published by Methuen 1964; published in Picture Puffins 1970; text © Frank Herrmann 1964; illustrations © George Him 1964; made and printed in Great Britain by A. & M. Weston Limited, South Wigston, Leicester. Rear advertises other Picture Puffins, including Ping, The Happy Lion, Harry the Dirty Dog, Captain Pugwash and Fee Fi Fo Fum. Condition: used, fair to good, a complete reading copy. Wrappers worn, creased and rubbed at edges and corners; a later pencil “2p” on the front cover; spine creased but intact. Internally complete, including the colour spreads and the final “Other Picture Puffins” page. Age toning, handling creases and a few small marks; no loose leaves. Please judge from the photographs. Frank Herrmann (1927–2017) was born Frank Curt Alfons Herrmann in Berlin, the elder son of the architect Fritz Herrmann and Gabriele (née Jaffé). His family left Nazi Germany for England in 1937. After school and war service he worked in publishing at Faber & Faber, Methuen and Ward Lock. At Methuen he worked on the first colour edition of Winnie-the-Pooh with E. H. Shepard and introduced Dick Bruna’s Miffy books to English readers. The Giant Alexander stories began as bedtime tales for his children, Camilla, Lucilla, Paul and Piers, after the family moved to a sixteenth-century manor near Maldon; the giant was placed in that Essex town. Methuen published the first book in 1964, followed by The Giant Alexander and the Circus (1966), The Giant Alexander in America (1968), The Giant Alexander and Hannibal the Elephant (1971) and the omnibus All About the Giant Alexander (1975). The series sold in large numbers, and Herrmann and Him often read it together in schools. Herrmann later wrote The English as Collectors (1972) and Sotheby’s: Portrait of an Auction House (1980), reorganised Sotheby’s book department, and in 1983 co-founded Bloomsbury Book Auctions with Lord John Kerr and David Stagg. He died in Essex on 23 April 2017, aged 89. George Him (1900–1982) was born Jerzy Himmelfarb in Łódź, then in the Russian Empire, to a Polish-Jewish family. He studied in Warsaw and began law in Moscow, leaving when the university closed in 1917, then took a doctorate at Bonn on the comparative history of religions (1924) before training at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Art. He shortened his name to Him in 1933 and formed the Lewitt-Him partnership with Jan Le Witt. They settled in Britain; Him was naturalised in 1948. Their work mixed cubist and surrealist drawing with humour, and included the giant umbrella tree for Britain Can Make It (1946), the Guinness clock at Battersea, and murals for the Festival of Britain. After the partnership ended in the mid-1950s, Him worked alone on posters, advertising, exhibition design and children’s books, including this series, for clients such as Penguin, Imperial Airways, Schweppes and the Design Centre. He designed the graphics for a Thames Television Just So Stories and the 1977 National Children’s Book Week posters and logo, and received a V&A Frances Williams illustration award. He died in Hampstead on 4 April 1982. …