THE SAD TALE OF THE GREEDY BOY

London: Collins, 1944. Very good.. First edition of this scarce British children's story on the Struwwelpeter model, issued during World War II with an implicit suggestion of civic as well as personal virtue: good boys tolerate deprivation without complaint. Moral tale whose anti-greed lesson presumably had a particular edge in the midst of wartime rationing. The titular Greedy Boy risks life and limb to climb up to the "bottle of sweets"; this being 20th-century England and not 19th-century Germany, his transgressions and subsequent fall from a great height earn him only pain and suffering, not death. "His mouth watered...His fingers itched..." for the barley sugars; unspoken but understood is the fact that he cannot have them: sweet rationing was introduced in 1942 and not fully lifted until well after the war's end. A rare early work by the author of the better-known THE WITCH-CHILD; OCLC locates just three holdings of this title, with only one in the US. 9'' x 6''. Original quarter red cloth with pictorial boards. Cover and color illustrations throughout by Chichester. Printed at the Baynard Press. 21, [1] pages. Light soil and edgewear to boards, with slight rippling to rear board. 2'' closed tear and creasing to front free endpaper; interior otherwise clean and unmarked.