Posted by Robert Thompson on 02/22/00 from 212.229.58.245 via proxy finch-09.www-cache.demon.co.uk:
In Reply to: Re: Map quality in various editions + a bouquet posted by Jon on February 22, 2000 at 14:24:50:
>One classic example is in SW, the picture captioned "On The Way To The Islands", which in earliest editions showed Wizard's painter trailing off the stern of Goblin. This had disappeared by, IIRC, 1947
Actually, there never was a painter in the first edition of SW. There has been much correspondence about the illustrations in SW and why many of them seem to have clipped borders. The simple answer is that Ransome drew them that way - the originals in the Brotherton Library are just the same as those in the (early) Cape editions. Who knows why some only have three sides to the border, but they do! The Brotherton also has both versions of the Mealdial drawing - the first edition had the sun apparently travelling the wrong way - (or Ransome forgot that he wasn't in the southern hemisphere!) That's a thought - did AR ever cross the equator? Perhaps he did when travelling to China, but apart from that?