The Blue Fox

[Cecil Beaton. Ronald Duncan]


As well as being a writer and playwright, Ronald Duncan also managed a farm in North Devon. In May 1946, the first weekly instalment of Duncan's Jan's Journal appeared in the Evening Standard newspaper. The column was filled with tales from the country, primed for an urban audience. The Blue Fox, alongside Jan's Journal (1949) and Jan at the Blue Fox (1952), brings together a selection of the columns. Cecil Beaton provides an illustration for the dust jacket, depicting the Blue Fox pub sign. The illustrations and decorative endpapers are by another artist, Michael Hanson (Duncan's brother-in-law).


Ronald Duncan. Foreword by Brian Vesey-FitzGerald. Illustrated by Michael Hansom. With a dust jacket design by Cecil Beaton. Museum Press Limited. London. 1951. First edition. Hardback, octavo; pale-blue cloth-bound boards, gilt title to spine, dust jacket. 202 pages. Decorative endpapers and text illustrations by Hansom. Dust jacket by Beaton. English. 220 x 150mm. 0.45kg. . Very good in very good dust jacket; slight shelf wear, small nicks to spine ends and a couple to top edge, neatly repaired with tape to verso, light fading to spine, not price-clipped; dustiness to top edge, foxing to page edges, no inscriptions.