Hardback, Putnam, first illustrated edition, first issue, February 1933; with woodcuts by C. F. Tunnicliffe.
Book condition: with dust wrapper (in protective sleeve); previous owner's bookplate pasted to half-title, some light spotting on fore edge, otherwise a very good copy.

This is the first issue of the first illustrated edition, with the dust wrapper carrying Tunnicliffe's woodcut showing 'Mr Tinker in the Rising Sun Hotel'.

This new edition, uniform with the Tunnicliffe-illustrated Tarka the Otter, The Lone Swallows, and The Peregrine's Saga, is revised from the first edition in that it starts with ‘The Trapper’s Mates’ and ends with ‘Stumberleap’. Some stories in the first edition were omitted: ‘No Eel for Nog’, ‘Mewliboy’, ‘Chakchek’s Raid on London’ (which was taken into the new Peregrine’s Saga edition as ‘The Outlaw’), ‘The Yellow Boots’, and ‘The Old Pond’ (now in the new Lone Swallows edition). Instead are added: ‘Zoë’ (from The Peregrine’s Saga first edition), ‘Redeye’ (ditto), and ‘The Epic of Brock the Badger’, four stories from various sources now consolidated as one long item.

The publisher's blurb for the first edition (1926) states: 'This is a book of the countryside. Red-deer, foxes, herons, badgers, falcons, sun and sea and wind live in its pages, as they could only be made to live by one who has himself lived with them. There is the excitement of the chase, the natural human pity for the hunted, the intense joy of the bird "wild in its native air" – told in English that is precise and beautiful. The book reflects a personality original and vital, and every page testifies to the author's extraordinary powers of observation and interpretation. Of the author's earlier book, The Peregrine's Saga, Mr. John Galsworthy wrote – "I've been greatly struck by it. He has a real gift – many real gifts. You see – he sees, and that's rare; he will come into his own."'

(For a further consideration of the book and the background to the writing of it, see Anne Williamson's The Old Stag.)