Beauty and the Beast, 1968, 606d

Beauty and the Beast, 1968.  This book, illustrated by Eric Winter, was the 1th book in the original series of 27 Well-Loved Tales books.  The text, as always in the books of this series, was written by Vera Southgate.

It was something of a challenge for artist Eric Winter to create a ‘beast’ who could be both frightening, believable and sympathetic.  The rest of the characters and settings are very naturalistic and so a more fantastical beast would have seemed out of place.  So his approach was to interpret ‘Beast’ as a human form with gorilla hands and face.  It looks a bit odd at first, but Winter must have got it right, because, as a child, I found the scene where Beast is dying by the rose-bush heart-breaking.

This copy:

Beauty and the Beast, 1968, matt boards, Illustrated by Eric Winter.  This copy is in very good condition inside and out.  There isn’t much wear to the boards except for a heavy bump head of the spine.  There are some tiny marks on the cover (see photo) but the pages are very clean.  Dating from the early-1970s, this copy was originally priced at 18p.