The watchmaker's wife, and other stories

"An early unsigned Margaret Armstrong binding design in red on smooth golden brown cloth of a square central field of 23 transport balloons arranged in alternating rows of five and four with the words of the title spaced on each side of the field. Spine with titles in gold. A collection of offbeat short stories for adults. The title story is of a yacht that is run aground when a hanging rope of a passing transport balloon gets wrapped around the yacht's mast, pulling it off course and onto a deserted island. When the occupants of the yacht are able to land the occupants of the balloon, they find a watchmaker and the watchmaker's wife. An early and relatively unknown binding design by Armstrong that incorporates a repeated motif of the title story's primary plot device. Contemporary advertising1 indicates that the present book "Can be had uniform with the author's other volumes and also in 'unique' binding with cover design in red of ascending balloons." Gullans and Espey indicated that the majority of copies are found in the uniform binding (an undecorated dark green cloth), which is still the case today." -- Austin Abbey Rare Books.

Photographs of binding from Watson Library Digital Collections https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16028coll17/id/4830