Richard Adams - The Girl in a Swing - Adams' Annotated Copy - Allen Lane, 1982, First Edition.

London, Allen Lane, 1982. First Edition. First Impression. Hardback. A near fine copy. No jacket (though probably never had one). An intriguing copy. Adams' famous book was withdrawn as a character, Kathe Geutner, shared her name with a real person who threatened a libel action. The name was switched to Karin Forster. Early issues of the first edition bear the Kathe name. The present copy has been amended, purportedly by Adams, marking all the occurrences of the name. Note on the upper board reads 'In dit exemplaar zijn de door Adams zelf aangegeven correcties overgenomen' (basically stating Adams made the corrections, as far as I can tell). A handwritten note beneath states that he missed some. Included with the book is a review slip for Nabokov's Pnin (Heinemann) addressed to Max Schuchart (also laid in is a post card to Schuchart - apparently not relevant to the book). Schuchart was a Dutch editor and translator, best known for translating the works of Tolkien. The story behind the book, we assume, is that Adams amended the names in the book and sent a copy to Schuchart for him to either translate, or perhaps to correct the Dutch edition. The NL edition seems to have been published in 1981 in Utrecht, with a translation by Schuchart. There are two forms of annotation: red biro and pencil. The biro is probably Adams, the pencil is probably Schuchart. The corrections are throughout the text, with Adams' being mostly just crossings out with some corrections to grammar and spelling and Schuchart's being mostly notes seemingly less about translation and more about formatting. A little mystery, but an interesting copy at the conflux of the two issues. A nice copy too. Adams' agent's stamp on the front endpaper. [8844, Hyraxia Books].