W. Heath Robinson — Bill the Minder

London, Hodder & Stoughton, c1920. Cloth. A beautifully illustrated children's book by the notable English cartoonist and illustrator W. Heath Robinson. William Heath Robinson began his career illustrating notable children's texts such as Hans Christian Andersen's 'Danish Fairy Tales and Legends' and Charles Kingsley's 'The Water-Babies' among many other works, before writing and illustrating his own texts. This work, 'Bill the Minder' is commonly regarded as the start of Robinson's preoccupation of depicting unlikely machines that later became a staple of his artistic style. Indeed, his work is commonly identified through the depiction of whimsically elaborate, some might say ridiculously complicated, machines designed to achieve simple objectives, with his name 'Heath Robinson' even being entered into the popular language during First World War as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance. 'Bill the Minder' was later converted into a television series produced at Bevanfield Films for Central Independent Television and shown on ITV. The story tells of the adventures of a 15-year-old boy and his cousins Boadicea and Chad. In the process of their adventures they meet many strange people and help solve their unique problems with the use of fantastic machines which Bill is very capable of crafting in a short time. Bound in cloth with pictorial boards. With numerous black and white illustrations and sixteen tipped in colour plates including frontis. Some of the black and white illustrations have been hand coloured as can be seen in one of the photographs above. In a pictorial cloth binding. Externally very smart. Some mild wear to extremities, including some bumping and some discolouration. Internally firmly bound. Pages bright and generally clean with the occasional mild spotting. Tipped in inscription to the front free-endpaper. Very Good . Ill.: W. Heath Robinson. Very Good .