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Garner, Alan
The Owl Service
Publisher: Collins, London;
Date of Publication: 1967
Stock Code: 12101
First Edition. Octavo, pp. 156. Publisher’s rose red cloth with silver titles to spine, in the publisher’s unclipped pictorial dust-jacket. Extremely faint discolouration to the top edge of both boards otherwise a near fine book. The unclipped dust-jacket has a trace of browning to the top of the back panel but is otherwise unblemished without any chips or tears. An unusually near fine copy. Garner’s fourth book is a low fantasy novel describing the coming of age of four teenagers. Garner drew inspiration for the book from the Welsh myth of Lleu, and his wife Blodeuwedd who was made for him out of flowers. The idea gestated with Garner for years before chance intervened and he saw his mother-in-law’s 19th century tea service with an owl hidden within the flower pattern. Susan Cooper said that the novel can be called "true fantasy", "subtle and overwhelming". Philip Pullman has described Garner as the ‘most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien’ with the The Owl Service winning both the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize as well as the prestigious Carnegie Medal. One of only six novels ever to do so. £600.00