Eudora Welty. 
 
The Bodley Head: 1944. Bodley Head edition. Ills. John Holland. Hardcover in a jacket. Small octavo. Tears along the edges and folds of the jacket. Also tape scars on the edges on the inside. Dings along the edges of the boards and one scratch on the front board. A little foxing on the fore-edge and the preliminary pages are speckled too. Leaves are a little browned by time but the text is clean. Former owner's stamp on front and back endpapers. 196 pages. Book is very good and jacket is good. 
 
Welty brings her short story wizardry and precision to her first novella. An updated Brothers Grimm legend set in the also legendary forests of Mississippi. It can be enjoyed as magical storytelling for the modern world, interpreted as moral allegory, or argued about as a commentary on the history of American pioneers. No matter what you get brawling river boatmen, gentlemen robbers, and black-eyed fiends who guard a castle, all alongside the enchanted illustrations of John Holland. 
 
"At first they did not believe her, but by dark she had told it the same way at least seven times, until there was nothing else to do but believe her, unless they jumped down the well."