Duffy and the Devil by Harve & Margot Zemach [FIRST EDITION] 1974

Duffy and the Devil by Harve Zemach & Margot Zemach FIRST EDITION [1974] FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX Second Printing.  Large vintage hardcover with dust jacket in very good condition. Dust jacket unfortunately has a tear to top edge; otherwise very good; small spot of sticker ghosting on rear.  Book itself is very nice.  Some sunning to cloth on boards.  Reads very nicely! Duffy and the Devil was a popular play in Cornwall in the nineteenth century, performed at the Christmas season by groups of young people who went from house to house. The Zemachs have interpreted the folk tale which the play dramatized, recognizable as a version of the widespread Rumpelstiltskin story. Its main themes are familiar, but the character and details of this picture book are entirely Cornish, as robust and distinctive as the higgledy-piggledy, cliff-hanging villages that dot England's southwestern coast from Penzance to Land's End.The language spoken by the Christmas players was a rich mixture of local