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Uncle the elephant
Trunk call for funds ... one of Quentin Blake's illustrations for JP Martin's Uncle books. Illustration: Quentin Blake
Trunk call for funds ... one of Quentin Blake's illustrations for JP Martin's Uncle books. Illustration: Quentin Blake

JP Martin's elephant Uncle unforgotten in fan's republishing plan

This article is more than 11 years old
Crowdfunding appeal to relaunch much-loved children's tales illustrated by Quentin Blake

Long out of print and viewed by many as unjustifiably forgotten, the classic adventures of the millionaire elephant Uncle and his eccentric cast of friends, retainers and enemies, created by JP Martin and unforgettably illustrated by Quentin Blake, are due to be republished by a devoted fan.

Beginning as surreal stories told by the late Martin to his children and grandchildren, the author was persuaded to write them up towards the end of his life, and the series of six books was eventually published in the 60s and 70s with around 50 drawings by former children's laureate Blake apiece. They won Martin and Blake instant acclaim, with national reviews predicting they could become "a classic in the great English nonsense tradition", and comparisons made with Alice in Wonderland and Edward Lear. But despite collecting a cult following – and fans including Will Self, Neil Gaiman and Kate Summerscale - the Uncle stories slid into obscurity and are largely out of print, with first editions selling for hundreds of pounds today.

Now Marcus Gipps, who is a fan as well as an editor at Orion, has obtained rights in all six from Random House and the New York Review of Books, and is planning to bring out all six in an omnibus edition - if he can raise enough money through a Kickstarter fundraiser which has just launched.

"The books have languished largely out of print, despite well-known fans and Quentin Blake's profile. If you look on Abebooks or Amazon, it would currently cost approx £1,500 to buy a complete set," said Gipps. "Having spent eight years as a bookseller trying to convince Random House that the books should be reprinted, I've decided to do it myself … I loved them as a kid [and] I thought that if no one else was going to do it, then I should."

His 750-page illustrated omnibus edition will include new material from fans including Gaiman, Martin Rowson, Summerscale, Garth Nix, Andy Riley and Justin Pollard, and Blake has said he is "very much in favour" of the books' reissue. Gipps launches his Kickstarter today, with a goal of £7,000. If more money is raised, he will print more books.

The Uncle stories open with a description of their lead character, an elephant who is "immensely rich, and he's a BA. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car."

From Uncle's house Homeward, "which is hard to describe, but try to think of about a hundred skyscrapers all joined together and surrounded by a moat with a drawbridge over it, and you'll get some idea of it. The towers are of many colours, and there are bathing pools and gardens among them, also switchback railways running from tower to tower, and water-chutes from top to bottom", Uncle and his retainers see off attacks from his enemy Beaver Hateman, who lives nearby in Badfort, "the vilest castle of infamy ever constructed".

Imogen Russell Williams, Guardian children's books writer, welcomed the news of the Uncle books' reissue. They are "joyously surreal, set in landscapes full of toffee, deferential choirs of badgers, heavenly water-slides and velvet chairs," she said. "Their pachydermous protagonist governs a benevolent plutocracy – but the books' great joy is the frequent sly and subtle lampooning of his capitalist pomp. The news that Uncle, the elephant with the BA and a 'borrowed' bicycle in his past, will soon be warding off further feats of villainy from the ominous Beaver Hateman and his crew makes me gibber with excitement."

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