IT

Hodder & Stoughton. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986 Thick 8vo., lettered in chunky typographic lettering gilt to spine; in the particularly fresh and vibrant pictorial dust jacket, featuring a chilling image by Gerald Grace (£12.95 net in the UK); pp. [xii], 13-912; an exceedingly bright example, small white mark to upper board, and very minor abrasion to spine; internally a touch toned, with some vertical lines of toning to the paper stock, likely caused during production; the jacket exceedingly fine, with no noticeable defects.  First UK edition.  Arguably one of King's most famous novels, It was his 22nd book, and tells the terrifying tale of a group of children in a small American town who are terrorised by a demonic clown. Inspired by the tale of the Three Billy Goat's Gruff, King envisaged an evil entity which lived in the sewers underneath people's feet, later claiming that the story came to him while out walking over a bridge in his home town of Boulder, Colorado: "I decided that the bridge could be some sort of symbol--a point of passing. I started thinking of Bangor, where I had lived, with its strange canal bisecting the city, and decided that the bridge could be the city, if there was something under it. What's under a city? Tunnels. Sewers. Ah! What a good place for a troll! Trolls should live in sewers!...sometime in the summer of 1981 I realised that I had to write about the troll under the bridge or leave him--IT--forever." In 1990, the novel was adapted into a two-part miniseries directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, and in 2017 the first of a two-part film franchise was released to much commercial success, grossing over $700 million worldwide.  A wonderful copy of this classic work of horror fiction.  . Near Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 1986.