This is the tale of a summer’s day, deep in the woods of England, when the grasshopper and the butterflies invite all the creatures to a ball and a feast. From St Michael’s Mount, Windsor, Rye, Salisbury, Tintern Abbey and the far corners of England they come:

‘Was ever there seen such a varied collection of beautiful creatures?’

Setting out in Johnson’s Spinner Trains, Hot Air Balloons, stagecoaches, on wing and on foot; most arrive, but others are waylaid by adventures, as you will discover.

Beneath the Broad Oak Tree, the creatures dance the evening away, feasting and merrymaking until the glow-worm leads the weary guests back to their beds.

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It all began in 1807 when the poet William Roscoe published a book of verse for children entitled: The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast.

Alan Aldridge, the seminal graphic artist who burst upon the art world in the sixties, came across it in a Victorian anthology and set to work designing illustrations inspired by Roscoe’s work.

From this sprang the partnership with the late William Plomer, winner of the Queens Gold Medal for Poetry and former President of the Poetry Society, who wrote completely new verse to complement Alan Aldridge’s final total of twenty-eight illustrative plates.

The result was the illustrated book of poetry:
The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast.

The book was first published in 1973 by Aurelia Enterprises and Jonathan Cape in association with Times Newspapers. It was an immediate success with its first edition of 25,000 copies selling out in three days. Over the next year it went on to sell an unprecedented 700,000 copies, winning the Whitbread Children’s book of the year award.