Introduced by Michael Moorcock.
Illustrated by Sam Weber.
Bound in buckram.
Printed and blocked with a design by Sam Weber.
Set in Adobe Caslon.
Frontispiece and 5 colour illustrations.
Book size: 9½" × 5¾", approx. 176 pages.

In 1950, Ray Bradbury had a kernel of an idea for a story, and rented a typewriter in the basement of the UCLA library for nine days (it cost him $9.80). Dashing from the basement to the stacks to track down half-remembered quotations and typing at furious speed, in that short time he produced the first draft of an extraordinary novel. Serialised, widely published, adapted for film, theatre and even opera, the book, as Bradbury wrote, ‘seems to have a life that goes on recreating itself’.

Fahrenheit 451 envisages a dystopian future in which the job of firemen is to seek out books, and burn them. Montag is a fireman who enjoys his job, wearing ‘the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.’ He agrees with his boss who tells him how much happier people are now, watching endless television at high volume, than when they read books and thought for themselves. Then one night, Montag meets a young girl with ‘unconventional’ habits – walking at night, collecting butterflies and tasting rain. Something about the girl forces Montag to look at his world differently: children in cars running down pedestrians for fun, his wife overdosing regularly on sleeping pills, and his neighbour proud that her children would ‘just as soon kick as kiss me’. Montag realises that ‘we have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing.’ Such subversive thoughts will lead Montag to rebel – and rebellion has terrible consequences.