A sequel to The Iron Man, Ted Hughes’ The Iron Woman returns to the mythic-industrial landscape of his earlier children’s classic, but this time the machine-body rises from polluted water rather than fallen metal.

Lucy finds herself drawn toward a vast figure emerging from the marshes: a woman of iron, mud, rage and warning, awakened by the poisoning of the earth’s rivers and wetlands.

Where The Iron Man turns on fear, appetite and cosmic threat, The Iron Woman is sharper, stranger and more openly ecological. Hughes writes it as a fable of contamination and revenge, full of waste, sludge, animal intelligence and apocalyptic weather. It is still technically a children’s book, but in the way old children’s books often are: half moral tale, half nightmare, not especially interested in reassuring anyone that civilisation has the situation under control.

This Faber hardback edition is illustrated by Andrew Davidson, whose black-and-white engravings give the book a proper myth-object quality: otters, armour, riverbanks, machinery, darkness, all rendered with the menace of something dredged from a poisoned dream. A great one for Hughes readers, collectors of illustrated children’s books, environmental fiction people, and anyone who likes their fables with mud under the nails.

First Faber hardback edition, 1993, with dust jacket. Illustrated by Andrew Davidson. Some light rubbing, creasing and shelf wear to jacket edges and corners, with minor marks visible; internally clean from the photos, binding appears sound. A very good, highly presentable copy.