A Wonderful Association Copy of the Privately Printed "Peter Rabbit" POTTER, Beatrix. POTTER, Beatrix, [illustrator]. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: [Privately printed], 1902. Full Description:
Tale of Peter Rabbit.
London: [Privately printed], 1902.
London: Privately Printed by Strangeways], February 1902.
First (privately printed) edition, second issue. One of 200 copies printed. Twelvemo
(5 3/16 x 4 1/16 inches; 131 x 103 mm.). [84] pp. Color frontispiece and forty-one full-page black and white text illustrations.
Original olive green boards pictorially stamped and lettered in black on front cover. Spine rounded (not flat). Spine a bit darkened, with extremities very lightly rubbed. A few minor scratches to front cover. Occasional very minor finger soiling. A near fine copy of this extremely rare edition. Housed in a quarter speckled calf clamshell case.
An excellent association copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper to Victoria, the youngest daughter of Blanche Wrigley (née Potter), Beatrix Potter’s cousin: “To/‘Victoria’/from/Grandmama/Feb. 13th, 1902.” “Grandmama” was probably Mary Anderson, the wife of Beatrix Potter’s uncle, Edmund Crompton Potter.
“The first issue comprised 250 copies; they are distinguished by a flat-backed binding of gray-green boards, printed with a black-line drawing. The books were ready on 16 December and Miss Potter began giving them away to selected friends and relatives and selling them to others at one shilling two pence each. By this time, however, Beatrix Potter’s career had already been given its first impetus, for the publisher Frederick Warne & Co. had agreed to accept the book for publication in a regular trade edition. But in February 1902, before the trade edition was ready, Miss Potter ordered another 200 copies to be printed of her private edition, this second issue had a rather better binding, with a rounded back and darker printed boards. In October 1902 the Warne commercial edition was published” (Morgan Library, Early Children’s Books, 220, describing the 1901 first issue).
Linder, p. 420. Quinby 1A.
HBS 69526.
$35,000.
Price: $35,000.00
Item #69526