Beatrix Potter’s Privately Printed Ambleside Edition of “The Fairy Caravan”
Fairy Caravan.
London and Philadelphia: Copyright of the author, 1929.
Full Description:
POTTER, Beatrix. The Fairy Caravan by Beatrix Heelis (“Beatirx Potter”). [Philadelphia and London]: Copyright of the Author, 1929.
Beatrix Potter’s privately printed Ambleside edition. One of 100 copies, with the first nine leaves printed at Ambleside and the remaining sections from the sheets of David McKay’s Philadelphia edition. Large octavo (9 x 6 3/4 inches; 230 x 175 mm). 225, [3, blank] pp. Pages [1]-18 are printed on laid paper watermarked “Abbey Mills/Greenfield” surmounted with a crown. Frontispiece and five color plates, twenty-one full-page black and white illustrations (including the vignette of seven dogs on p. [5]), and forty-two black and white vignettes in the text.
Original quarter dark green cloth over green boards. Front cover lettered in dark green. Spine extremities with a little shelfwear. Minimal rubbing corners. Uncut and mostly unopened. A very fine copy of this extremely scarce Beatrix Potter item. Housed in a full dark green cloth clamshell case, with pictorial paper label.
“It was intended that this book should be printed only in America, and would contain some of the writings about [Beatrix Potter’s] farm animals in a fairy caravan setting, pieced together with fragments of her miscellaneous unpublished work...It is about a travelling circus known as Alexander and William’s Circus, which was invisible to humans...Apart from the numerous pen-and-ink drawings for The Fairy Caravan, there were to be a number of coloured illustrations...[Potter’s] next concern was to obtain English copyright. After making inquiries, she told Mr. McKay, ‘It is evident that the English copyright must be secured by me. I told you—in our backyard—that I am shy about publishing that stuff in London—my real wish and present intention is to have one hundred copies semi-privately printed by the Ambleside printer—a small local publisher...A few would have to be sold over the counter, and there are certain formalities about depositing copies for registration purposes.’ So she asked for one hundred sheets of paper to be sent over in order to have them bound privately. This was done by George Middleton, printers and publishers, Ambleside, Westmorland. In the privately bound copies of The Fairy Caravan, the first eighteen pages of the American edition, including the preface and dedication page, were discarded, and a new set of pages printed at Ambleside. An additional page was added on which were sketches of dogs she knew, with their names written underneath. On the title page, Beatrix Potter used her married name, Beatrix Heelis. The preface was omitted from the private edition because it had been written specially for American readers” (Linder, pp. 292-294).
Linder, p. 431. Quinby 29.
HBS 69527.
$7,500.
Price: $7,500.00
Item #69527