PBA Galleries

[82] (of [86]) pp. With color frontispiece & 39 (of 41) black & white line drawings by the author. 13.5x10.5 cm (5¼x4"), covers lacking, signatures still sewn. First Edition.

Rare privately printed first edition of the first of Beatrix Potter's tales of Peter Rabbit and his cohorts. This edition numbered only about 250 copies, printed at Potter's expense after the manuscript had been rejected by a half-dozen publishers. She gave some of the edition away to friends and relatives, selling others at one shilling two pence each. Warne finally accepted the work for publication, but before the trade edition came out Potter had a second privately printed issue produced. Besides the light gray pictorial boards binding, lacking in the present copy, the first privately printed edition can be differentiated from the second by several textual points, among them, on page [52], the sentence "He found a door in a wall; but it was locked," which had the positions of the semi-colon and comma switched for the second edition. The book is one of the great rarities of 20th century children's literature, and quite desirable, even in the present condition. The most recent copy to sell at auction, rather worn though complete, brought some $30,000 in 2005; and in 2004, the Justin Schiller copy brought $80,000. The present copy has an early pencil inscription on the recto of the frontispiece, "Joan Ashton, from Granny." Quinby 1.