Presented by Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Sextodecimo, pages unnumbered. Original pictorial grey paper boards, decoration and titles to front board in black. Housed in a custom black quarter morocco and cloth solander box. Coloured frontispiece and 41 text illustrations after pen and ink drawings. With the bookplates of Mildred Greenhill and H. Bradley Martin to the front pastedown. A faint spray of foxing to a few leaves, slight marking to front free endpapers, still an exceptional copy of this fragile publication.
First edition, first impression. The first of her small format books to be published, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was developed from a picture letter sent to Noel Moore on 4 September 1893. In 1900, Potter thought it might make a small book, and contacted Moore to see if he had kept the letter and if she might borrow it back; the letter was then expanded into the book with 41 black and white drawings and a colour frontispiece. However, as a larger format and colour were in vogue at the time for children’s books, it was rejected by a number of publishers, including Warne, after they found Potter was adamant that the size and form of the book should not be altered. Determined to see it in print, she decided to publish it herself, with the colour frontispiece printed by Herschel of Fleet Street using the recently introduced three colour press. The privately-printed edition was ready on 16 December 1901 in an edition of 250 copies; Potter presented them to friends and relatives, and also sold them for 1/2d. Within two weeks it proved so popular that she commissioned a second impression. The book was then taken up by Frederick Warne and published in a regular trade edition in October 1902.
