APPLEY DAPPLY'S NURSERY RHYMES

1917. London: Frederick Warne and Co., n.d. [1917]. Original green-grey boards lettered in red, with front cover pictorial onlay.

First Edition, first or second printing (indistinguishable from each other) -- but in later-state binding. Most of these rhymes are Beatrix Potter's own, but also included is "You know the old woman who lived in a shoe?". She first did illustrations for that rhyme as early as 1893, and she and Warne planned a volume of illustrated verse soon after PETER RABBIT made such a hit in 1901-1902. However it kept getting set aside for other volumes, and then Norman Warne died in 1905, and the project was dropped for a dozen years -- when in 1917 Fruing Warne asked her for another story and she did not have one. (Five years later there would be another volume of rhymes, CECILY PARSLEY'S NURSERY RHYMES.) The first two APPLEY DAPPLY printings came out in October and November 1917; the third printing did not come out until 1919-1920. Though all three are undated, the third is distinguishable from the earlier two, because its front endpaper adds to the sign JOHNNY TOWN-MOUSE, which came out in 1918; also, after 26 May 1919 the publisher's name adds "Ltd.". This copy consists of sheets and endpapers from the first or second printing (no "Ltd." on the title page, no JOHNNY TOWN-MOUSE on the front endpaper), but the front cover has darker red lettering, the publisher's name adding "Ltd." and in a different font. Condition is very good-plus, perhaps near-fine, with minor wear at some extremities and at one spot on the front cover. Linder pp 225-229 & p. 430; see Quinby 23A (this mixed-state is not cited).