The Fairy Caravan.

Philadelphia; David McKay Company, 1929., 1929. Hard Cover. INSCRIBED U.S. FIRST EDITION (preceding the U.K. First Edition). Octavo, pp. 225, [1]. Six colour plates including frontispiece, plus numerous line drawings within text including head- and tail-pieces and full page illustrations. Publisher's bottle green cloth with gilt titles and decoration to spine with printed title onlay illustrated in colour to upper board. Housed in a custom-made black morocco silk-lined clam-shell box, with gilt titles and decoration to upper. Cover cloth stained to lower board, gilt dulled; minor wear to spine tips and corners; onlay slightly scuffed but bright. Ownership name & address to front paste-down. Boldly inscribed to title page "Copyright of the Author in Great Britain witheld, entered at Stationers Hall" in Beatrix Potter's hand, and "Philadelphia" crossed through by her in the publisher's imprint. Inner margin p. 108/9 creased otherwise contents clean. A Very Good copy in fine clam-shell box. In 1929, Beatrix Potter realised that the U.S. publication of The Fairy Caravan would leave her lacking a British copyright; so she requested that her American publisher David McKay send her 100 sets of sheets to be privately published in Britain. These were bound up by George Middleton in Ambleside in a signed limited edition of 100 copies. Its seems highly likely that in writing such an explicit inscription to the title page Ms Potter was asserting her right to the copyright and using this copy to illustrate this to her UK publisher, as well as to provide him with the text for the UK title-page.