Beatrix Potter | The Tailor of Gloucester, inscribed presentation copy, private printing, London, 1902, original boards

Beatrix Potter

The Tailor of Gloucester. London, 1902.

FIRST PRIVATELY PRINTED EDITION, 8vo (138 x 100mm.), PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR in ink on preliminary free endpaper "to Cicely Roscoe from Beatrix Potter Jan 16th 03", coloured plate to verso of title page, coloured plates, original pictorial pink boards, browning to front and back free endpapers

A rare presentation copy of the first privately printed edition of The Tailor of Gloucester, which was Potter's personal favourite of all her published books. The recipient Ciceley Roscoe was possibly a relative of Beatrix Potter: Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe MP was Potter's uncle by his marriage in 1863 to Lucy Potter, the brother of Beatrix's father. Beatrix Potter stayed with her uncle Sir Henry at his country house Woodcote Lodge, near Leatherhead in Surrey in March 1896 where he encouraged her scientific studies and drawing. It is interesting to note that Sir Henry's grandfather William Roscoe MP wrote and published a small children's book in 1808 titled "The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast" which gives human features to animals. This was a very popular work and by royal request the poem was set to music by Geroge Smart and performed by the royal princesses Mary, Elizabeth and Augusta. It is possible that this book might have been an inspiration for Beatrix Potter's stories.

The story of the Tailor of Gloucester was based on a real life incident where a tailor, John Prichard, claimed a suit he was making for the mayor had been completed overnight by fairies. Potter was delighted by the story and made it her own, turning the fairies into mice and placing it in eighteenth century Gloucestershire. She visited the costume department at the South Kensington Museum in order to inform her illustrations of eighteenth century dress and used Prichard's own shop for her sketches of the shop in the story. It was originally written as a Christmas gift for Freda Moore, the daughter of her former governess, but she later borrowed the copy and revised it for private printing, completing this in December 1902 for family and friends. The first trade edition of the Tailor of Gloucester came in October 1903.

LITERATURE

Linder, 423; Quinby, 4

PROVENANCE

Inscribed by the author to Cicely Roscoe "from Beatrix Potter Jan 16th 03"