1910 Rare Early Edition - The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse by Beatrix Potter

An attractive early printing of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, retaining its original blue-grey pictorial boards, charming colour illustrations, and distinctive Potter pictorial endpapers.

Author: Beatrix Potter.
Title: The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse.
Publisher: London and New York: Frederick Warne and Co., [circa 1910].
Edition: Early printing, likely the third impression. The title page is undated, while the copyright page retains the 1910 copyright statement; the pictorial endpapers correspond to those used in the earliest impressions. Quinby 18.
Language: English.
Pages: 84 pages.
Size: Approximately 5.5 x 4.5 inches.
Binding: Very good original blue-grey paper-covered boards, lettered in white to the front board and spine, with the original hexagonal colour pictorial onlay of Mrs. Tittlemouse to the front cover. Light rubbing, minor marks and gentle wear to edges and corners consistent with age, as shown. Binding firm and attractive. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good, complete, bright and clean overall, with only occasional light age-toning and minor spotting or handling marks. Original colour pictorial endpapers featuring characters from Potter’s tales.
Illustrations: Complete with a colour frontispiece and 26 beautiful colour plates by Beatrix Potter, plus the black-and-white title-page vignette.

Estimate: USD 450–600.

The book: First published in 1910, The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse follows the fastidious wood mouse Thomasina Tittlemouse as she struggles to keep her carefully ordered home clean while an assortment of beetles, bees and other uninvited visitors wander through her passages. Most troublesome of all is the untidy Mr. Jackson, whose intrusion provides much of the story’s gentle humour. Potter combines an almost naturalistic observation of animals with the miniature domestic world that made her books so enduringly appealing.

This copy is particularly desirable as an early undated printing in the original small-format boards. Bibliographical evidence indicates that the first two impressions carried the date 1910 on the title page, while an undated issue retaining the same early pictorial endpapers is generally identified as the likely third printing, around 1910-1911. 

The author: Helen Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) was an English author, illustrator, naturalist and conservationist whose finely observed animal stories became classics of children’s literature. Her combination of delicate watercolour illustration, understated humour and precise observation of the natural world is especially evident in Mrs. Tittlemouse, where even the smallest insects and domestic details become part of the story.