The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

The Tale of Benjamin Bunny Beatrix Potter London and New York: Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd., printed September 1961. Small octavo. Original cream paper-covered boards, upper cover lettered in red “THE TALE OF BENJAMIN BUNNY / BY BEATRIX POTTER” above an oval colour pictorial onlay of Benjamin Bunny in his tam-o’-shanter, carrying the red pocket-handkerchief, with the Warne imprint in a small red cartouche at the foot. Plain cream lower board. Colour-printed pictorial endpapers in the standard later Warne design, with Potter characters holding miniature copies of the tales linked by trailing stems. Half-title and title with line vignette of Benjamin; dedication “FOR THE CHILDREN OF SAWREY / FROM / OLD MR. BUNNY”; 27 colour plates after Potter’s watercolours, including the frontispiece, printed on the rectos opposite the text in the classic Warne arrangement. Printer’s imprint: “PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS LTD / LONDON AND BECCLES” with the code 598·961. A September 1961 printing. Frederick Warne used a numerical printer’s code from about 1942 to 1984 in which the group after the stop gives month and year: here 961 is the ninth month of 1961. The title page is undated, as usual on these reprints, and carries the Berne Convention copyright notice for Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd., London. This is the trade binding of the mid-century Warne issues — cream boards and red lettering with the oval onlay. Beatrix Potter (Helen Beatrix Potter, 1866–1943) wrote and illustrated the book. Born in London to a wealthy family, she spent childhood holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, where she drew animals, fungi and landscapes with scientific care. A privately printed Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901) was taken up by Frederick Warne and published in the familiar small format in 1902. The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, the fourth of the series, followed in September 1904. It continues Peter’s adventure: Benjamin, named after Potter’s pet rabbit Benjamin Bouncer, finds his cousin wrapped in a red pocket-handkerchief, and the two return to Mr. McGregor’s garden for the lost clothes, only to be caught by the cat and rescued — and punished — by old Mr. Bunny. The dedication is to the children of Near Sawrey, the village beside Hill Top, the farm Potter bought with the royalties from Peter Rabbit in 1905. She drew the pictures at and around Hill Top and Fawe Park on Derwentwater; the onions, the fir-tree, the wall and the greenhouse are taken from places she knew. Potter prepared the plates as watercolours sized for the page; Warne printed them in colour, one illustration to each opening, with her text set in a large, widely leaded type. She later married William Heelis, farmed in Sawrey, and left her land to the National Trust. The twenty-three little books, of which this is one, remain the form in which her work is usually collected. Condition: very good plus. A clean, tight copy of this 1961 printing. Boards lightly age-toned, as usual with this paper, with minor rubbing at the corners and along the edges; the oval onlay is bright and unfaded, and the red lettering is clear. Spine square and lettering unchipped; hinges sound, with no cracking or looseness visible at the gatherings shown. Endpapers fresh, without ownership inscription. Title, copyright leaf and text leaves clean; the colour plates — Benjamin on the bank, Peter in the handkerchief, the onion bed, old Mr. Bunny and the cat, the return home — retain good colour and are free of foxing. Page edges lightly toned. A well-preserved reading or nursery copy of the standard post-war issue.…