“HE ESCAPED FROM BEING A HUMAN WHEN HE WAS SEVEN DAYS OLD…”
RACKHAM, Arthur. BARRIE, J.M. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1912]. Quarto, original green cloth gilt, original dust jacket.
Enlarged third trade edition, illustrated by Rackham with a new color frontispiece, 49 original mounted color plates, and 12 new in-text line cuts (seven full-page) not present in earlier editions, in the scarce original dust jacket.
Peter Pan first appeared as a character in Barrie’s 1902 novel The Little White Bird; this book contains the chapters featuring the boy who never grows up. It is also “the book which first made Rackham’s work famous” (Carpenter & Prichard, 321) and is “a much-sought-after volume by the many collectors” of his illustrations (Quayle, 87). This is a faithful republication of the 1906 first edition, without the cartographic endpapers, and with a new frontispiece, 12 new in-text line cuts, and plates mounted on white stock rather than brown and interspersed throughout. A second edition was issued in 1910, with only 24 of the plates. Without original box. Latimore & Haskell, 40. Riall, 114.
Plates fine. Occasional faint foxing to text, text block with minor expert reinforcement, minor spot of discoloration to spine head. Scarce fragile original dust jacket with minor loss to spine ends and corners, slight rubbing to mounted illustration on front panel, tape repairs to verso. An attractive copy in near-fine condition.