Beatrix Potter

First edition, first printing of The Pie and the Patty-Pan, the inspiration for the Beswick figure Duchess with Flowers.

• Beatrix Potter (English).
• London: Frederick Warne and Co., 1905.
• Quarto.
• Includes a color frontispiece and 9 color plates, 21 vignettes in black and white.
• Bound in publisher’s blue-grey boards with mounted kitten color illustration on upper cover, lettered and paneled in white, mottled lavender endpapers.

This first edition is in larger format than the usual Beatrix Potter titles, this was changed in 1930, when it was reissued as The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pen in the standard format. "The year 1905 appears on the front of the title page of the first printing. The early printings have plain mottled lavender end-papers, which were shortly replaced by an end-paper design featuring a pie and a patty-pan. The cover picture was then changed from a cat in a small circle, to one of Ribby sitting by the fire, in a large circle" (Linder).

Linder p.425.

Quinby 9.