Beatrix Potter | The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, inscribed presentation copy, first edition, London, 1905

Beatrix Potter

The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. London: Frederick Warne and Co., and New York, 1905.

FIRST EDITION, 8vo (140 x 100mm.), PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR in ink on preliminary free endpaper: "Muriel Blackwell, with love from Beatrix Potter, Sept 28th 05", half title, title with plain vignette, coloured plates, original publisher's brown boards, with coloured image mounted to upper board, neatly rebound in white half calf, spine gilt with raised bands in compartments, endpapers decorated with coloured vignettes of Beatrix Potter's characters

THE EARLIEST TRACED PRESENTATION COPY OF THIS TITLE, INSCRIBED IN THE MONTH PRIOR TO PUBLICATION, SEPTEMBER 1905. A finely rebound first edition of Beatrix Potter's much loved Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Potter's sixth book to be published. 

Mrs Tiggy-Winkle was inspired by a real life washer woman that the Potter family employed at Dalguise House in Perthshire named Kitty MacDonald, with the name for the character coming from Potter's own pet hedgehog. It is set in the dramatic landscape of the Lake District, on the summit of Catbells near Derwentwater, where Potter was summering during the development of the tale. Her childhood friend, Lucie Carr, was the inspiration for Lucie. Lucie is a girl that happens upon Mrs Tiggy-Winkle's cottage and ends up helping her deliver her laundry to the local animals and birds in the neighbourhood including Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny.

The story was developed in the summer of 1904 and the plates were finalised in September 1905. Twenty thousand copies of the book were released in October 1905, but this exceptional presentation copy was inscribed by Beatrix Potter in advance of the official release date for her friend Muriel Blackwell.

LITERATURE

Linder, p. 425; Quinby 8

PROVENANCE

Inscribed by the author to Muriel Blackwell "with love from Beatrix Potter, Sept. 28th 05"