Bessie Parker, Nancy Parker

Beautiful mock-up of Funny Bunnies, with the original watercolors and line-drawings for the 1905 picture book, with manuscript notes.

• Bessie Parker (English).
• Illustrated by Nancy Parker.
• 27 leaves, with typewriter text tipped on one side only.
• 12 full-page watercolors with numerous hand-drawn line illustrations throughout.
• Original loose hand-painted wrapper tipped onto later grey paper.
• Grey cloth-covered boards, ring-bound, silver-lettered with sketch book product details.

"So will you kindly study for a time / The coloured picture opposite this rhyme, / And count the rabbits in it, big and small, / While I endeavour to describe them all."

Sisters Bessie and Nancy Parker collaborated on several titles featuring the antics of humanized animals; Funny Bunnies was their third work together. While in concept broadly similar to Beatrix Potter's The Tale Of Peter Rabbit, the Parker sisters' books imbued their bunny characters with charmingly-illustrated originality. The Indianapolis Star called the illustrations "clever in design and well executed," expressing relief that the main characters "afford a welcome change from the all-pervading Teddy bear of juvenile literature" (55).

This remarkable survival demonstrates the foundational quality of artistry that goes into making a picture book. Each in-text line drawing is carefully executed, and the full-page watercolor illustrations glow with color. The pinprick holes in the margins of the leaves are further testament to the process of preparing a picture book manuscript for publication: it is likely that they were pinned to a board or wall to puzzle out the order of the rhymes and corresponding illustrations. In comparing the original art to the published chromolithograph illustrations, the charm and personality certainly remain in the final product, but the watercolors provide much more depth – demonstrating the inherent challenge of recreating them in print (though many of the Parker books achieve it admirably). The Parkers created some of the most vivid picture books of the early-20th century, and original material related to their work is extremely rare.