Tale of Ginger & Pickles, The
London: Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd, 1930. Item #06105
Signed by Beatrix Potter at Hill Top During the Second World War
An Exceptionally Attractive Copy with Contemporary Wartime Provenance
POTTER, Beatrix. The Tale of Ginger & Pickles. London: Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd., [1930].
Later edition (first published in 1909). An exceptionally appealing copy, signed by Beatrix Potter on the half-title and dated in her hand, "Apr. 3rd 41."
Small quarto (5 3/8 x 4 1/8 inches; 137 x 105 mm.). 75, [1, blank] pp. Color frontispiece (included in pagination) and nine full-page color illustrations. Black-and-white vignette on title-page and nineteen black-and-white text illustrations.
Publisher's buff paper-covered boards, stamped in dark green on front cover and spine. Color pictorial onlay on front cover within a blind panel with scalloped lower edge. Color pictorial endpapers (Quinby VIII & IX). In the original price-clipped printed dust jacket. A remarkably fresh and well-preserved copy.
Loosely inserted is the original eight-page folding Frederick Warne catalogue, Beatrix Potter's Picture Books, together with an autograph letter of provenance dated 21 March 1998, reading in part: "The above book was signed by Beatrix Potter in 1941, and was given to me by my next door neighbour Mr. W. A. D. Eastham, manager of Martins Bank, Blackpool. During the war he stayed each year in the village of Sawrey, and became quite friendly with Beatrix, who as a favour agreed to sign the book..."
The letter, signed by Mrs. Ruth Lee, provides an unusually convincing and highly desirable chain of provenance, documenting precisely how the signature was obtained. According to Mrs. Lee, the volume had belonged to her neighbour, W. A. D. Eastham, manager of Martins Bank in Blackpool, who regularly spent part of each wartime year at Near Sawrey. During those visits he became acquainted with Beatrix Potter at nearby Hill Top, and on 3 April 1941 she kindly signed this copy for him. Such first-hand documentary evidence accompanying a Potter signature is distinctly uncommon and lends the volume an exceptional degree of authenticity and historical interest.
Originally conceived as a handwritten and illustrated Christmas gift for the young daughter of Harold Warne, The Tale of Ginger & Pickles ranks among the most delightful and subtly humorous of Beatrix Potter's later books. Potter transforms the everyday realities of village commerce into an engaging moral fable in which Ginger, a cat, and Pickles, a terrier, keep a prosperous village shop whose generous policy of extending unlimited credit to every customer ultimately brings about financial ruin. The story affectionately reunites many of the familiar characters from Potter's earlier tales, creating one of the richest cross-sections of her fictional world while gently satirizing the practical economics of rural life that she knew so intimately from her years at Hill Top Farm.
By April 1941, when this copy was signed, Potter was seventy-four years old and had long since retired from writing new tales, devoting herself almost entirely to farming and the preservation of the Lakeland countryside. Signed books from this late period of her life are appreciably scarcer than the presentation copies of her Edwardian years, making this an especially appealing survival. Preserved in its original dust jacket and accompanied by both the contemporary Warne catalogue and the detailed letter recording the circumstances of its signing, the present volume is considerably more desirable than the great majority of signed Potter books encountered on the market.
Quinby 18. Linder, pp. 429-432.
Price: $8,500.00