POTTER, Beatrix. The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse.

POTTER, Beatrix. The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. London: Frederick Warne & Co. 1918.

16mo. Publisher's green paper-covered boards with pictorial label to front, white lettering to front and spine, pictorial endpapers, in custom-made red solander box ; pp. 85, [1], frontispiece and 26 colour illustrations by the author; very good.

First edition, first impression, with the dropped 'N' from London on the imprint.

This story is Potter's adaptation of Aesop's fable 'The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse', and in her version sympathy is definitely with Timmy Willie, the country mouse. The book carries an autobiographical weight, being written during the war when Potter had retreated further into her valuable farm work. It is dedicated, cryptically, to 'Aesop in the Shadows', a reference to her life-long admiration for the fables and also, perhaps, to her own failing eye-sight. Johnny Town-Mouse was her last book to be fully illustrated from scratch. Hereafter, her books had to be pieced together using drawings made many years earlier. As Sean Fitzpatrick writes: 'The Tale of Johnny Town-mouse is not a tale that builds up the town, but one that hunkers down in the country. And this was the last vision that Beatrix Potter chose to share with her readers before retreating with Aesop into the shadows.'

Linder p. 430; Quinby 25.
Fitzpatrick, Sean, “To Beatrix in the Shadows: Johnny Town-mouse After 100 Years.” Crisis Magazine (August 6, 2018).

SKU: 2126807