Description
“ALL CHILDREN, EXCEPT ONE, GROW UP”: PRESENTATION COPY OF THE TRUE FIRST EDITION OF PETER PAN, INSCRIBED IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION
BARRIE, J.M. Peter and Wendy. London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1911]. Octavo, original gilt-stamped pictorial green cloth, original dust jacket.
First edition of Barrie’s classic children’s novel and the first appearance of the story as we now know it, richly illustrated by F.D. Bedford. This copy is inscribed on the half title, “To Audrey from her friend, J.M. Barrie, Oct. 1911.”
The first publication of the now-classic story about the adventures of Peter Pan and Wendy in Never Never Land. Although Peter Pan was introduced as a character in some chapters of Little White Bird (1902) and the play Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), the story as we now know it did not exist until this book appeared in 1911. “With the publication of his masterpiece? Barrie introduced the children of England to the strangest adventure they would ever experience—a world of fairies, mermaids, a one-armed pirate, and a flying boy who refused to grow up” (Silvey, 46). Peter and Wendy “contains much that is not in the play, including an opening chapter which relates how Wendy and her brothers knew of Peter Pan and the ‘Neverland’ before Peter ever came to their nursery; the last chapter, ‘When Wendy Grew Up,’ described how Wendy’s daughter Jane takes Wendy’s place in the Never Never Land in later years” (Carpenter & Prichard, 403). This edition is particularly desirable due to the elaborate and beautiful plates by F.D. Bedford, which were usually replaced in later editions by those of Mabel Lucie Attwell. The recipient of this copy was probably Audrey Lucas, daughter of essayist and assistant editor of Punch, Edward Verrall Lucas, who knew virtually everyone in the London literary and publishing worlds in the first part of the 20th century, and had actually heard Barrie read Peter Pan while it was still in manuscript (see Dictionary of Literary Biography).
Moderate foxing to fore-edges and first and last gatherings. Original cloth quite nice, gilt bright. Rare dust jacket very good with minor expert restoration. Very scarce inscribed.
