PETER AND WENDY

London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911. First edition. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. First printing of Barrie's immortal novel, in the rare original dust jacket. Exquisite copy of Barrie's novel, expanded from the original 1904 play and from the shorter 1906 Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens into the best-known and most-quoted of the story's several versions. The most relentlessly self-aware of all the darker children's classics, PETER AND WENDY has proven difficult to subvert in its essential heartless knowingness: already pre-subverted, it contains within itself the coiled seeds of disillusion, as the wonder of childhood rests on the heartlessness underneath in a perfect balance unknown to other Edwardian sentimentalists. In the midst of Barrie's powerful appeal to childhood memories, Peter himself stands as the implacable enemy of nostalgia; unmoved by reminiscences, he bars the way to grown-ups who want to go back. "Don't you remember Captain Hook?" asks Wendy, shocked. "I forget them after I kill them," says Peter. 7.75'' x 5.5''. Original green cloth with bright gilt decoration to front board and spine. In original gray-green dust jacket with matching gilt decoration. Illustrated frontispiece and title page by Bedford, with eleven additional black-and-white full-page illustrations throughout (13 in total). [vii], 267, [1] pages. Minor rubbing to boards at corners. Offsetting to endpapers. Minimal foxing. Vertical crease to rear endpaper. Several chips to jacket at extremities; horizontal tear along top edge of rear panel, neatly repaired with archival tape to verso. Spine sunned: overall well preserved.