The Tailor of Gloucester. by POTTER, Beatrix

[Strangeways, London], 1902. . First edition, first issue, [one of 500 copies]; 16mo; 16 colour plates by the author, one plate with pencil initials or flourish beneath, internally excellent, original pink boards lettered and illustrated in black with rounded spine, a superb copy.
A remarkably fine copy of Beatrix Potter's first privately printed edition of The Tailor of Gloucester; this work was developed from an illustrated letter, given by Potter to Freda Moore. Based on a true story about a tailor, one Mr. Prichard, whose headstone in Gloucester reads 'The Tailor of Gloucester', told to her by Caroline Hutton during a stay at Harescombe Grange near Stroud, Gloucestershire, for which the author took sketches of Gloucester landmarks & streets, and even tore a button off her own coat so she could watch a tailor in Chelsea at work.

This edition incorporates many of the author's favourite rhymes & verses, which were removed or reduced in the Warne edition published a year later, though even for the privately printed edition Beatrix was obliged to sacrifice some 1,100 words from her original manuscript. The Tailor of Gloucester was the author's favourite among all her works, writing of this edition 'I find that children of the right age - 12 - like it best; the smaller ones who could learn off the short sentences of Peter find this one too long'.
Linder 420 & pp.114; Quinby 3; Taylor, Whalley, Hobbs, Battrick pp.59-60; Gottlieb/Morgan 221; Osborne, p. 379.