J.M. Barrie / Arthur Rackham (ill.) - Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens - 1912

"Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens", by J.M. Barrie / Arthur Rackham (ill.)

Hodder & Stoughton, London - 1912, new revised and expanded edition of the 1906 first edition (considered to be a remarkable improvement with the additional colored plates; this is considered to be his best edition, his magnum opus) - 50 colored plates and several b/w in-text illustrations by Arthur Rackham - 124p, 26cmx20cm - condition: good condition (significantly better than usually encountered),, , all 50 colored plates present, incl. frontispiece and tissueguards. Gift inscription to endpaper, some wear to boards, fading to cloth and some page edges. endpapers tanned,.. A collectible copy for any serious Rackham collector.

J.M. Barrie’s novel The Little White Bird (1902) “contains the first sketches for Peter Pan. He explains to David that ‘all children in our part of London were once birds in the Kensington Gardens; a The central chapters of the book tell the story of one such child, Peter Pan, who ‘escaped from being a human when he was seven days old…and flew back to the Kensington Gardens’…The Peter Pan chapters of The Little White Bird were re-issued in 1906 as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with colour plates by Arthur Rackham; this was the book which first made Rackham’s work famous. It should not be confused with Peter and Wendy (1911), Barrie’s novelization of the play Peter Pan” (The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature).