The Gingerbread Man, An old, old story retold and illustrated by Violet Moore Higgins

Chicago: Albert Whitman & Company, Just-Right-Books, 1926. Cloth. Fine/very good +. Violet Moore HIGGINS. [JUVENILE] [FAIRY TALES]. First edition. The dust jacket front flap identifies this as the "New Enlarged Picture Edition" with a price of "Net 65" cents. 8vo; [59]pp; navy cloth over board, gilt-stamped lettering and border, color pictorial only of a gingerbread man running through a garden; gilt lettering on spine; pictorial endpapers, navy on gray paper, ownership bookplate on ffep filled out in neat pencil; color fp and pictorial title page; text in navy; illustrated throughout; unclipped pictorial dust jacket, chipping at edges and lightly age-toned; color pictorial slipcase, rubbing of edges, small closed tear on top; fine in very good plus dj and publisher's slipcase. Not in Baumgarten. OCLC locates this in only 3 libraries. Gingerbread was a favorite treat in Europe for centuries, and later in America. Stories with gingerbread can be traced back to many fairy tales including those written by the Brothers Grimm. This story appears to be an American folktale first printed in the May 1875 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine under the title "The Gin-Ger-Bread Boy" with no credit given to an author. In the letters published by readers to the same issue of St. Nicholas Magazine, a letter appears:

"The author of the "Gingerbread Boy," in our pages for Little Folks writes as follows: "The 'Gingerbread Boy' is not strictly original. A servant girl from Maine told it to my children. It interested them so much that I thought it worth preserving. I asked where she found it, and she said an old lady told it to her in her childhood. So it may possibly have been in print, though I have never seen it."

Violet Moore Higgins (1886-1967) was an American cartoonist, book illustrator, and author.