Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes

London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1922. First Edition of Beatrix Potter’s Second and Last Book of Rhymes

POTTER, Beatrix. Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes. London: Frederick Warne & Co., [n.d., ca. 1922?].

First edition of Beatrix Potter’s second and last book of rhymes.

Twelvemo (4 7/8 x 4 inches; 123 x 102 mm.). 52, [1], [1, blank] pp. Color frontispiece and fourteen color plates (included in pagination). Black and white vignette on title-page.

Original red boards ruled and lettered in white on front cover and lettered in white on spine. Color pictorial label on front cover within a rectangular blind (truncated) panel outlined in blind. With the correct, first edition color pictorial endpapers (Quinby Plates XVI and XVII). Neat ink signature on front free endpaper. Minimal fading to spine, still a very fine copy.

“Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes is a sequel to Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes, but the rhymes and pictures used for this book have even earlier associations than those for Appley Dapply…Following the success of Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes in 1917, Warnes asked for a sequel. ‘People worry me for just one or two more books,’ Beatrix Potter wrote to a friend, ‘but my eyes are getting weak and I am tired of doing them…and since the war there is so much to do…I have a big farm as well as my house-keeping; so I seldom sit down except to meals and necessary letters.’ In her portfolios were the two paintings of 1893 illustrating the verse about ‘Guinea-pigs’ Garden; the Cecily Parsley booklet of 1897; and two versions of her ‘Nanny Netticoat’ rhyme. These, and some of her other early drawings, were recopied and used for the book” (Linder, pp. 251-252).

Cecily Parsley serves as a sister volume to Appley Dapply, both in terms of the nursery rhyme content and the format, but draws largely upon earlier memories and associations of the author than its sibling.

Linder, p. 430; Quinby 26; V & A 1534. (Inventory #: 06114)