"HE ESCAPED FROM BEING A HUMAN WHEN HE WAS SEVEN DAYS OLD…"

(RACKHAM, Arthur) BARRIE, J.M. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. London: Hodder & Stoughton, circa 1913. Quarto, later three-quarter crimson morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers, top edge gilt. $1500.

Third edition, illustrated by Rackham with a color frontispiece, 49 original mounted color plates, and 12 in-text line cuts (seven full-page), handsomely bound.

Peter Pan first appeared as a character in Barrie's 1902 novel The Little White Bird; this book contains the chapters featuring the boy who never grows up. It is also "the book which first made Rackham's work famous" (Carpenter & Prichard, 321) and is "a much-sought-after volume by the many collectors" of his illustrations (Quayle, 87). This is the 1912 enlarged third edition, a faithful republication of the 1906 first edition that featured a new frontispiece and 12 new in-text line cuts. The plates are mounted on heavy stock (white, rather than the brown stock of the first edition) and interspersed throughout. A second edition was issued in 1910, with only 24 of the plates, making this third edition somewhat more desirable. See Latimore & Haskell, 40; Riall, 114.

Only occasional mild foxing to text, plates and binding fine.