March 2021 Catalogue

4 I m a g i n e d W o r l d s E a r l y M a r c h 2 0 2 1 Rare First Edition Of The Margery William Bianco’s Beloved The Velveteen Rabbit 2. BIANCO, Margery Williams. The Velveteen Rabbit, Or How Toys Become Real. London, 1922. Tall octavo, original pictorial boards, dust jacket. $20,500. Click for more info First edition, English issue (simultaneous with the American issue), of this beloved children’s classic, with seven beautiful color chromolithographs (three double-page) by William Nicholson. This copy blind-stamped “Presentation Copy.” “Margery Bianco’s first children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit , was written while she was living in England… Her own two children were young and at an age when toys meant much to them. She had vivid memories of the toys she had loved as a child, and this thinking about toys and remembering toys suddenly brought them to life” (Meigs et al., 473). Nicholson’s work has been placed “in the front rank among picture-books of this century” (Marcus Crouch). Only the first printing of the book occurs with the chromolithographic plates as originally drawn by Nicholson (contemporary reprints were photo- mechanically reduced). Book bright and fine, fragile dust jacket with mild toning, soiling and a few tears with loss to a few letters only on spine panel. A very lovely copy. Scarce and desirable. “When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”