Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. From The Little White Bird. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: Hodder and Stoughton, [1912]. First Edition Thus. Large folio, green cloth boards, decorated and titled in gilt. Light wear to spine ends & inner hinges. Contents in fine bright condition.

Fifty mounted coloured plates, each with titled tissue guards and accompanying black & white plates.

Regarded as the ‘Best’ edition, printed six years after the first as the fifty illustrations are dispersed throughout as they pertain to the text, as opposed to being bound-in at the end (as with the 1906 edition).

In 1902 J. M. Barrie wrote the novel ‘The Little White Bird’ the central chapters of which tell of a child named Peter Pan who escaped from being a human when he was seven days old and flew back to Kensington Gardens. The first book to appear with the title of ‘Peter Pan’ was in 1906, beautifully illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

A contemporary review of this book published in The World reads: ‘Mr Barrie has done what no one else has done since the inventor of ‘Alice’ he has invented a new legend, a modern folk story which comprehends all the innermost secrets of the modern child, be he four or forty. Mr Rackham, for his part, has been bewitched in his cradle: he does not dream of fairies or hobgoblins, he knows them.’