A nice Beatrix Potter book, one not found too often on eBay, especially so in DJ. Be sure to read about the interesting provenance of this book.
Item 330650057159 sold for $600 on Jan. 3, 2012
1929 Beatrix Potter First Edn in scarce DJ The Fairy Caravan McKay Philadelphia
"Scarce Breatrix Potter Philadelphia-Published Semi-Autobiographical, Illustrated Short Story, The Fairy Caravan, Rare In Publisher's Dust Jacket
You would have to spend $1,445 or $2,000 to purchase the only other copies of this scarce Beatrix Potter first edition in the original dust jacket we found available for sale online:
The Fairy Caravan, by Beatrix Potter (Philadelphia: David McKay 1929), first edition, 6 5/8" x 8 1/2" tall hardbound, 225pp., in original green cloth boards with gilt lettering and design to spine and color pictorial label to front cover, profusely illustrated (six full-page color plates, and 20 full-page and 42 smaller B&W illustrations), in publisher's original color pictorial dust jacket. Spine is ever-so-slightly cocked, and the covers, though quite bright (thanks to use of the dust jacket), are a bit rubbed and edgeworn, with some light staining to the rear cover at the top, and a smudge on the pictorial title label on the front cover. Inside, the book is exceptionally clean and flawless, except for the stamp and signature of well-known and somewhat infamous Indiana collector Earl Ford McNaughton on the front pastedown (see the note below). Otherwise, a very good copy of this issue in a rare dust jacket, which has sunning to the spine, soiling, chipping, abrasions, a 5" tear to the rear of the jacket (with a crude tape repair to the reverse) and a tear along the front hinge separating the jacket into two pieces, nevertheless nicely preserved and displayed in a Brodart™ archival sleeve. Collectors' references: See Linder p. 292-5, Quinby 29a.
Long after Beatrix Potter stopped writing the Peter Rabbit series, during a period in her life when she was primarily writing and drawing for her own pleasure, and devoting most of her energies to a highly successful venture breeding and raising Herdwick sheep, she was approached by American publisher Alexander McKay of David McKay Co. in Philadelphia. McKay persuaded Potter to let him publish a long short story she had been writing for years about a guinea pig. Potter had great difficulty in finishing the drawings for the book, which she named The Fairy Caravan, her eyesight by then not what it once was, but they are her usual endearing work, and her prose is exceptional.
Though not a common Potter title, children throughout the ages have loved The Fairy Caravan. And Potter fans realize that The Fairy Caravan was somewhat autobiographical. The backdrop for the story, which follows the adventures of Tuppenny, a young guinea pig who runs away from home to join a travelling circus, is the woods and estate surrounding Graythwaite Hall in the Lake District, Cumbria, which were also a favourite walking spot for Wordsworth.
There is additional publishing "back-story" around this title, familiar to Potter collectors. Frederick Warne and Company, her publisher for prior books, were less than happy about the American publication of a Potter book, but she considered the title too personal to be published in England, and the trade edition wasn't released there until long after her death. Yet the lawyers had concerns about the strength of the copyright in England, so she had 100 copies specially bound and self published in the UK to protect her interests there. One of those copies is a "holy grail" acquisition for a Potter collector ($8,000 for the only copy available online).
Provenance - about the prior owner: Earl Ford McNaughton was until November 2004 president of the First National Bank of Fremont, near Ft. Wayne, Indiana, when he was ousted for mismanagement of the bank his family had founded in the late 1800s, and his dealings with fraudulent loans. McNaughton was an obsessive collector of antiques and antiquarian books, and the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported his bank owned more than 10% of its assets in these collectibles, extremely unusual for an FDIC-insured bank. Since he was forced to resign at the bank, most of these antiques, including this first edition, were placed up for sale."
