First American Edition, First Printing

"J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Retold for Little People", by May Byron with the Permission of the Author, pictures by Arthur Rackham, published by Scribner, New York, 1930. First Printing of the First Edition, with marking 'A' and Scribner's colophon present on the copyright page.

Hard cover, original publisher's pictorial cloth [spine ends and corner wear, soiling and fading, especially spine: see pictures]; 5.1/2" x 8", 123 pages, "Map of Peter Pan's Kensington Gardens" on the page before half-title; 6 color plates including frontispiece [all listed plates are present], 15 b/w text illustrations, old dump stain on top edge of the pages, no smell, a little soiling and slightly bumped upper corners of several pages, very good condition. See photos.

For it was in 1897 that Barrie became acquainted with the three little boys in Kensington Gardens: five-year-old George, four-year-old Jack, and baby brother Peter, who came to play in the park each day attended by their nanny. They talked about cricket, pirates, and fairies; he dazzled them by the way he could wiggle his ears; and before long, Barrie was meeting up with the boys on a regular basis.

Barrie's Peter Pan is human-born, not a fairy, but he's lived in Never Land so long that he's as much a fairy as he is a boy: magical, capricious, and amoral, like the fairies of the old Scots tradition. He's a complex mixture of good and bad. He's a liminal creature, standing on the threshold between fairy and child, mortal and immortal, villain (when he lures children from their homes) and hero (when he rescues them from pirates).

Daily life went on. Barrie continued to write, and "Peter Pan" continued to cast its spell, becoming the most famous of Barrie's works. The tale of Peter Pan as a baby, originally published in "The Little White Bird", was now available in a separate children's book edition, called "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens", with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Barrie's literary star continued to rise, and he was awarded a baronetcy in 1913 in recognition of his status as one of the best loved authors in Britain."

Mary Clarissa "May" Byron (1861-1936) was a British writer and poet, best known for her abridgements of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan book. She published under the names May Byron, M.C. Gillington and Maurice Clare. Byron specialized in writing biographies of great composers, poets and writers, before going on to rewrite some of J. M. Barrie's works for younger readers, to write poetry, and to write cookbooks.

Arthur Rackham [1867-1939], a famous British illustrator.

Although acknowledged as an accomplished black-and-white book illustrator for some years, it was the publication of his full colour plates to Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" by Heinemann in 1905 that particularly brought him into public attention, his reputation being confirmed the following year with J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens". Income from the books was greatly augmented by annual exhibitions of the artwork at the Leicester Galleries. Rackham won a gold medal at the Milan International Exhibition in 1906 and another one at the Barcelona International Exposition in 1912. His works were included in numerous exhibitions, including one at the Louvre in Paris in 1914.

US: Priority (c 2-4 days) ----------- $18.50
Canada: Priority (c 2-6 weeks) -- $32.50
World: Priority (c 2-8 weeks) --- $45.50