POTTER, Beatrix (1866 - 1943) The Tailor of GloucesterLondon: Strangeways and Sons, Printers, December 1902. 16mo (146 x 116mm). Frontispiece in color and 15 plates. Original pink paperboards with a line drawing of three mice sewing on the front cover. Condition: light uniform toning at edges, few spots at fore-edge; endpapers and pastedowns lightly foxed, spine sunned with some light dustsoiling to covers. first edition. privately printed and from a total edition of 500. This books differs considerably from the edition later published by Frederick Warne. It contains many more jingles and nursery rhymes as well as additional pictures. Potter herself paid for this colored printing of 500 copies. Strangeways printed the private editions of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tailor of Gloucester. Beatrix Potter first told the story of The Tailor of Gloucester in a letter from Beatrix to Freda Moore, daughter of her former governess, Annie Carter. The charming Christmas tale was the author's personal favorite. Affixed to the front free endpaper is a thank you note to Potter's first biographer Margaret Lane from Leslie Linder, who decoded Potter's secret writing, March 19, 1966; he gives the same message in Potter's secret code in another note on the facing endpaper. Osborne I. 379; Linder 420; Quinby 3.