The story of a party: Ribby, the cat, invites Duchess, the Pomeranian, to tea, for which she has prepared a pie. Duchess decides to switch the pie with one of her own, and chaos ensues. The story was begun in 1903, left off in favour of an earlier publication of The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and picked up again in 1905.
In 1905 Potter wrote to Warne, “if the book prints well it will be my next favourite to the “Tailor”” (quoted in Linder, The History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter (1987), p,171)
The setting and illustrations of the book are particularly centred on the village of Sawrey, which Potter lived in and loved. She bought Hill Top Farm, Sawrey, the same year as The Pie and the Patty-Pan was published. “Margaret Lane tells how “The Pie and the Patty Pan roams about the village of Sawrey, lingering over the tiger-lilies and snapdragons in cottage gardens, glancing into parlours and kitchens, pausing to admire a white-washed slate-roofed porch covered with purple clematis, and to consider the plants in cottage windows and the pumps in backyards. One or two of the street scenes were drawn in Hawkeshead, but the book is Beatrix Potter’s praise of Sawrey, and contains many village details that she loved.”” (quoted in Linder, p. 169).
The first Potter book in large format, and the last book Beatrix Potter and Norman Warne collaborated on before his untimely death in August 1905. “Although [he] did not live to see the published book, he had seen it in its final stages” (Linder, p.172).The only Potter book to be published without pictorial endpapers as they were overlooked in the confusion in the wake of Warne’s death.
With neat gift inscription to front free endpaper, dated Christmas Day 1905. Scattered foxing, spine sensitively repaired and reinforced, age-toning to endpapers as is usual, else a reasonably presentable copy.
Provenance: the Private Collection of Thomas & Greta Schuster.
