Potter, Beatrix [Cover illustration]; Bingham, Clifton; Glasgow, G. R.. CHANGING PICTURES: A Book of Transformation Pictures. Ernest Nister, London, 1893.

Price: US$1002.45 + shipping

Description: Pp. [16], with 6 movable chromolithographic plates with tab-operated transformational slats, black & white pictorial title page and numerous text illustrations (one full page), floral patterned endpapers; cr. 4to; red cloth backed pictorial glazed papered boards, slightly soiled, edges lightly worn; early inked gift inscription (1893) on upper free endpaper, neat paper repair to top fore-corner of same, outer leaves lightly browned, hinges neatly reinforced, paper repair to closed tear near the tab of plate 3, a few spots of foxing and some light soiling; Ernest Nister, London and E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, n.d.[1893]. First edition. *The text, in verse and prose, is by 'C.B.' (Clifton Bingham), and G. R. Glasgow. One of three coloured illustrations on the upper board is an early (unattributed) picture by Beatrix Potter, of a rabbit opening a door to discover a Christmas basket of carrots and other vegetables. In 1892 Potter had sold a few of her illustrations to Nister, and the firm was to publish her first attributed drawings, which were an early incarnation of Jeremy Fisher, initialled H.B.P. [Helen Beatrix Potter]. The drawings accompanied A Frog he would a Fishing Go, verses by Clifton Bingham in Comical Customers, a Nister holiday annual for 1896. Later, Potter described Nister as 'an unattractive' firm, 'but it was my first start at anything published' [See Linder, A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter, pp. 175-178). All the 'dissolving' or transformational plates are in working order, although the stub of the tab of the penultimate plate (of cats, in a style similar to Louis Wain) is torn off, but extant.

Seller: Kay Craddock - Antiquarian Bookseller, Melbourne, VIC, Australia