Potter (Beatrix) The Tale of Peter Rabbit, first trade edition, deluxe issue with 'wept big tears' on p.51 and bound in mustard-yellow cloth rather than paper boards, half-title, leaf-pattern endpapers, 31 full-page colour illustrations by Potter, small ink ownership inscription to front free endpaper, a few abrasion marks, pp.58-9 and 66-7 stuck together, p.80 with short marginal tear, gutter cracked and weak, final leaf becoming detached, contents shaken, lacking pp.9-10 and pp.15-16, lacking rear free endpaper, lower hinge broken, original mustard-yellow cloth with mounted colour illustration on upper cover, t.e.g., slightly rubbed and soiled, [Linder p.421, Quinby 2], 16mo, London & New York, Frederick Warne and Co. [1902].

⁂ Rare deluxe issue of the first trade edition of the first book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. Originally published in two privately printed editions of 250 and 200 copies (December 1901 and February 1902, respectively), this first trade edition was the first in which all of Potter's designs are printed in color. Leslie Linder records that 2000 copies from the first printing of 8000 were issued in "green cloth, light green cloth or olive-green cloth". This mustard-yellow cloth variant is therefore unrecorded by Linder, making it perhaps the rarest of the different deluxe issues of Peter Rabbit.