![]() In 1916 Potter inscribed a copy of the Warne edition stating "this is my own favourite amongst my little books". The story is unique in the series with its period setting (Potter drew the costumes from the collection at the V&A museum, then the South Kensington Museum), and was based on a true story that Potter had heard while staying with her cousin Caroline Hutton in Gloucestershire: an elaborate waistcoat had been commissioned for a grand mayoral occasion, but the tailor lacked the time to complete it and needed another packet of cherry-coloured silk - though more prosaically, it was his two assistants who had secretly finished the work. Potter had the tale privately printed, as Warne had not yet published The Tale of Peter Rabbit and she did not think her publishers would want a second book from her so soon. The Tailor of Gloucester was first written and illustrated for Freda Moore as a Christmas present in 1901. The text of this edition is considerably longer than that of the first trade edition and the cover incorporates a vignette illustration that was never used again. ![]() First edition, first impression, one of 500 copies privately printed for the author a year before Warne's trade edition, issued in the same month and in a similar format to the second privately printed Peter Rabbit. ![]()
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