# Is "The Tailor of Gloucester" by Beatrix Potter a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter (Privately printed for the author by Strangeways & Sons, 1902) is identified by: True first (privately printed): December 1902, printed for the author by Strangeways & Sons, London, in an edition of 500 copies (Quinby 3; Linder 117 and 420). The two-stage pattern is confirmed and matches Peter Rabbit: the December 1902 privately printed edition (500 copies, Strangeways & Sons for the author) precedes the October 1903 Frederick Warne & Co.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- True first (privately printed): December 1902, printed for the author by Strangeways & Sons, London, in an edition of 500 copies (Quinby 3
- Linder 117 and 420)
- 12mo, roughly 131 x 102 mm, [96] pp., with a colour frontispiece and fifteen colour illustrations
- Original pink pictorial boards, stamped and lettered in black on the front cover, with a rounded rather than a flat back — a binding difference from the privately printed Peter Rabbit and a useful confirmation
- Text point: the private printing carries the long passage (roughly eight to nine pages) of Simpkin's Christmas Eve wanderings through Gloucester and the bulk of Potter's rhymes and verses, all cut by the publisher from the trade edition, and three of its illustrations were dropped from the trade edition
- First trade edition (Frederick Warne & Co., October 1903
- Publisher imprint reads Privately printed for the author by Strangeways & Sons

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Beatrix Potter |
| Publisher | Privately printed for the author by Strangeways & Sons |
| Year | 1902 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | True first (privately printed): December 1902, printed for the author by Strangeways & Sons, London, in an edition of 500 copies (Quinby 3 |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
True first (privately printed): December 1902, printed for the author by Strangeways & Sons, London, in an edition of 500 copies (Quinby 3; Linder 117 and 420). 12mo, roughly 131 x 102 mm, [96] pp., with a colour frontispiece and fifteen colour illustrations. Original pink pictorial boards, stamped and lettered in black on the front cover, with a rounded rather than a flat back — a binding difference from the privately printed Peter Rabbit and a useful confirmation. Text point: the private printing carries the long passage (roughly eight to nine pages) of Simpkin's Christmas Eve wanderings through Gloucester and the bulk of Potter's rhymes and verses, all cut by the publisher from the trade edition, and three of its illustrations were dropped from the trade edition. First trade edition (Frederick Warne & Co., October 1903; Quinby 4; Linder p. 423): the first printing has a single-page endpaper design occurring four times, while the December 1903 second printing has a double-page endpaper occurring twice — that endpaper state is the printing point. Trade binding: maroon boards ruled and lettered in white, with a colour pictorial label on the front cover set within a blind-stamped panel in the shape of a truncated pyramid; issued in a glazed glassine wrapper with Potter advertisements on the back panel. Warne's trade edition contains 26 colour plates, seventeen entirely new and the remainder repeated from the 1902 private printing.

## Is this the true first?
The two-stage pattern is confirmed and matches Peter Rabbit: the December 1902 privately printed edition (500 copies, Strangeways & Sons for the author) precedes the October 1903 Frederick Warne & Co. trade edition, which cuts the text and adds new illustrations. Both are collected and both should be named: the 1902 private printing is the true first, the 1903 Warne is the first published (trade) edition — and because the two differ substantially in text and plates, they are not interchangeable. There is no US or foreign-language precedence question. The census claim is confirmed as stated.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
The trap for this title is facsimiles and later Warne printings rather than a book club. Warne's 1968 'The Tailor of Gloucester: A Facsimile of the Original Manuscript and Illustrations' (limited to 1,500 copies, with an introduction by Leslie Linder and Potter's twelve original watercolour sketches) reproduces the manuscript and early artwork and is regularly mistaken for — or catalogued as — the 1902 private printing; it is neither, and it is not a facsimile of the printed 1902 book. Within the trade edition, the December 1903 second printing is told by the double-page endpaper occurring twice, and twentieth-century Warne reprints in the standard small format are common. No book-club edition is documented in the sources consulted.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Tailor of Gloucester* by Beatrix Potter a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-tailor-of-gloucester
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.