POTTER, BEATRIX. THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT. Colored frontispiece and 41 black and white illustrations by the author. 16mo, original

pictorial boards with flat back; minor foxing along page edges. A FINE COPY. (London: Privately printed), [1901] FIRST EDITION. FIRST ISSUE, with the flat-backed binding, of which only 250 copies were printed. "The books were ready on 16 December and Miss Potter began giving them away to selected friends and relatives and selling them to others at one shilling two pence each. By this time, however, Beatrix Potter's career had already been given its first impetus, for the publisher Frederick Warne & Co. had agreed to accept the book for publication in a regular trade edition." --Gottlieb, Early Children's Books, 220; Quinby 1.