The Blampied Edition of Peter Pan: The Original Text of Peter and Wendy

Second state.  viii, 216pp, with tipped in colour plate frontispiece, with captioned tissue guard, and eleven further tipped in colour plates with captioned tissue guards, 17 full page pen-and-ink illustrations.  Beige cloth-covered boards with navy blue lettering front and spine.  Green woodcut style illustrated endpapers.  Tall 4to,  Cloth boards are very slightly soiled around edges, with very gentle rounding to extreme corners and spine tips.  Slight, faint spotting on text block edges.  Hint of toning on endpapers.  Gift inscription neatly inked on the half title page, the very occasional minor sign of handling else internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original illustrated dust jacket, worn, torn and brittle, rubbed and chipped on edges with extensive tape repairs inside and out.  The dust jacket is not price clipped, showing a price of 10/6.  Dust jacket (faults and all) now protected in an archival-quality Mylar sleeve, fitted without the use of tape or adhesives.  

Renown Channel Island illustrator Edmund Blampied was invited to illustrate a new edition of J M Barrie’s Peter Pan in 1938; and his edition was first published in 1939, bound in decorated green cloth and with a retail price of 25 shillings. A second version, also dated 1939, – of which this an example – was issued just weeks later, in plain beige cloth and with a revised dust jacket, retailing at 10/6.  It is not clear why a second a version was so quickly produced, but the outbreak of the second world and the disruption that caused in the supply of materials may have been a factor.  The two versions are internally identical, although interesting to note that the dust jacket on the first version titles the book ‘The Blampied Edition of Peter Pan’ while that on the second version gives ‘J M Barrie’s Peter and Wendy’.  (The title page of both versions states The Blampied Edition of Peter Pan – The Original Text of Peter and Wendy’.