Posthumous & Lost Tales

The Sly Old Cat

Name: The Sly Old Cat
Author: Beatrix Potter

By Beatrix Potter · First published 1971

A sly old cat invites a rat to tea, planning to trap him under her own teacup. The rat accepts. He drinks his tea and eats his bread-and-butter. Then he picks up the teacup himself, places it gently over the cat's head, and walks away. Fourteen pictures, fourteen short pages. The shortest of all Beatrix's stories.

Written in March 1906 — the same month as The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit and The Story of Miss Moppet — this was the third of three panoramic books Beatrix bound herself for the children of her publisher Harold Warne. The manuscript, dated 21 March 1906, was given to Harold's daughter Nellie. But the panoramic format was a commercial failure. Bookshops refused to stock the strip-and-wallet books because they would not stay folded.

When Fierce Bad Rabbit and Miss Moppet were rebound as regular books in 1916, Frederick Warne asked if The Sly Old Cat might join them. Beatrix declined: "I should have to re-draw the pictures and probably part trace them, to save the expression." She suggested another illustrator, E. A. Aris — "His plagiarisms are unblushing, and his drawing excellent" — but the project went nowhere. The manuscript returned to Nellie. The book was finally published, with Beatrix's original drawings, in 1971 — sixty-five years after she wrote it.

The cover shown is the original edition. Amazon carries the copies in print today.

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For collectors

First Edition Notes

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Particulars

Posthumous edition: 1971, Frederick Warne & Co. — sixty-five years after the manuscript
Manuscript: Dated 21 March 1906, panoramic strip-and-wallet form
Format (original): 14 pictures + 14 short pages, mounted on linen, folded concertina-wise
Written for: Nellie Warne, daughter of Harold Warne — bound personally by her father
Position: One of three panoramic books from 1906; the third and only one not published in Beatrix's lifetime

Curiosities

❦The wallet manuscript was a Christmas-style present from Harold Warne to his daughter — "specially bound in wallet form, just like the published copies" of the other two.
❦When Frederick Warne asked Beatrix to illustrate it freshly in 1916, she suggested another artist instead: "His mice have too large ears, he should be advised that rats have still smaller ears. He can draw cats much better than I can."
❦The book is the shortest of all Beatrix's stories — fewer words than a single picture letter.
❦For sixty-five years the manuscript lived in private hands. Frederick Warne finally published it in 1971, using Beatrix's original drawings — exactly as she had bound them for Nellie in 1906.
❦It was the third of three sister books with Fierce Bad Rabbit and Miss Moppet — together a small lost trilogy.