The Original Tales

The Story of Miss Moppet

Name: The Story of Miss Moppet
Author: Beatrix Potter

By Beatrix Potter · First published 1906

Miss Moppet thinks she has finally trapped a clever mouse under her duster. She waits very still, very pleased with herself. But this is a particular kind of mouse, and he has a few tricks of his own. The whole story is fourteen pictures and fourteen short pages.

Beatrix wrote it in March 1906 alongside The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit. Both books used the same panoramic format — fourteen pictures on a single linen strip, folded concertina-wise into a wallet. They were the only two of three planned panoramic books to ever reach the shops.

The shops did not like the panoramic format — "they got unrolled and were so bad to fold up again." Ten years later, in 1916, Miss Moppet was rebound as a regular book, the same size as Peter Rabbit. It is one of the briefest tales — a small comedy that ends, like all the best ones, with the small one winning.

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

First privately printed: 1906, panoramic form (linen strip folded into a wallet)
First book edition: 1916, Frederick Warne & Co.
Format: 14 pictures + 14 short pages
Manuscript date: 21 March 1906
Series of three: One of three planned panoramic books — only two were ever published

Curiosities

❦The manuscript is dated 21 March 1906 — written the same week as her two other panoramic experiments.
❦Three panoramic books were planned. The third, The Sly Old Cat, was completed and bound for Harold Warne's daughter Nellie — but the shops' refusal of the format killed any plan to publish it. It would not see print until 1971, sixty-five years later.
❦The wallets were as much objects as books. Each strip unrolled to about three feet long and tucked behind a flap.
❦Each manuscript was specially bound by Harold Warne himself as a gift for one of his daughters — a privately bound experiment that did not survive contact with the wider book trade.
❦Miss Moppet is one of the briefest of all Beatrix's published tales — short enough to fit on a single page.