The Original Tales

The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse

Name: The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse
Author: Beatrix Potter

By Beatrix Potter · First published 1918

Timmy Willie is a country mouse who falls asleep in a hamper of vegetables and wakes up in town. He meets the elegant city mouse, Johnny Town-Mouse, and his friends, who hold a dinner of eight courses under the floorboards. Timmy Willie does not eat city food well. He is also not equipped for city cats. He goes home as soon as he can.

Beatrix wrote it in 1918, struggling to find time. Her parents were ageing and needed care, the farm was full of work, her eyes were tiring. The story is a retelling of one of Aesop's oldest fables — *The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse* — and Beatrix dedicated the book in honour: "To Aesop in the shadows."

She tried three titles. The manuscript was originally "The Tale of Timmy Willie." She changed it to "A Tale of a Country Mouse," then settled on "The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse." The book was on sale in time for Christmas — "I had an awful scramble to do this little book," she told Mrs. Moore. The reviewer in *The Bookman* was kinder: "Miss Potter need not worry about rivals. She has none."

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First Edition Notes

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Particulars

Trade edition: November 1918, Frederick Warne & Co.
Setting: An English country garden and an unnamed town
Dedication: "To Aesop in the shadows"
Source: One of Aesop's fables — The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse
Working titles: The Tale of Timmy Willie → A Tale of a Country Mouse → final

Curiosities

❦Beatrix counted carefully. The manuscript was 1,133 words; Warne measured 1,135 in the printed book. Mrs. Tittlemouse had been almost exactly the same length.
❦The book dummy was made by pasting paper over the title page of Mrs. Tittlemouse and writing in the new wording — paragraphs typed and pasted in, sketches roughed out in their correct positions.
❦Beatrix felt the strain by 1918. She wrote to Warne: "I shan't be able to continue these damned little books when I am dead and buried! I will try to do you one or two more for the good of the old firm."
❦The book reached the shops just in time for Christmas. The first printing's binding "was not quite pleasing" — too curved. Warne made the next batch with flatter backs.
❦The reviewer in The Bookman loved Timmy Willie better than Johnny: "Such charming pictures and exciting letterpress! Poor Timmy Willie who had such simple country tastes, and who fell asleep by mistake in a hamper of vegetables…"