The Tale of Little Pig Robinson
Pig Robinson is sent to market with vegetables and finds himself shanghaied onto a ship called The Pound of Candles, bound for the tropics. The cook plans to eat him. The ship's cat takes pity on him, helps him escape, and Pig Robinson rows ashore on a remote island, where he lives happily — until the day a small green boat arrives, carrying an Owl, a Pussycat, and a runcible spoon.
The book has a strange double timeline. Although it was the last of Beatrix's stories published in the Peter Rabbit series, in 1930, it was one of the first she ever wrote — earliest drafts from 1893, when she was twenty-seven. The seed of it is even older: a letter she sent her father from Ilfracombe in April 1883, when she was seventeen, describing "an old lady who seemed very anxious to get her coal," driving her horse and cart full-speed into the harbour. Years later Beatrix found the letter and pencilled on it: "Worth keeping, an early impression leading to Pig Robinson."
The coastal scenes in the book are a composite of several seaside towns Beatrix had visited over forty years: Ilfracombe (the steps to the harbour), Teignmouth (the shipping), Sidmouth (the model for "Stymouth"), Lyme Regis (the steep street and thatched cottages), Hastings (the tall wooden net-drying shed). And the story itself was inspired by Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussy-Cat — which Beatrix had illustrated for her own amusement in the 1890s.
The cover shown is the original edition. Amazon carries the copies in print today.
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Particulars
- Trade edition
- 1930, Frederick Warne & Co. (and Alexander McKay, USA, simultaneously)
- Setting
- A composite of English coastal towns; "Stymouth" = Sidmouth
- Dedication (American edition)
- "For Margery, Jean and David McKay" — the children of her American publisher
- Origin
- Earliest drafts begun at Falmouth, c. 1893; copied at Sidmouth April 1901; again April 1902
- Position
- The last of her stories published in the Peter Rabbit series, but among the first ever written
Curiosities
- ❦The seed of the book is a letter Beatrix wrote her father from Ilfracombe in April 1883, aged seventeen, describing a horse-and-cart full of coal driven at full speed into the rising tide. "Worth keeping," she wrote on the envelope decades later, "an early impression leading to Pig Robinson."
- ❦Six weeks before her death, Beatrix found the original 1893 manuscript in a drawer: "I was turning out a drawer, sorting waste paper, setting aside, and I found an old draft of Pig Robinson's first chapters dated 1893—! I remember that story stuck on board the Pound of Candles."
- ❦Beatrix summarised the unwritten Parts II and III in a margin note: "R. is so extremely sea-sick that he becomes thin and so they keep him alive and treat him with great kindness, to make him fat again… (It is most dreadful rubbish.)"
- ❦The story is a small homage to Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussy-Cat. The book's last pages explain: "You remember the song about the Owl and the Pussy Cat and their beautiful pea-green boat… Now I am going to tell you the story of that pig, and why he went to live in the land of the Bong tree."
- ❦The dog Gypsy in the book was a real airedale belonging to her American publisher's daughter. "The big dog Gypsy only smiled and wagged his tail at Robinson." Margery McKay had sent Beatrix a photograph.
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