The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher
Mr. Jeremy Fisher, a frog of independent means, sets out one rainy afternoon on his lily-pad boat to catch some minnows for his dinner. He has invited two friends — Sir Isaac Newton the newt, and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise — and he is determined to provide. He catches a stickleback. The stickleback bites him. Worse comes after.
The story is older than Peter Rabbit. Beatrix first drew nine pen-and-ink sketches of "A Frog he would a-fishing go" in 1894 — twenty-eight years old, unpublished, stubborn — and sold them to a children's-annual publisher named Ernest Nister for one guinea. He printed them in a book called *Comical Customers*. Eight years later, after Peter Rabbit had become famous, Beatrix bought everything back: drawings, copyright, zinc blocks. Six pounds.
She redrew the pictures, painted beautiful new studies of water lilies, and turned the small frog into a gentleman with a mackintosh and overshoes. The book was dedicated to Stephanie Hyde-Parker of Melford Hall — the cousin's child who had nearly received Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. "For Stephanie from Cousin B."
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Particulars
- Trade edition
- July 1906, Frederick Warne & Co.
- Setting
- A pond among water lilies
- Dedication
- "For Stephanie from Cousin B" (Stephanie Hyde-Parker of Melford Hall)
- Origin drawings
- Nine pen-and-ink sketches first published 1894 in Comical Customers, illustrating "A Frog he would a-fishing go"
- Repurchased rights
- Six pounds, paid to Ernest Nister after Peter Rabbit's success
Curiosities
- ❦The frog drawings are older than Peter Rabbit by eight years. They were Beatrix's first published work, in 1894 — under the initials H.B.P.
- ❦At twenty-eight Beatrix had a moral victory. Nister offered her one guinea (21 shillings) for nine drawings. She refused. They paid 22. "Of no great importance in terms of money, but a moral victory for Miss Potter."
- ❦When she went to buy back the copyright and the zinc blocks, Nister told her the blocks had been destroyed. Beatrix offered six pounds. The blocks were "promptly 'found.'"
- ❦Beatrix called Nister "an unattractive German (?) firm — but it was my first start at anything published."
- ❦Stephanie Hyde-Parker had been promised a Beatrix dedication for years. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was almost hers — but went to Lucie. Mr. Jeremy Fisher came the next year, by way of compensation.
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