The Little White Bird. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1902. First Edition. Pp viii, 312. Publisher’s black cloth boards, beveled edges, title lettered in gilt to spine. Browning and foxing to edges and  to endpapers, otherwise a nice bright copy.

Contains the first appearance of ‘Peter pan’ in chapter 14 (Peter appears as a seven-day-old infant) with a frontispiece plate depicting ‘The Child’s Map of Kensington Gardens.’

The Peter Pan story began as one chapter and grew to an “elaborate book-within-a-book” of more than one hundred pages during the four years Barrie worked on The Little White Bird.

In 1906 Barrie sanctioned the publication of the children’s gift book, ‘Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,’ with the text extracted from this edition and with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.  Peter Pan, his fellow characters, and the setting of Neverland have appeared in many works since.