first edition, number 2 of 100 copies , usual browning to free endpapers, original cloth, dust-jacket, minor dust-soiling to fore-edges and joints, but overall an excellent copy, [Linder 432; V pp.1236-1238 & 1715; Taylor, Whalley, Hobbs, Battrick p.168], 16mo, Warne, 1955. The first separate edition of a story originally penned in 1907 for the Warne children, rediscovered in 1918 by Fruing Warne, who expressed a preference for this title over the author's preferred Tale of Jenny Crow ; "Beatrix jibbed at the 'rather namby pamby' pigeons, since they left little scope for pictorial variety - 'it is too much pigeon, over & over' - and she had never been good at birds." [Taylor, Whalley, Hobbs, Battrick]. Unfortunately the author could not be convinced to provide illustrations for this work, and Warne were not keen on using another illustrator that she recommended, and as a result the work was not published until 1955.