Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes - Composition and Publication

Composition and Publication

Potter was enthralled with nursery rhymes and enjoyed rewriting traditional rhymes to refer to her animal characters. Her early work was crammed with rhymes, as evidenced in the privately printed edition of The Tailor of Gloucester.

Her interest in rhymes was partly an attraction to the rhythms of older forms of English, and partly to the mysteries and riddles many rhymes presented. Potter took inspiration from childhood favourite Randolph Caldecott, especially his rhymes that gave prominent place to animals, and, in her 1902 correspondence with her editor Norman Warne about the publication of Peter Rabbit, indicated she "sometimes thought of trying some of the other rhymes about animals, which did not do."

Following the publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902, Potter planned a book of nursery rhymes called Appley Dapply, but Warne preferred her original (rather than her derivative work) and offered only modest encouragement. The project was dear to Potter's heart, and she continued to develop the concept while working on other productions for Warne. Potter planned Appley Dapply as a large format book with page borders and decorations in a style reminiscent of Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, and even considered publishing the book at her own expense if Warne lost what little interest he had in the project. In late 1904 she offered Warne a dummy book of ninety-four pages and thirty rhymes, twenty-one of which Warne approved for future publication. When Warne died suddenly and unexpectedly in August 1905, the book of rhymes was set aside, and Potter turned her attention to other projects.

Early in 1917, Frederick Warne & Co. faced financial ruin after then publisher Harold Warne was convicted of forgery and sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor in a London prison. Potter was the company's greatest creditor and artistic property, and, when asked to do what she could to save the firm, she agreed to provide a book for Christmas: "I hope Appley Dapply will be in time to be useful, and that it will be as good a season as can be had during this war."

She had other interests and concerns at the time, and did not look forward to the intense labour necessary to prepare a book for publication. She suggested instead the company raid the dummy book of 1904 for material and publish their choices in a small format book similar to The Story of Miss Moppet from 1906. "I'm afraid this sounds very lazy," she wrote Fruing Warne, Harold Warne's brother and then head of the publishing firm, "But you don't know what a scramble I live in; and the old drawings are some of them better than any I could do now."

Fruing grabbed at Potter's proposal. Applely Dapply's Nursery Rhymes was released in October 1917 with a revised edition of Peter Rabbit's Painting Book and the new Tom Kitten's Painting Book. Applely Dapply sold well. Potter was satisfied and wrote Warne in late October, "I am much pleased with A. D., it makes a pretty book." It was reprinted in November 1917, and, by the end of the year, 20,000 copies had been sold. The dummy book would be raided again in 1922 to compile a collection of nursery rhymes called Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes as a companion to Appley Dapply.

The book opens with a three-stanza rhyme about Appley Dapply, a mouse who raids cupboards for treats, and is accompanied with three illustrations, one which depicts a little mouse running away from a cupboard with a tray of pies:

Appley Dapply

has little sharp eyes,

And Appley Dapply

is so fond of pies!

The following rhyme tells of Peter Rabbit's sister, Cotton-tail, and her implied courtship by a little black rabbit who leaves a gift of carrots at her door. In The Tale of Mr. Tod, Cottontail is married to the black rabbit. Like the first rhyme, the little black rabbit rhyme is of three stanzas accompanied by three illustrations.

The third rhyme tells of Old Mr. Pricklepin, a hedgehog, who, elsewhere in Potter is identified as Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's uncle. His shining eyes, his wrinkled paws, and his human shoes emphasize their relationship. The single stanza is accompanied by an illustration Potter believed to be the finest she ever produced.

As early as 1893 Potter illustrated and made a booklet of "There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe". There, the Old Woman's children are depicted as scampering mice, and their mother as a mouse whipping her children in a shoe in the background. In Appley Dapply however, the author speculates upon the identity of the old woman in two stanzas, believing she was a mouse due to being able to live in a shoe. In the first illustration, the mouse and her children tumble from an elaborately beaded turquoise-blue shoe, and, in the illustration accompanying the second stanza, the mouse knits peacefully – presumably while the children are in bed.

The fifth rhyme tells of Diggory Delvet, the first mole in Potter's work. He may have been inspired by the mole in Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina or possibly Moley in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. "Diggory Delvet" and the last rhyme in the book about a guinea pig are two of the few limericks written for children by someone other than Edward Lear.

The sixth rhyme is a single stanza and accompanied by an illustration depicting a pig in a dress sitting in a high-backed chair and peeling potatoes:

Gravy and potatoes

In a good brown pot —

Put them in the oven,

And serve them very hot!

The seventh and last rhyme is a limerick about an "amiable guinea-pig" (the first guinea pig in Potter's work) who brushes his hair back like a periwig and dons a blue tie. The verse is accompanied by three illustrations depicting the guinea pig in various stages of coiffing and dressing. Guinea pigs would have their own story told in the tale of Tupenny in Potter's The Fairy Caravan of 1929.

Ruth K. MacDonald of the New Mexico State University observes in Beatrix Potter (1986) that Potter recommended to Warne that Appley Dapply be printed in a format similar to Miss Moppet, which had originally been printed in a panorama style but, in 1916, had been reprinted in a format slightly smaller than the other books in the Peter Rabbit collection. Miss Moppet was intended for babies and very young children, and MacDonald believes Potter's suggestion indicated she also intended Appley Dapply for the very young who are satisfied with vignettes and the sorts of simple, isolated incidents nursery rhymes present, rather than longer, more complex plots.