BURNETT, Frances Hodgson (author). Ethel Franklin BETTS (illustrator). A Little Princess, being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time. New York Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1905

Royal 8vo. Original dark blue finely ribbed cloth lettered in gilt to spine with large onlaid pictorial plate to upper cover, top edges gilt, others uncut, plain white endpapers; pp. [xiv], 3-266; with 12 striking coloured plates; an unusually attractive copy of a book which is often read to pieces, with some rubbing and turning to corners, bruising to spine ends but no splitting, and a few small marks and scratches to cover plate; internally generally very clean with a very faint, narrow (8mm), and short, tide-mark to top edge at inner gutter, which extends a third of the way through the book but is barely noticeable and certainly does not detract, and a neat contemporary gift inscription, dated 1906, to front free endpaper.

First edition of this great children’s classic, as illustrated by Ethel Franklin Betts (1857-1959), also published the same year in the U.K., under the same title, by Frederick Warne & Co., with artwork by Harold Piffard.

Franklin Betts was one of the celebrated Brandywine group of artist/illustrators, who studied under Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute, and became known and lauded for the impactful graphic design elements of her illustrations. She flourished in the Golden Age of children’s book artistry working for magazines and children’s book publishers. Her highlight titles are this one, “The Complete Mother Goose”, and “Fairy Tales from Grimm”.

The children’s literary masterpiece “A Little Princess” enjoys a rich publishing history. It first appeared in serialised form, starting December 1887, as a novella titled “Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss. Minchin’s”, in St. Nicholas Magazine, and in book form, with the same title, in 1888, coupled with another Burnett novella, “Edith’s Burglar”, in an edition published by Frederick Warne & Co.

In 1905 Burnett expanded the work, including additional chapters, refining the characterisation, and enriching the narrative, and it re-emerged as the “A Little Princess” in 1905 on both sides of the Atlantic, interestingly with two different illustrators.