Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse - Blank Unnumbered Pages - Advice of value if any ?

Evening
I have a copy of Beatrix Potter The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. Copyright 1918
The book has no spine and is not in the best of condition but I am interested in the blank pages that are within it.


Pages 12 & 13 / 18 & 19 / 24 & 25 /30 & 31 / 36 & 37 / 42 & 43 / 48 & 49 / 54 & 55 / 60 & 61 / 66 & 67 / 72 & 73 / 78 & 79 / 82 & 83 - have no print and no page numbers on them.
Any ideas as to whether this book is unusual ?
Regards
Becky

 

Very curious.

Is the text contiguous? Does it flow smoothly past those blank pages, or are there obvious gaps?

 

According to @2manycats (sitting exhausted in his chair this evening), these blank pages were standard in some early editions of many Beatrix Potter books - an artifact of the printing process. Identifying actual first editions of her books is very complex. He has a reference book which he will check tomorrow.

 

What a great question ? Ive just taken a look and read until the third blank set and so far the story is continuous.
Thank you for taking the time to reply
Becky

 

Interesting - thank you for taking the time to reply - look forward to anything further found.
Becky

 

Little Update - Contacted by the Beatrix Potter Association who informed me the blank pages were because there was not the facility to print both sides at that time.

 

I don't accept that. There's any number of 19th century (and earlier) books that don't have that problem. Unless it was peculiar to Warne & Co., in which case it should be present in others of their books.

 

"At that time?" Warne published Johnny Town-Mouse in 1918. Hardly the era of Gutenberg.

Debora

 

Hi,
I have my Gram's book where there were several blank pages. My Gram just filled the blank pages with drawings.
It is one of my favorite books.
greg

 

Okay. I am looking at Leslie Linder's A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter, 1971, published by Warne, the original publisher of the Peter Rabbit books. It has four maddeningly vague appendixes with SOME bibliographic information which is helpful but often not decisive in identifying early printings, much of it pieced together from the publisher's records, and revolving around the illustrations on the endsheets, date if any on title page, and other small textual changes.

Until some unspecified time, but AFTER 1922 (the approximate date of an 85-page JT-M I have in hand), most of the books had 85 pages, including many blanks; "current" (i.e. circa 1971) printings had 59 pages. He does not specify, as far as I can tell, WHEN this switch occurred.

The four-color process used in printing the color plates required different paper than regular text paper, a glossy clay-coated stock that takes the fine color plates better, but is a bit more delicate than ordinary uncoated paper. One COULD print both sides, but I expect you would run the risk of damaging one side or the other, thus rendering it unusable, so they didn't try. Usually you see such pictures as tipped-in plates in larger books, "tipped-in" meaning they are glued in along the inner edge, not bound in, involving more hand-work. Simply folding and sewing in the color pages, as in the Potter books, would have been cheaper, though leaving those vexing blank pages. Because the sheets are folded in quarters or eighths, you have blank pages facing other blank pages, which does indeed look like a printing error to modern eyes.

British publishers of the day were EXCEEDINGLY fiscally cautious (they still are - only 500 hardcover copies of the first Harry Potter book were originally printed!) - the first printing of Peter Rabbit was of only 250 copies, which is remarkable when you consider that the cost of preparing the color plates would be the majority of the expense - once you have the plates cut, it's not that much more expensive to print more copies, but you don't want unsold kid's books gathering dust in your warehouse!

 

I can see that. So each blank page should have a colored illustration on the other side.

 

Yes, each blank page does have an illustration on the other side.

 

I thought the same but they were rather matter of fact with their response so I didnt like to push the matter !

 

I love this. How wonderful

 

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What a fantastic reply. That all made complete sense to me and is such great information. My next dilemma is value, the condition of the spine is dreadful but the pages are really good which is amazing as it came from a school clearance that I did and it was in the art classroom. My next bit of research begins.
Cant thank you enough for taking the time to reply and helping so much
Becky

 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Johnny_Town-Mouse