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The Story of Miss Moppet

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The Story of Miss Moppet
First edition cover
AuthorBeatrix Potter
IllustratorBeatrix Potter
LanguageEnglish
GenreChildren's literature
PublisherFrederick Warne & Co.
Publication date
November 1906[1]
Publication placeEngland
Media typePrint
Preceded byThe Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit 
Followed byThe Tale of Tom Kitten 

The Story of Miss Moppet is a moral tale about teasing, written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was released by Frederick Warne & Co for the 1906 Christmas season. Potter was born in London in 1866, and between 1902 and 1905 published a series of small format children's books with Warnes. In 1906, she experimented with an atypical format, and released Miss Moppet on a long strip of paper that folded accordion-fashion into a wallet. Booksellers found the story difficult to keep folded, and it was therefore reprinted in book format some time after 1913.

Miss Moppet, the story's eponymous main character, is a kitten teased by a mouse. While pursuing him she bumps her head on a cupboard. She then wraps a duster about her head, and sits before the fire "looking very ill." The curious mouse creeps closer, is captured, "and because the Mouse has teased Miss Moppet—Miss Moppet thinks she will tease the Mouse; which is not at all nice of Miss Moppet". She ties him up in the duster and tosses him about. However, the mouse makes his escape, and once safely out of reach dances a jig atop the cupboard.

Although critically The Story of Miss Moppet is considered one of Potter's lesser efforts, for young children it is valued as an introduction to books in general, and to the world of Peter Rabbit. The character of Miss Moppet was released as a porcelain figurine in 1954 and a plush toy in 1973. A French translation followed in 1976, and the book was released in an electronic format in 2005. First editions in the original format are available through antiquarian booksellers.

Background

Helen Beatrix Potter was born on 28 July 1866 to barrister Rupert William Potter and his wife Helen (Leech) Potter in London. She was educated by governesses and tutors, and passed a quiet childhood reading, painting, drawing, tending a nursery menagerie of small animals, and visiting museums and art exhibitions. Her interests in the natural world and country life were nurtured with holidays in Scotland, the Lake District, and Camfield Place, the Hertfordshire home of her paternal grandparents.[2]

File:Potter Mouse Dances a Jig.JPG
"He has wriggled out and run away; and he is dancing a jig on the top of the cupboard!"

Potter's adolescence was as quiet as her childhood. She matured into a spinsterish young woman whose parents groomed her to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their home.[3] She continued to paint and draw, and experienced her first professional artistic success in 1890 when she sold six designs of humanized animals to a greeting card publisher.[4] She hoped to lead a useful life independent of her parents, and tentatively considered a career in mycology, but the all-male scientific community regarded her as nothing more than an amateur and she abandoned fungi.[5][6]

In 1900, Potter revised a tale that she had written for a child in 1893, and fashioned it into a dummy book, imitating the size and style of Helen Bannerman's runaway bestseller of 1899, The Story of Little Black Sambo.[7] Unable to find a buyer for her book, Potter published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901.[8]

Frederick Warne & Co. had once rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the "bunny book" (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke.[9] Potter agreed to colour her pen and ink illustrations, chose the then-new Hentschel three-colour process for reproducing her watercolours,[10] and on 2 October 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit was released.[11]

Potter continued to publish children's books with Warnes, and, in July 1905, bought Hill Top, a working farm of 34 acres (14 ha) at Near Sawrey in the Lake District, with profits from book sales and a small legacy from an aunt.[12] When her editor and fiancé, Norman Warne, died suddenly and unexpectedly on 25 August 1905, she became deeply depressed and was ill for many weeks. She rallied to complete The Pie and the Patty-Pan, the last tale she had planned with Warne.[13]

Development and publication

File:Miss Moppet Interior title and 1st illus..jpg
Interior of the wallet showing (left to right): the flap, the title page, and the first illustration of the panorama strip

Early in 1906, Potter was developing The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, a story which had been written for a child in 1893. Although she had not planned the tale with Warne, she had discussed it with him, and he had given it his approval before his death. The original had been set on the River Tay in Scotland, but Potter moved the setting to Moss Eccles Tarn and Esthwaite Water, small bodies of water near Hill Top. She typically worked on two projects at the same time for variety. While developing Jeremy Fisher, she began experimenting with book formats for babies and very young children just acquiring verbal skills. Three stories were the result: The Story of Miss Moppet, The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit and The Sly Old Cat. All were intended to be published in a panorama format similar to George Cruikshank's A Comic Alphabet of 1836. Alphabet consisted of a long strip of paper printed with text and illustrations that folded accordion-fashion between the book's covers.[14][15]

Potter was at Hill Top in July 1906 during the development of Miss Moppet, and the kitten she borrowed from a Windermere mason working at the farm was a feisty, difficult subject. "An exasperating model," Potter wrote, "I have borrowed a kitten and am rather glad of the opportunity of working at the drawings. It is very young and pretty and a most fearful pickle."[16] "Pickle" was a word Potter used to describe mischievous kittens, children, and her exuberant, outspoken cousin Caroline Hutton. In 1907, she dedicated The Tale of Tom Kitten "to all Pickles—especially those that get upon my garden wall."[17]

File:Potter Moppet Catches Mouse.JPG
"And then all of a sudden — Miss Moppet jumps upon the Mouse!"

Potter was an admirer of American author Joel Chandler Harris and created a series of plates in the 1890s for his Uncle Remus stories, possibly in an attempt to find career direction. So deep was her admiration, she may have based the scene of Miss Moppet wrapping her head in the duster from a similar scene in an Uncle Remus tale in which Br'er Fox pretends to be sick by wrapping his head in flannel and sitting in a rocking chair.[18] In another scene from Miss Moppet, the kitten catches a mouse but Potter avoided painful pictures in her books and wrote on the manuscript sketch: "She should catch him by the tail / less unpleasant".[14]

Ten thousand copies of The Story of Miss Moppet were released in a panorama format priced at 1/- in November 1906 and another 10,000 copies in December 1906. There were no subsequent printings in the panorama format.[1] Fourteen colour plates and fourteen pages of text were printed from left to right on a long strip of cloth-backed paper.[19] The strip folded accordion-fashion into a grey cloth wallet measuring 108 by 89 millimetres (4.3 in × 3.5 in). When opened, the panorama strip measured 108 by 2,492 millimetres (4.3 in × 98.1 in).[1] The wallet was closed with a flap and tied with a ribbon.[20]

The format was popular with readers, but not with booksellers, who found it too difficult to keep folded, closed, and in its place once curious customers opened it for examination.[20] Potter referred to this fact late in life when she said, "Bad Rabbit and Moppet were originally printed on long strips—The shops sensibly refused to stock them because they got unrolled and so bad to fold up again."[19]

File:Miss Moppet Panorma Portion.jpg
Part of the panorama showing (left to right): Miss Moppet tossing the mouse about in the duster, a "page" of text, and Miss Moppet discovering the mouse has escaped

Twenty thousand copies of The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit were published in panorama format in November and December 1906 in exactly the same measurements as Miss Moppet. Both were later published in a small book 122 by 103 millimetres (4.8 in × 4.1 in) format.[21] The Sly Old Cat was scheduled for publication in 1907 but fell victim to the pressures exerted by booksellers. It was set aside, but was proposed for publication in 1916 as The Story of the Sly Old Cat. Potter's eyesight was failing and she refused to develop it. The story was published in book format with Potter's 1906 rough sketches for the first and only time in 1971. It is not included in the standard 23-volume Peter Rabbit library.[15][22]

Some time after 1913 Frederick Warne & Co discontinued Miss Moppet in its panorama format, and republished the story in a traditional book format. Potter provided a frontispiece of the kitten and mouse seated in profile, and a title page vignette of a mouse on all fours facing the reader for the book format. At 113 by 92 millimetres (4.4 by 3.6 in), the book's dimensions were slightly smaller than other Peter Rabbit books.[22][23] In 1917, she suggested to her publisher that Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes be published in the smaller Miss Moppet format, an indication she thought Appley Dapply was a book for the very young.[24]

Plot

File:Potter Mouse is Gone.JPG
Miss Moppet breaks the fourth wall when she discovers the mouse has escaped.

Miss Moppet is a predator and prey story. Although the typical outcome of such a story is the death of the prey, Potter gives Miss Moppet a twist by endowing her cat and mouse with characteristics that create a kind of parity between the two animals. Miss Moppet is a young, inexperienced, female predator dependent upon human care while the mouse is a mature, independent male prey animal "not afraid of a kitten". Because the playing field has been levelled, suspense is created and the outcome is less predictable.[25]

The tale opens with an illustration of a wide-eyed kitten: "This is a Pussy called Miss Moppet, she thinks she has heard a mouse!" The following illustration depicts a mouse wearing a pink bowtie and green jacket "peeping out behind the cupboard, and making fun of Miss Moppet. He is not afraid of a kitten." Miss Moppet darts at him, but misses and bumps her head on the cupboard. She thinks the cupboard very hard and rubs her nose. The mouse scurries to the top of the cupboard and watches her.

Miss Moppet ties a duster about her head and sits before the fire on a red hassock. The mouse's curiosity is piqued; he thinks she looks very ill and comes sliding down the bell-pull. "Miss Moppet looks worse and worse." The mouse creeps nearer. Miss Moppet holds her head in her paws and peeks at the mouse through a hole in the duster. "The Mouse comes very close." Miss Moppet jumps and snags him by the tail.

"And because the Mouse has teased Miss Moppet—Miss Moppet thinks she will tease the Mouse; which is not at all nice of Miss Moppet." The kitten ties the mouse up in the duster then tosses it about like a ball. The mouse peeks from the hole in the duster. In the last illustration but one, Miss Moppet is seated upright on her rump and staring at the reader. The duster lies opened and empty in her paws. "She forgot about that hole in the duster", and the mouse has escaped. He dances a jig safely out of Miss Moppet's reach atop the cupboard.

Scholarly commentaries

A kitten sitting on a hassock with a dust cloth wrapped over her face and head.
"Miss Moppet ties up her head in a duster, and sits before the fire."

James M. Redfield, Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, in his article "An Aristotelian Analysis of Miss Moppet" (1985) observes the story has a narrative unity that agrees with the tenets established in Poetics.[26] Potter's work displays a definite beginning, middle, and end, and demonstrates unity of plot, of form, and of internal probability. Redfield points out examples of peripeteia, praxis, pathos, and hamartia,[27] and even suggests a katharsis occurs.[28] Despite a knot-tying feline and a jacket-clad murid, Redfield indicates Miss Moppet accords with Aristotle's tenets and "hangs together because it makes sense".[29]

Ruth K. MacDonald, Professor of English at New Mexico State University where she teaches children's literature and past president of the Children's Literature Association observes in Beatrix Potter (1986) that Miss Moppet demonstrates Potter's ability to pare text and illustrations to essentials, but notes that she worked best with more complicated plots, more complicated characters, and stories with specific settings rather than generalized backgrounds. Miss Moppet is a vignette, she indicates, rather than the typical Potter tale of causality, extended plot, and variety of character, and depends upon the archetypal animosity between cat and mouse with the cat being the dominant character.[30]

Potter intended the story for babies and very young children but she had little experience with either. Her inexperience is evident in the choice of the panorama format itself because a long strip of paper and a wallet are likely to be mutilated by an infant or a very young child. Miss Moppet was a diversion for Potter and displays what she could produce in the baby book genre, but the whole is one of her lesser efforts.[30]

Miss Moppet was more successful than its companion piece The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit according to M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and author of Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003). Kutzer ascribes its success to the fluid line of the illustrations and a plot that is less moralistic and more humorous than that of Bad Rabbit. Potter was never at her best when writing for a clearly defined audience, Kutzer observes, and in writing a Victorian moral tale about teasing, Potter failed to completely engage the reader's imagination in either the story or the illustrations.[31] Miss Moppet has not been dismissed entirely by modern readers; it is valued as an introduction to books in general for very young children and to the world of Peter Rabbit.[30]

Merchandise

File:Potter Moppet Ties Mouse.JPG
Beswick Pottery issued a porcelain figurine based on the illustration of Miss Moppet tying the mouse in the duster.[32]

Potter asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy.[33] She was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales with spinoffs such as a Peter Rabbit doll, an unpublished Peter Rabbit board game, and Peter Rabbit nursery wallpaper between 1903 and 1905.[34] Similar "side-shows" (as she termed the ancillary merchandise) were produced with her approval over the following two decades.[35]

After Potter's death in December 1943, Frederick Warne & Co granted licences to various firms for the production of merchandise based on her characters. Beswick Pottery of Longton, Staffordshire released a porcelain figurine of Miss Moppet in 1954,[36] and, in the 1980s, Schmid & Co of Toronto and Randolph, Massachusetts tapped Miss Moppet's image for a Christmas ornament and a music box figurine.[37] Stuffed toy manufacturers had sought licencing rights as early as 1906, but it was was not until the 1970s that an English firm was granted worldwide rights. Their labour intensive products were unprofitable however, and in 1972, The Eden Toy Company of New York became the exclusive manufacturer of Potter characters. A plush Miss Moppet was released in 1973.[38]

Reprints and translations

File:Miss Moppet cover book format ca 1918.jpg
Cover of the hardcover edition (ca. 1918) with a pictorial onlay depicting Miss Moppet peeking through a hole in the duster

As of 2010, all 23 of Potter's small format books remain in print, and are available as complete sets in presentation boxes.[39] A 400-page omnibus edition is also available,[40] as is an electronic format, released in 2005.[41] The first edition panorama format and early editions in hardcover format are occasionally offered by antiquarian booksellers.[42][43]

The English language editions of Potter's books still bore the Frederick Warne imprint in 2010, despite the company being sold to Penguin Books in 1983. In 1985 Penguin remade the book's printing plates from new photographs of the original drawings, and in 1987 released the entire collection as The Original and Authorized Edition.[44]

Potter's books have been translated into almost 30 languages, including Greek and Russian.[44] Under licence to Fukuinkan-Shoten of Tokyo, in the 1970s The Tale of Miss Moppet and 11 other stories were released in Japanese.[45] Miss Moppet was translated into French by Patrice Charvet, and published in 1976 by Frederick Warne, as L'Histoire de Mademoiselle Moppette.[46] In 1986 MacDonald observed that Potter's books had become a traditional part of childhood in not only English-speaking lands, but also those in which translated editions were made available.[47]

References

Footnotes
  1. ^ a b c Linder 1971, p. 426
  2. ^ MacDonald 1986, pp. 1–4
  3. ^ MacDonald 1986, pp. 6–7
  4. ^ Taylor 1996, pp. 51–2
  5. ^ Taylor 1996, pp. 60, 67
  6. ^ MacDonald 1986, p. 13
  7. ^ Lear 2007, p. 144
  8. ^ Lear 2007, p. 145
  9. ^ Lear 2007, pp. 144–7
  10. ^ Hobbs 1989, p. 15
  11. ^ Taylor 1996, p. 76
  12. ^ Lear 2007, p. 207
  13. ^ Lane 1978, pp. 136,140
  14. ^ a b Taylor 1987, p. 129
  15. ^ a b MacDonald 1986, p. 50
  16. ^ Taylor 1996, p. 107
  17. ^ Lear 2007, p. 218
  18. ^ Taylor 1987, p. 69
  19. ^ a b Linder 1971, p. 183
  20. ^ a b Lear 2008, p. 213
  21. ^ Linder 1971, p. 246
  22. ^ a b Taylor 1987, p. 130
  23. ^ Lear 2008, pp. 279–80
  24. ^ Taylor 1987, p. 155
  25. ^ Redfield 1985, pp. 35–6
  26. ^ Redfield 1985, p. 33
  27. ^ Redfield 1985, p. 36
  28. ^ Redfield 1985, p. 40
  29. ^ Redfield 1985, p. 34
  30. ^ a b c MacDonald 1986, pp. 50–3
  31. ^ Kutzer 2003, pp. 129–30
  32. ^ DuBay 2006, p. 37
  33. ^ MacDonald 1986, p. 128
  34. ^ Lear 2008, pp. 172–5
  35. ^ Taylor 1987, p. 106
  36. ^ Dubay 2006, p. 37
  37. ^ Dubay 2006, pp. 106–8
  38. ^ Dubay 2006, pp. 91–2
  39. ^ "The World of Peter Rabbit". Amazon.com. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  40. ^ "Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales". Amazon.com. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  41. ^ "The Story of Miss Moppet". Amazon.com. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  42. ^ "The Story of Miss Moppet". Aleph-Bet. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  43. ^ "The Story of Miss Moppet". David Brass Rare Books. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  44. ^ a b Taylor 1996, p. 216
  45. ^ Linder 1971, pp. 433–7
  46. ^ "L'Histoire de Mademoiselle Moppette". Abebooks.com. Retrieved 6 October 2010.
  47. ^ MacDonald 1987, p. 130
Bibliography
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