The story of Beatrix Potter and Frederick Warne is a wonderful story which has always impressed me.
It is, obviously, the story of one of the most successful children's authors of all time and of the publisher who eventually recognised what she had created. But it is also a story about booksellers becoming publishers, about an author who understood the physical book almost as well as her publisher did, and about the extraordinarily blurred boundaries between writing, illustration, publishing and commerce at the beginning of the twentieth century.
And, for Goldsboro, there is a rather lovely connection too. More of that later.
Frederick Warne was born in Westminster in 1825 and entered the book trade at just fourteen, joining the retail bookselling business run by his brother-in-law, George Routledge.
That becomes a recurring theme in this journey through publishing history. Again and again, the people whose names eventually became famous publishing houses began by selling books. I just wish more did today, but I digress.
George Routledge had started as a bookseller in London and gradually moved into publishing. Frederick Warne became his partner, and by the 1850s the firm was trading as Routledge, Warne & Routledge. Warne spent more than a decade helping build the business before leaving in 1865 to establish his own company, Frederick Warne & Co., in Bedford Street, Covent Garden.
He knew exactly the market he wanted to serve. Warne believed, as Routledge had, in making good books available to large numbers of readers. His Chandos Classics series eventually ran to more than 150 titles and sold millions of copies. But the company also became particularly distinguished for illustrated books and children's publishing, working with some of the great names of Victorian illustration, including Edward Lear, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane.
That history matters, because by the time Beatrix Potter arrived, Frederick Warne & Co. already understood something important: the illustrations were not decoration added to a children's book. They were part of the book itself.
Potter understood that too. The story of The Tale of Peter Rabbit began not as a publishing proposal, but as a letter.
On 4 September 1893, Potter wrote to five-year-old Noel Moore, the son of her former governess, who was recovering from scarlet fever. Unsure what to write, she told him a story about four little rabbits called Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter, illustrating the letter as she went.
Years later, Noel's mother suggested that Potter turn some of these illustrated letters into books. Potter borrowed the original Peter Rabbit letter back and began developing it. What happened next should offer comfort to almost every rejected author.
Publishers said no.
At least six of them, including Frederick Warne. Part of the disagreement was about the very nature of the book. Potter had strong ideas about its size and price. She wanted a small book that would fit naturally into a child's hands and, just as importantly, one that children could actually afford.
Publishers preferred something larger, grander and more expensive, with colour illustrations.
Potter's response was characteristically practical. Little rabbits, she argued, could not afford six-shilling books.
So she did what writers have done ever since traditional publishing refused to commission. She published it herself.
In December 1901, Strangeways & Sons printed 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. A second private printing of 200 copies followed in February 1902. And it worked.
People bought the book. So much so, that Frederick Warne reconsidered.
A family friend of Potter's, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, one of the founders of the National Trust, encouraged Warne to look at the book again. On the very day Potter was celebrating the arrival of her privately printed edition, Warne wrote, offering to publish it, provided she shortened the text and supplied colour illustrations.
What followed is one of the most interesting author-publisher collaborations in children's literature.
Potter was not an author who simply handed over a manuscript and waited for the finished object to appear. She cared about everything.
She edited the proofs meticulously. She designed the cover, title page and frontispiece. She suggested colours for the binding. She cared deeply about the quality of the reproduction of her illustrations. Above all, she remained adamant about the size of the finished book.
The book had to belong in a child's hand.
Warne's first commercial edition appeared in October 1902 in a print run of 8,000 copies. Another 12,000 were printed the following month and a further 8,220 in December.
Potter was astonished.
“The public must be fond of rabbits!” she observed.
They were.
Warne sold around 46,000 copies of Peter Rabbit in its first year, and Potter and the company settled into an extraordinarily productive relationship, eventually publishing twenty-three of her little books.
But the story was also becoming much more personal.
By then Frederick Warne himself had effectively retired, and the family company was being run by his sons. One of them, Norman Warne, became Potter's editor.
Their professional relationship gradually became something else. Norman proposed to Beatrix in July 1905. She accepted.
Her parents disapproved of the match, regarding a man “in trade” as socially unsuitable. It is one of those details that now seems faintly absurd: one of the world’s most successful authors being told that marrying her publisher was beneath her.
They never married. Less than a month after their engagement, Norman Warne died suddenly of pernicious anaemia.
It is difficult not to see the Warne name differently once you know that.
For Potter, Frederick Warne & Co. was not simply the company name printed on her title pages. It was bound up with friendship, collaboration, trust and one of the great emotional losses of her life.
And Potter's understanding of publishing extended well beyond books.
She recognised extraordinarily early that her characters could have lives outside the page.
In 1903 she created a Peter Rabbit doll and registered the design at the Patent Office. Warne subsequently worked with her on other products connected with the books.
What we would now call licensing, merchandising and intellectual property exploitation was already part of Beatrix Potter's thinking more than a century ago.
She understood the brand. But crucially, she never allowed the commercial possibilities to eclipse the integrity of the books themselves. The size mattered. Paper mattered. The reproduction of the illustrations mattered. And, crucially, the price mattered.
In other words, Beatrix Potter did not simply write books. She helped make them.
Which is exactly why she belongs in The People Who Made Books series.
And, as I mentioned, there is the Goldsboro connection.
In 2006, Potter's relationship with Norman Warne became part of the film Miss Potter, starring Renée Zellweger as Beatrix and Ewan McGregor as Norman.
Cecil Court was used as one of the film's London locations.
No. 25 Cecil Court, now home to Goldsboro Books, was also used during filming.
A company founded by a former bookseller publishes a woman it had already rejected once, and together they create one of the most enduring publishing phenomena in the world.
More than a century later, part of their story is recreated in a little London street devoted to books, inside the building from which we now sell them.
Perhaps publishing history is never quite as far away as we imagine.
