On September 4, 1893, Beatrix Potter sent a letter to five-year-old Noel Moore. The little boy was the son of her friend and former tutor, Annie Moore, and Potter wanted to lift his spirits.

Beatrix Potter to Noel Moore, Sept. 4th 1893. Reproduced in Leslie Linder’s A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter, published by Frederick Warne & Co., 1971.

Many admirers of Potter know how she transformed that whimsically illustrated letter into the immortal children’s classic, The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

But success did not come easily, or instantaneously, to Beatrix Potter. When she first hoped to publish her illustrated rabbit tales, she could not find any takers. So she had the small-format books, intended for little hands, privately printed. Once she shouldered the initial risk, Frederick Warne & Co. (one of the publishers that had previously turned down her work) agreed to publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit commercially in 1902. From that moment to this, the books in the Peter Rabbit series have never been out of print.

Perhaps less well known is The Happy Pair, published by Hildesheimer & Faulkner, a firm that printed greeting cards and annuals, as well as other works. This delicate little booklet, just seven leaves bound by a silk cord, is the first appearance of Potter’s artwork in commercial print. Six of her original illustrations accompany a set of six poems, written by Frederic E. Weatherly, the man who wrote the lyrics to “Danny Boy.”

From A Happy Pair. Hildesheimer & Faulkner: London, 1890.

Collaboration was rare for Potter, who later would refuse requests to illustrate the writing of other children’s authors. This work is particularly interesting because it shows a developmental stage in Potter’s art and is evidence of how she worked with others.

A Happy Pair is exceedingly scarce, with only five copies recorded in North American libraries, and perhaps no more than another five copies known to exist elsewhere.