Vintage Beatrix Potter Collection Part II Boxed Set – Vols 13-23, Frederick Warne Authorized Editions, 11 Books with Gift Box, England 1980s

The official Frederick Warne boxed presentation set of Beatrix Potter — The Original and Authorized Editions, Part II, Volumes 13 to 23 — eleven small-format hardcover books in their original cream-and-gold gift carton with a gold-cord carrying handle. The set contains the second half of Beatrix Potter's full 23-book canon: Mr. Tod, Pigling Bland, Samuel Whiskers, The Pie and the Patty-Pan, Ginger and Pickles, A Fierce Bad Rabbit, Miss Moppet, Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes, Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes, The Little Pig Robinson, and The Flopsy Bunnies — each in Warne's small format with Potter's original watercolour illustrations and the classic cream-and-gilt cover.

Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) self-published Peter Rabbit in 1901 after six London publishers turned it down; Frederick Warne reconsidered in 1902 and went on to publish the entire 23-volume canon over the next three decades. Potter wrote, painted, and laid out each book in her signature small format — deliberately sized to fit a child's hand. After her death in 1943 the copyrights passed to Warne, who remained the sole publisher of The Original and Authorized Editions until merging with Penguin in 1983. That phrase — printed on the carton of this gift set — was the firm's way of distinguishing its small-format hardcovers from the unauthorised cheap reprints and TV-tie-in paperbacks that began circulating in the 1970s, and dates this boxed presentation to the post-1983 window.

The presentation carton is the original Warne gift box, printed with iconic Potter watercolour vignettes on its top and side panels — Peter Rabbit in the radish patch, Benjamin Bunny in his red cap, the Flopsy Bunnies asleep in lettuce — and finished with a gold cord handle for carrying. The carton itself is the harder-to-find element of any Part II set on the secondary market today: most surviving sets have lost the box, the cord, or an interior volume in the 30–45 years since they were sold.

Part II carries the more curious half of the canon. Part I (vols. 1–10) holds the most famous titles — Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Benjamin Bunny, Tom Kitten, Jemima Puddle-Duck. Part II holds the later, more sophisticated Potter: Mr. Tod (her darkest, fox-and-badger), Pigling Bland (semi-autobiographical, with a love story), Samuel Whiskers (one of her most accomplished), the nursery rhyme volumes (Appley Dapply and Cecily Parsley), and the smaller-format children's stories. For the collector, Part II is the harder half to assemble — the titles circulate less, and individual volumes were often given away separately rather than kept as a set.

This Part II is the direct companion to the Beatrix Potter Part I boxed set already listed in this shop. Together, the two reconstitute the entire 23-volume Beatrix Potter Original and Authorized canon as Frederick Warne intended it and as Potter herself designed it. Few Etsy listings offer both halves simultaneously.

A piece for the Beatrix Potter completist, for the new-baby / christening / first-birthday gift (ready to give without re-wrapping), for the cottagecore or grandmillennial nursery, or as a hand-down library for a grandchild just learning to read.