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UCAS had hinted, in his letter of March 1905, congratulating Rackham on the Rip Van Winkle exhibition, at J. M. Barrie’s interest in his work and at the prospect of his undertaking illustrations for Peter Pan. It was not intended that he should illustrate the famous play, successfully produced for the first time the previous Christmas and not published until 1928, but rather those chapters from that rambling book The Little White Bird (1902) which had introduced Peter Pan to the world, though in a form very different from that in which he is seen on the stage. Rackham could have found no subject more immediately topical, or more fashionably propitious. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, as he re-created it, and as it appeared from Hodder and Stoughton with fifty full-page illustrations in colour mounted on thick paper according to the taste of the time (see, , , ), became the outstanding Christmas gift-book of 1906 – and maintained its hold for many later Christmases. The pattern of publication continued as before, with a limited edition, a trade edition, an American edition, and a French edition (1907) of Piter Pan: Les Jardins de Kensington.

The initiative in commissioning these drawings came from Messrs