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| Author | Beatrix Potter |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Beatrix Potter |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Frederick Warne & Co. |
| Publication date | July 1906 |
| Publication place | England |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Preceded by | The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan |
| Followed by | The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit |
The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher is a children's book, written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was released by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1906. Potter's career as a children's author and illustrator was launched in 1902 with the publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She continued to publish children's books, and, in 1906, expanded a frog tale she had written for a child in 1893. Potter was summering in Perthshire in 1893 and set the tale on the River Tay but, in 1906, she was living in the English Lake District at Hill Top and transferred the setting to its environs. The tale reflects her love for the Lake District and her great admiration for children's illustrator Randolph Caldecott, one of her childhood favourites.
Jeremy Fisher is a frog who lives in a "slippy-sloppy" house at the edge of a pond. One rainy day he collects worms for fishing, and sets off across the pond on his lily-pad boat. He plans to invite his friends for dinner if he catches more than five minnows. He encounters all sorts of setbacks to his goal: a water beetle tweaks his toe, rats rustle about in the weeds at water's edge, a stickleback pricks his fingers, and a shoal of little fishes laugh at him. A large trout catches and swallows him, but takes a dislike to the taste of his Macintosh and spits him out again. Jeremy swims for shore, decides he will not go fishing again, and hops home. His friends arrive and he serves roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce for dinner.
Potter's tale pays homage to the leisurely summers her father and his upper class friends from the London clubs passed sport fishing at rented country estates in Scotland. Following the tale's publication, a child fan wrote Potter suggesting Jeremy find a wife. Potter responded with a series of miniature letters on the theme as if from Jeremy and his amphibious friends. After Potter's death in 1943, licences were issued to various firms granting permission to produce the Potter characters. Jeremy and his friends were released as porcelain figurines, plush toys, and other merchandise. Jeremy appeared as a character in the 1971 Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter, and his story was adapted to animation in 1993 as an episode in the BBC television series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.
Plot
Jeremy Fisher is a frog who lives in a damp little house amongst the buttercups at the edge of a pond. His larder and back passage are "slippy-sloppy" with water, but he likes getting his feet wet; no one ever scolds and he never catches cold. One day, Jeremy finds it raining and decides to go fishing. Should he catch more than five minnows, he will invite his friends to dinner. He puts on a Macintosh and shiny goloshes, takes his rod and basket, and sets off with "enormous hops" to the place where he keeps his lily-pad boat. He poles to a place he knows is good for minnows.
Once there, he sits cross-legged on his lily-pad and arranges his tackle. He has "the dearest little red float". His rod is a stalk of grass and his line a horsehair. An hour passes without a nibble. He takes a break and lunches on a butterfly sandwich. A water beetle tweaks his toe, and rats rustling about in the rushes force him to seek a safer location. He drops his line into the water and immediately has a bite. It is not a minnow but little Jack Sharp, a stickleback. The fish escapes but not before Jeremy pricks his fingers on Jack's spines. A shoal of little fishes come to the surface to laugh at Jeremy.
Jeremy sucks his sore fingers, but a trout rises from the water and seizes him with a snap. The trout dives to the bottom, but finds the Macintosh tasteless and spits Jeremy out, swallowing only his goloshes. Jeremy bounces "up to the surface of the water, like a cork and the bubbles out of a soda water bottle", and swims to the pond's edge. He scrambles up the bank and hops home through the meadow, quite sure he will never go fishing again.
In the last few pages, Jeremy has put sticking plaster on his fingers and welcomes his friends, Sir Isaac Newton, a newt, and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise, a tortoise. Isaac wears a black and gold waistcoat and Ptolemy brings a salad in a string bag. Jeremy has prepared roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce. The narrator describes the dish as a "frog treat", but thinks "it must have been nasty!"
Background
In addition to the frogs and other amphibians Potter kept as pets in her childhood, the influences on Jeremy were Potter's sport fishing father Rupert William Potter and British illustrator Randolph Caldecott. In 1871, and for ten years thereafter, the Potter family summered at Dalguise House, a country estate in Scotland renowned for its outstanding fishing. The young Beatrix may have heard the fish stories of her father and his buddies. Margaret Lane, author of The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter writes of Jeremy Fisher: "he imaginative parallel between frogs and human anglers in mackintoshes, and between newts and tortoises ... and certain types of elderly pompous gentlemen, is eloquent." Lane believes the picture of Jeremy relating his mishap with the trout to Sir Isaac is "so rich in observation, both of amphibians and elderly gentlemen, that one is ever afterwards prone to confuse them in memory."
Mr. Potter and his daughter shared an enthusiasm for British illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Potter's father owned several of Caldecott's drawings. In Jeremy Fisher, Potter consciously tried to copy Caldecott but felt she had failed. "I did try to copy Caldecott," she stated, "but ... I did not achieve much resemblance." She declared, "I have the greatest admiration for his work – a jealous appreciation; for I think that others, whose names are commonly bracketed with his, are not on the same plane at all as artist-illustrators."
Production
The origin of The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher lies a story letter Potter wrote to a child in September 1893 while summering on the River Tay. The letter begins, "Once upon a time there was a frog called Jeremy Fisher, and he lived in a little house on the banks of a river." The following year, Potter produced nine sketches called "A Frog he would a-fishing go" for publisher Ernest Nister, but the firm declined wirting Potter: "eople do not want frogs now." Nister continued talks however, and Potter finally received the price she wanted. The sketches were published with verses by Clifton Bingham in a 1896 Nister children's annual.
Energized by the success of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902, Potter decided to develop the frog story and bought back her drawings and Nister's printer's blocks to protect any future copyright concerns. She wrote her editor Norman Warne, "I should like to do Mr. Jeremy Fisher too some day ... I think I can make something of him."
The tale was set aside while Potter and Warne developed other projects, but in 1905 he approved the frog tale for development. As Potter expanded the manuscript, she moved the setting from the River Tay to Esthwaite Water and Moss Eccles Tarn, small bodies of water in the environs of Sawrey, Hawkshead, and her Hill Top farm.
In August 1905, Norman Warne died. His brother Harold became Potter's editor and she wrote to him indicating his brother had approved the frog project: "We had thought of doing the larger half-crown book of verses "Appley Dapply" & the frog "Mr. Jeremy Fisher" to carry on the series of little ones. I know some people don't like frogs! but I think I had convinced Norman that I could make it a really pretty book with a good many flowers & water plants for backgrounds." Harold Warne finally agreed to the Jeremy Fisher tale.
In July 1906, 20,000 copies of The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher were released in both red or grey-green paper boards at one shilling and in decorated cloth at one shilling six pence in a 138 by 105 millimetres (5.4 in × 4.1 in) format. Another 5,000 copies were published in September 1906 and another 5,000 in September 1907. The book was dedicated to Stephanie Hyde Parker, the daughter of Potter's cousin Ethel, Lady Hyde Parker: "For Stephanie from Cousin B.". Jeremy sold as well as other Potter productions.
Commentaries
MacDonald notes that The Tale of Jeremy Fisher is short and simple, and appropriate for children about the same age as that for The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Although a specific time period is not addressed by the author, the reader may assume the British Regency is intended as evinced in Jeremy's dress. Judy Taylor and her colleagues indicate in Beatrix Potter 1866–1943: The Artist and Her World that the simple story is rife with Potter's keen observation of nature, and her fictional animals conduct themselves in the ways their real world models would recognize – Jeremy likes wet weather, for example, and Ptolemy eats vegetable matter.
M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at State University of New York at Plattsburgh and author of Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code, observes that the social positions of Jeremy and his friends are established through the clothing they wear: Jeremy wears the dress of a Regency gentleman, Sir Isaac Newton wears a black and gold waistcoat and tailcoat, and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise wears the chain and medallion of his office. Potter is not as critical of Jeremy as she is of her other indolent upper class characters such as the dolls in The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Although she sharply critiqued the upper class elsewhere, Kutzer observes that in Jeremy Fisher her tone has mellowed. She suggests that Potter's relocation to Sawrey and Hill Top farm may have produced in her a willingness to accept "the silliness of the aspiring middle class as well as the eccentricities of the upper classes" without being overly judgemental.
MacDonald points out that although Potter regarded the lives of her father and his pals as comical and even beneath notice, yet she clearly respected and valued their outdoor pursuits and the pleasure they took in the natural world from the bemused treatment she accorded their sporting pastimes in Jeremy Fisher. She valued nature untouched by humans even more, MacDonald notes, as evidenced by the careful observation in the illustrations. Jeremy Fisher is not a complex story, and was written without the many revisions typical of Potter's other productions. The pictures appear effortless in their execution and are distinguished by the blues and the greens of the water and its marine growth. MacDonald writes, "Her ability to show human society without also implying its damaging effects on flora and fauna further underscores the book's felicitous composition and success."
Lear writes, " wanted to do a frog story for some time, because it was amusing and offered the opportunity for the naturalist illustrations she delighted in. The story of a fisherman down on his luck reminded Beatrix of the 'fish stories' her father's friends had told in Scotland, as well as her brother's travails with rod and reel. She also recreated the gentlemen's club atmosphere absorbed from her father's reports of evenings spent at the Reform and the Athenaeum. The text and illustrations for this story are some of the most balanced and compatible of all her writing. Nature is described and illustrated truthfully: beautifully tranquil as well as unpredictably aggressive. Its carefully coloured botanical backgrounds of water plants, a frog with anatomically correct turned-out feet, a trout that any self-respecting fisherman would enjoy snagging, and a rather frighteningly rendered water-beetle who tweaks Jeremy's dainty toes, all made it a delight to look at as well as to read."
Miniature letters
About 1907, Potter created a series of miniature letters folded to represent an envelope and sent to various child fans in either a miniature mail bag or a toy mail box. "Some of the letters were very funny," Potter wrote, "The defect was that inquiries and answers were all mixed up."
Four Jeremy letters were written at about 1910 to Drew Fayle who thought Jeremy should marry. In one letter, Sir Isaac promises Master Fayle a piece of wedding cake should Jeremy marry and, in another letter, Ptolemy writes that Jeremy's parties "would be much more agreeable if there were a lady to preside at the table." Jeremy writes in the third letter: "When I bought my sprigged waistcoat & my maroon tail-coat I had hopes ... but I am alone ... if there were a 'Mrs. Jeremy Fisher' she might object to snails. It is some satisfaction to be able to have as much water & mud in the house as a person likes." Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, a hedgehog washerwoman in another Potter tale, writes Master Fayle in the fourth letter:
Dear Master Drew,
If you please Sir I am a widow; & I think it very wrong that there is not any Mrs. Fisher, but I would not marry Mr. Jeremy not for worlds, the way he does live in that house all slippy-sloppy; not any lady would stand it, & not a bit of good starching his cravats.
Yr. obedient washerwoman, Tiggy Winkle.
Merchandise
Marketing strategy was a principal force in making Potter's small format books the classics she asserted they would one day be. She recognized the commercial possibilites of her characters and exploited Peter Rabbit between 1903 and 1905 with a doll, an unpublished board game, and a children's wallpaper. Potter termed the ancillary merchandise "side-shows" and continued to exploit her tales and characters over the course of twenty years.
In 1947, Frederick Warne & Co. granted Beswick Pottery of Longton, Staffordshire rights and licences to produce the Potter characters in porcelain. A figurine of Jeremy Fisher was issued in 1950 and figurines of Isaac Newton and Ptolemy Tortoise in 1972 and 1973. A figurine of Jeremy digging for worms was released in 1988 and a figurine of Jeremy catching a fish was released in 1999. A Jeremy mug was produced in 1988 and a large figurine of Jeremy in 1994.
Stuffed toy manufacturers had sought licensing rights to the Potter characters as early as 1909 but it was not until the 1970s that House of Nesbit Ltd., an English firm, was granted worldwide rights. Their detailed products were labour intensive, unprofitable, and finally discontinued. In 1972, Eden Toys, Inc. of New York received exclusive rights and, in 1973, Jeremy Fisher was one of the first eight plush toys released by the firm. In 1974, Jeremy and other characters were issued as 37 inches (94 cm) "Giants" intended for store displays. Collectors soon sought them. During the 1980s, Jeremy and Peter Rabbit "Giants" were produced in several versions. In 2000, in keeping with the Beanie Baby craze, Jeremy was issued as a beanbag collectible. Isaac Newton was released for two years. The most popular Potter characters, including Jeremy, have been available in countless sizes and versions over three decades of production.
Schmid & Co. were granted licensing rights to Beatrix Potter in 1977. Jeremy Fisher was one of the first ten character music boxes the company released in 1977, and music boxes depicting Ptolemy Tortoise and Isaac Newton were released in 1983 and 1984. In 1983, a flat ceramic Christmas ornament of Jeremy was released, and in 1987 an ornament depicting Jeremy on his lily-pad.
Other merchandise includes a variety of Jeremy Fisher enamelled boxes manufactured by Crummles of Poole, Dorset between 1974 and 1995, an ANRI wood carving and ANRI Toriart figurines and ornaments, and Huntley & Palmer biscuit tins between 1974 and 1978.
Reprints and translations
As of 2010, all 23 of Potter's small format books remain in print, and are available as complete sets in presentation boxes, and as a 400-page omnibus edition. Jeremy Fisher is available in Kindle format. First editions and early reprints are occasionally offered by antiquarian booksellers.
The English language editions of the tales still bore the Frederick Warne imprint in 2010 though the company was bought by Penguin Books in 1983. Penguin remade the printing plates from new photographs of the original drawings in 1985, and all 23 volumes were released in 1987 as The Original and Authorized Edition.
Potter's small format books have been translated into nearly thirty languages, including Greek and Russian. The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher was published in French in 1940 as Jérémie Pêche-à-la-Ligne, and in Dutch as Jeremais de Hengelaar in 1946. The tale was republished in Dutch in 1970 as Het Verhaal van Jeremais Hengelaar and was published in the Initial Teaching Alphabet in 1965. In 1984, the tale was again translated into French by M.A. James as L’histoire de Monsieur Jérémie Peche-a-la-Ligne. In 1986, MacDonald observed that the Potter books had become a traditional part of childhood in both English-speaking lands and those in which the books had been translated.
References
- Footnotes
- MacDonald 1986, p. 96
- Potter 2002, pp. 6–57
- ^ Lane 1989, p. 152 Cite error: The named reference "Lane152" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- Lear 2007, p. 212
- Lear 2007, p. 27
- Lear 2007, pp. 27–8
- ^ Lear 2007, p. 47
- Taylor 1987, p. 129
- Lear 2007, pp. 211–2
- Taylor 1987, p. 126
- ^ Taylor 1987, pp. 126–7
- ^ Taylor 1996, p. 66
- ^ Collecting Caldecott
- Taylor 1996, pp. 80–1
- Kutzer 2003, p. 117
- Taylor 1996, p. 111
- Taylor 1996, p. 106
- Linder 1971, p. 426
- Cite error: The named reference
Lear211–3was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - MacDonald 1986, p. 96
- Taylor 1987, p. 127
- Kutzer 2003, p. 121
- MacDonald 1986, p. 98
- Lear 2007, pp. 212–3
- Linder 1971, p. 72
- Linder 1971, pp. 79–80
- MacDonald 1986, p. 128
- Lear 2007, pp. 172–5
- Taylor 1987, p. 106
- DuBay 2006, pp. 30,35
- DuBay 2006, pp. 91–2,101
- DuBay 2006, pp. 106,120
- DuBay 2006, pp. 78–9,130,134,138
- "The World of Peter Rabbit". Amazon.com. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
- "Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales". Amazon.com. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
- "The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher ". Amazon.com. Retrieved 9 November 2010.
- "The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher". Aleph-Bet Books. Retrieved 9 November 2010.
- "The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher". Kirkland Books of Kendall. Retrieved 9 November 2010.
- ^ Taylor 1996, p. 216
- Linder 1971, pp. 433–37
- "L'histoire de Monsieur Jérémie Peche-a-la-Ligne". BYU. Retrieved 3 November 2010.
- MacDonald 1986, p. 130
- Works cited
- "Copying Caldecott" Guide to and commentary on The Beatrix Potter Collection (Prints and Books collection) at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, retrieved 3 November 2010
- Denyer, Susan (2000), At Home with Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit, Frances Lincoln Limited, ISBN 978-0-7112-3018-7
- Dubay, Debby; Sewall, Kara (2006), Beatrix Potter Collectibles: The Peter Rabbit Story Characters, Schiffer Publishing Ltd., ISBN 0-7643-2358-X
- Hallinan, Camilla (2002), The Ultimate Peter Rabbit: A Visual Guide to the World of Beatrix Potter, DK Publishing, Inc., ISBN 0-7894-8538-9
- Hobbs, Anne Stevenson (1989), Beatrix Potter's Art, Frederick Warne, ISBN 0-7232-3598-8
- Kutzer, M. Daphne (2003), Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-94352-3
- Lane, Margaret (1978), The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter, Frederick Warne & Co. Inc., ISBN 0-7232-2108-1
- Lear, Linda (2007), Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, St. Martin's Griffin, ISBN 0-312-37796-7
- Linder, Leslie (1971), A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter, Frederick Warne & Co. Inc., ISBN 0-7232-1334-8
- MacDonald, Ruth K. (1986), Beatrix Potter, Twayne Publishers, ISBN 0-8057-6917-X
- Potter, Beatrix (2002) , The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Frederick Warne, ISBN 978-0-7232-4776-0
- Taylor, Judy; Whalley, Joyce Irene; Hobbs, Anne Stevenson; Battrick, Elizabeth M. (1987), Beatrix Potter 1866–1943: The Artist and Her World, F. Warne & Co. and The National Trust, ISBN 0-7232-3561-9
- Taylor, Judy (1996) , Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, Countrywoman, Frederick Warne, ISBN 0-7232-4175-9
- The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends, BBC, 1993
External links
- The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher at Project Gutenberg
- The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher at Internet Archive
- Peter Rabbit Official Website
- Victoria and Albert Museum: Beatrix Potter
- Randolph Caldecott's A Frog He Would A-Woong Go
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