Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast, The de ROSCOE, William

London: Printed for J. Harris, 1807. Rare First Edition of William Roscoe's The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast
One of the Earliest Examples of Fantasy Writing for Children,
Which Uses Strange Situations and Gives Human Features to Animals

ROSCOE, William. MULREADY, William, illustrator. The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast. Said to be written for the Use of his Children, by Mr. Roscoe. London: Printed for J. Harris, Jany. 1st, 1807.

First Edition, First Issue. Sixteenmo (5 1/8 x 3 3/4 inches; 130 x 95 mm.). Sixteen leaves (32 pp). The final blank leaf attached to the back wrapper. Hand colored engraved frontispiece and thirteen fine hand colored engraved plates with the text at the top of the leaf. The illustrations are by William Mulready.

Nineteenth century full black morocco, front and back covers covers with a geometric design border. The front cover also with the title in gilt. Spine with four raised bands lettered in gilt. Dark green floral design endpapers, edges uncut.

The original printed front & back yellow card wrappers bound in. Remains of the manuscript price of 1/6 on top blank margin of front wrapper. The rear wrapper lists eight other book printed by J. Harris.

A spectacular copy of this great rarity, Harris's most famous publication...

"The work is illustrated with 12 hand-coloured engravings totally different from the second issue of the work. The second issue has the text printed and not engraved and in many respects is different or variant." (Gumuchian 4967).

The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast is a poem by William Roscoe, which first published in the November 1806 edition of The Gentleman's Magazine. The poem is an early example of fantasy writing for children, which uses strange situations and gives human features to animals. What sets it apart from other children's literature of the time is that there is no underlying moral tale. The poem was purely for fun and amusement, written in lively and light hearted rhyming couplets. It tells the story of a procession of insects and small animals who make their way to a ball being held by the butterfly. The guests range from a blind mole, assisted by a dormouse, to a wasp and hornet, both of whom promise not to use their stings during the evening. They eat supper and watch the spider's acrobatics, then everyone returns home, accompanied by the light of the glow worm watchman.

"The Butterfly's Ball has a complex history. The first issue book described here was not the poem's first appearance.
In November of 1806, The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast was published in both the Gentleman's Magazine and the Lady's Monthly Museum. Curiously, the texts of the two versions are slightly different, but in both, in the first line of the second verse, he included the phrase "little Robert," the son for whom the poem had originally been written. Since the Gentleman's Magazine was issued earlier in the month, it is usually given as the first appearance of The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast in print. But it would not be the last...

The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast was immediately popular with all who read it, including the Royal family. At the request of King George III and Queen Charlotte, William Roscoe sent his verses to the musician and composer, George Thomas Smart, who set them to music as a glee. This glee was performed by the Royal Princesses Mary, Elizabeth and Augusta, for their Royal parents, during a visit to the seaside resort of Weymouth. It is believed that William Roscoe edited the verses which he sent to George Smart, removing the reference to his son, Robert, as these verses are in his handwriting and there is no mention of young Robert. The Lady's Monthly Museum also noted that the poem was later sung to Smart's music at the annual dinner of the New Musical Fund.

In fact the 1807 first issue was so popular that it was reprinted several times which caused the copperplates to wear down rapidly. In 1808, John Harris published a brand new edition of The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast. All new illustrations were commissioned for this edition, in which the insects were depicted more realistically, if with somewhat less charm than the original copperplate engravings. In this new edition, the illustrations appeared on separate pages from the text. In addition, the poem itself was revised and expanded by William Roscoe.

The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast is also the title of a 1973 picture book by Alan Aldridge and William Plomer, loosely based on the poem. This greatly expanded and altered the original work, focused more on the animals' preparations for the Ball. The uninhibited imaginative zest of William Roscoe's poem inspired a concept album by Roger Glover of Deep Purple and Rainbow fame, staged in 1975 as a rock opera at the Royal Albert Hall.

William Roscoe (1753-1831) was an English banker, lawyer, and briefly a Member of Parliament. He is best known as one of England's first abolitionists, and as the author of the poem The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast,which he wrote for the amusement of his children.

William Mulready (1786-1863) was born in Ennis, County Clare. Early in his life, in 1792, the family moved to London, where he was able to get an education and was taught painting well enough so that he was accepted at the Royal Academy School at the age of fourteen. Many of his early pictures show landscapes, before he started to build a reputation as a genre painter from 1808 on, painting mostly everyday scenes from rural life. He also illustrated children's books including the first edition of Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare in 1807; William Roscoe's entertaining poem The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast in the same year; and a sequel to the latter by Catherine Ann Dorset. Some of these were for the Juvenile Library of William Godwin and Mary Jane Clairmont; Godwin in turn wrote, under a pseudonym, an account of Mulready's early life, suitable for children.

Grolier. One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature 23; Gumuchian 4967; Moon 725(1); Opie (1973) 747; Osborne 1, 76; Schiller (1983) 96.