The Velveteen Rabbit

Margery Williams · Down to Earth Series · 12 pages

Margery Williams's The Velveteen Rabbit, first published in the United States by George H. Doran Co. in 1922 with illustrations by Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson. The two illustrations in this edition are by Fred Warter. The head-note gives the reason for its inclusion: how love makes toys become real.

The story opens on the rabbit at his best — fat and bunchy as a rabbit should be, his coat spotted brown and white, real thread whiskers, ears lined with pink sateen — wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking on Christmas morning with a sprig of holly between his paws. There are nuts and oranges and a toy engine and a clockwork mouse in the stocking too, but the Rabbit is the best of all, and for two hours the Boy loves him; then the aunts and uncles arrive, the parcels are unwrapped, and in the excitement the Rabbit is forgotten. He spends a long time in the toy cupboard and on the nursery floor, naturally shy and snubbed by the more expensive toys. Williams draws the social comedy carefully: the mechanical toys are superior and full of modern ideas and pretend they are real; the model boat, having lost most of his paint over two seasons, catches their tone and refers to his rigging in technical terms; and the Rabbit cannot claim to be a model of anything, not knowing that real rabbits exist and supposing them all stuffed with sawdust like himself — sawdust being a subject he understands to be out of date and never mentioned in modern circles. The distinction between pretending to be real and becoming real is the one the whole story turns on, and it is why the file was gathered here.

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