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Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes is a collection of nursery rhymes written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1917.

Plot[]

The book opens with a three-stanza rhyme about Appley Dapply, a mouse who raids cupboards for treats, and is accompanied with three illustrations, one which depicts a little mouse running away from a cupboard with a tray of pies:

Appley Dapply
has little sharp eyes,
And Appley Dapply
is so fond of pies!

The following rhyme tells of Peter Rabbit's sister, Cotton-tail, and her implied courtship by a little black rabbit who leaves a gift of carrots at her door. In The Tale of Mr. Tod, Cotton-tail is married to the black rabbit. Like the first rhyme, the little black rabbit rhyme is of three stanzas accompanied by three illustrations.

The third rhyme tells of Old Mr. Pricklepin, a hedgehog, who elsewhere in Potter is identified as Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's uncle. His shining eyes, his wrinkled paws, and his human shoes emphasize their relationship. The single stanza is accompanied by an illustration Potter believed to be the finest she ever produced.

As early as 1893 Potter illustrated and made a booklet of "There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe". There, the Old Woman's children are depicted as scampering mice, and their mother as a mouse whipping her children in a shoe in the background. In Appley Dapply however, the author speculates upon the identity of the old woman in two stanzas, believing she was a mouse due to being able to live in a shoe. In the first illustration, the mouse and her children tumble from an elaborately beaded turquoise-blue shoe, and, in the illustration accompanying the second stanza, the mouse knits peacefully – presumably while the children are in bed.

The fifth rhyme tells of Diggory Delvet, the first mole in Potter's work. He may have been inspired by the mole in Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina or possibly Moley in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. "Diggory Delvet" and the last rhyme in the book about a guinea pig are two of the few limericks written for children by someone other than Edward Lear.

The sixth rhyme is a single stanza and accompanied by an illustration depicting a pig in a dress sitting in a high-backed chair and peeling potatoes:

Gravy and potatoes
In a good brown pot —
Put them in the oven,
And serve them very hot!

The seventh and last rhyme is a limerick about an "amiable guinea-pig" (the first guinea pig in Potter's work) who brushes his hair back like a periwig and dons a blue tie. The verse is accompanied by three illustrations depicting the guinea pig in various stages of coiffing and dressing. Guinea pigs would have their own story told in the tale of Tupenny in Potter's The Fairy Caravan of 1929.

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