Fifth edition; 8vo; original printed cloth. Beatrix Potter's copy, signed ‘Helen Beatrix Potter’ on the half title. This primer is one of a series which was aimed at introducing young children to the sciences. One of the editors of the series, which started in 1872, was Beatrix Potter's uncle, Professor Sir Henry Roscoe. Astronomy was published in 1877, when Beatrix would have been 10 years old, although her hand here seems to be from a few years later. The book also bears a bookseller's label "G. Stent 15 Gledhow Terrace South Kensington" which was just a stones-throw away from her family home in Bolton Gardens. Linda Lear in her biography of Beatrix Potter, states that she “could have become expert in any number of field of natural science: archaeology, botany, ornithology, mycology, geology or entomology .......only astronomy failed to attract her.... she had been fascinated by the brief flight of a night-time meteor. ‘I was much impressed by it’, she wrote, ‘a strange visitor from the outside of the world. I do not often consider the stars , they give me a tissick [make me breathless]‘. Very good light wear to the boards.