Kate Greenaway’s illustrated A Apple Pie was published in 1886.
The full title was A Apple Pie: An Old-Fashioned Alphabet Book, issued in London by Routledge. Greenaway based the picture book on the older English alphabet rhyme, pairing its sequence of letters and actions with her distinctive illustrations of children in idealised historical clothing.
The book appeared during Greenaway’s highly successful Victorian career as an illustrator. Her earlier work Under the Window, published in 1879, had already established her reputation, and her collaborations with the printer Edmund Evans helped make her colour-printed children’s books especially popular.
The year 1886 is easy to mix up with other Apple Pie ABC dates. The rhyme itself was mentioned as early as 1671; 1742 marks an important early printed version; and 1808 refers to another nineteenth-century adaptation. Greenaway’s book is the 1886 landmark.