Apple Pie ABC

Did You Know?

• The rhyme appeared under the macabre title The Tragical Death of A, Apple Pye Who was Cut in Pieces and Eat by Twenty-Five Gentlemen (London 1770; Worcester, Mass. 1787).
• Charles Dickens mentions the rhyme in three works: 'A Christmas Tree' (1850), Bleak House (1852), and 'The Italian Prisoner' (1860).

History

The rhyme teaches the alphabet by listing verbs that describe how children react to an apple pie, beginning with "A was an apple pie." The earliest printed versions from the 18th century ran through the letters with actions such as "B bit it" and "C cut it," ending with X, Y, Z, and & all wishing for a piece. Because capital I and J, and U and V, were not differentiated in writing at that time, those vowels were absent; later versions added "I inspected it" and "U upset it." The earliest known mention of the rhyme appears in a religious work from 1671, covering only letters A through G. It first appeared in print in 1742 in London in a spelling book, and was reprinted in Boston in 1750. Another early printing was Tom Thumb's Playbook (London 1747; Boston 1764), which was reprinted eight times in the U.S. by the end of the century. By then the rhyme was also appearing under the title The Tragical Death of A, Apple Pye (London 1770; Worcester, Mass. 1787), which was also reprinted many times in both countries. It has been suggested that the phrase "in apple pie order" derives from the regular progression of this alphabet rhyme.

Variations

Variations in wording began appearing at the start of the 19th century. The History of the APPLE PIE, an Alphabet for little Masters and Misses, ‘written by Z’ (London 1808), includes actions such as "B bit it, C cried for it, D danced for it," and ends with Z writing the history. Two American versions are held in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and a slightly different English version from 1835 is archived in the Open Library. The most popular illustrated later edition was Kate Greenaway’s A Apple Pie: An Old-Fashioned Alphabet Book (London, 1886), which has been continuously reprinted. Instead of the original ending with yearning for a piece, Greenaway substituted "UVWXYZ all had a large slice and went off to bed," allowing her to use only twenty illustrations. The rhyme also changed in other ways, as in The Real History of the Apple Pie, which has an extended coda where each letter speaks a line, such as "Says A, give me a good large slice," and ends with "& purloined the dish, And for another pie did wish."

Literary allusions

Charles Dickens mentions the nursery rhyme in three works. In an essay on "A Christmas Tree" (1850), he writes of nursery books with "fat black letters" and notes that A was an apple-pie, and that X never got beyond Xerxes or Xantippe. In Bleak House (1852), he alludes to the rhyme when describing legal process in the Court of Chancery, saying that solicitors and counsel appear for A, B, and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the apple pie. In "The Italian Prisoner" (1860), he compares the difficulties of transporting a bottle of wine to the apple-pie in the child's book, listing actions such as "Parma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany tackled it." The references to Xerxes and to "the history of the apple pie" suggest that Dickens knew the version written by Z.