Little Jack Horner in the Tudor period. The song’s most common lyrics are: <poem style="margin-left:24px> Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner, Eating his Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And said, "What a good boy am I!"</poem> It was first documented in full in the nursery rhyme collection "Mother Goose's melody, or, Sonnets for the cradle", which may date from 1765, although the earliest surviving English edition is from 1791. The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded by the composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his "National Nursery Rhymes and
Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes in an effort to stave off the firm's complete ruin. Potter was unwilling to become involved in the intense labour of preparing an entirely new book, and suggested the publisher raid the "Appley Dapply" dummy book prepared a decade and a half earlier. Seven rhymes with their accompanying illustrations were chosen and published as "Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes". The book sold well. Modern critics consider "Appley Dapply" an uneven compilation of illustrations spanning decades and styles across Potter's career and suggest that it fails as a unified work. The rhymes of Potter's composition are critically considered not particularly memorable, and