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 book is illustrated with framed pictures and evidence suggests the material was intended for a small booklet of its own. Some illustrations are executed in a fluid manner while others are in the style of Potter's early dry-brush technique. The simple nursery rhymes Potter composed capture the rhythm of such verse, but none of the rhymes are especially memorable. Taylor describes the book as "the last squeezings of an almost dry sponge." Potter confidently asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy. She was the first to