Banbury Chap Books and Nursery Toy Book Literature: [of the XVIII. and Early XIX. Centuries] — John Shaqi
Banbury Chap Books and Nursery Toy Book Literature: [of the XVIII. and Early XIX. Centuries]Pearson, Edwin
History
Banbury Chap Books and Nursery Toy Book Literature: [of the XVIII. and Early XIX. Centuries]
Pearson, Edwin
Chapbooks, English -- Illustrations; Children's literature, English -- Illustrations
Boswell has recorded several conversations of Oliver Goldsmith with Dr.
Johnson, in which the warm-hearted poet expressed a wish, "to make
fishes, animals, birds, etc., _talk_, or appear so to do, for the
amusement and instruction of children." In the National Collection is
"The Valentine's Gift, or a Plan to enable children of all sizes and
denomination to behave with honour, integrity, and humanity, very
necessary to a trading nation: to which is added some account of Old
Zigzag, and of the Horn with which he used to understand the language of
birds, beasts, fishes and insects," etc., "Printed for Francis Power,
(grandson to the late Mr. J. Newbery) and Co., No. 65, St. Paul's
Churchyard, 1790, price sixpence, bound in gilt dutch paper binding, 105
and iii pages".
Numerous books were sold by Francis Power, No. 65, _near the Bar_, in
St. Paul's Churchyard, London; his list comprises "Giles Gingerbread,"
"Tom Thumb's Folio," "The London Cries, taken from the Life," "The
Lilliputian Auction," by Charley Chatter, "Nurse Truelove's Christmas
Box," "New Year's Gift," "The History of Little Goody Two Shoes," new
edition, "Adventures of a Bee," "The Little Lottery Book," "A Pretty
Plaything for Children," "The Lilliputian Magazine," "The Picture
Exhibition," "Lilliputian Masquerade," "Juvenile Trials for Robbing
Orchards and Telling Fibs," "Pretty Poems by Tommy Tagg, for children
three feet high," "A Pretty Book of Pictures, or Tommy Tripp's History,"
"The Drawing School by Master Angelo," "Poetical Flower Garden," "Tommy
Trapwit's Be Merry and Wise," "Lecture upon Toys," 2 vols; "Pretty Poems
for children six feet high," "The Museum," "Polite Academy," "Poetical
Flower Basket," "Mother Goose's Fairy Tales," "A Spelling Dictionary,
Rhetoric; Logic; Arithmetic; History; Chronology; Geography;" "Vicar of
Wakefield." Most of the latter except "Vicar" formed a circle of the
sciences licensed by approval of the King, each dedicated to a youthful
nobleman, by "John Newbery." The size was "snuffbox," or waistcoat
pocket (capacious in 1790, see "School for Scandal," etc., Costume,
etc.) Documentary evidence and receipts in Goldsmith's handwriting,
acknowledging various sums for writing the "Rhetorick," and others of
the above exist. Goldsmith also did numerous Abridgements of the Old and
New Testaments, Robinson Crusoe, Pamela, Clarissa Harlow, Sir Chas.
Grandison, all in this juvenile series for J. Newbery.
[Illustration: 12_1
_The Spider, from Bunyan's Divine Emblems._]
This was a most popular juvenile brochure, at end of eighteenth century.
The early editions of J. Bunyan's Works, 2 vols, folio, had the Divine
Emblems at end of vol 2, with quaint old woodcuts. These were
industriously copied in reduced sizes, and published from 1d. to 6d., by
various London and Provincial "toy book" manufacturers. The above is a
solitary representative of the illustrations of one of these rare
editions of "Bunyan."
[Illustrations: 12_2, 12_3
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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