Happy 250th! : Samuel Holbrook’s Copy Book from 1776
Over the long holiday weekend, let’s take a second look at the post Ian Dooley, the curatorial assistant, wrote some years ago about a manuscript made by a child that is contemporaneous to the...
View ArticleMade by a Rascally Writing Master: Manuscripts of “The Beginning, Progress,...
This year Cotsen acquired three manuscript turn-ups of “The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man,” an rhymed bit of religious doggerel with metamorphic pictures which was virtually unknown until the...
View ArticleCharles Lamb and the “Detestable Picture” of the Witch of Endor: Strange...
The history of Joseph from the Old Testament has often been retold for children, while the tragic story of Saul, the first king of Israel, and David seems to have been avoided. The tragic chronicle...
View ArticleWhy Little John Quincy Adams had “Giles Gingerbread” Memorized
In What The Presidents Read, Liz Goodenough and Marilyn Olson wondered: A childhood book is much more than just a story—for presidents, it may represent a turn in the course of history. Did John F....
View ArticleBirds Who Watch Over People
Many English superstitions are associated with birds: Simpson and Roud’s Dictionary of English Folklore notes that swans were once thought to sing before they died and swallows to hibernate underwater....
View ArticleJohn Newbery Proposes an Unorthodox Way to Celebrate Valentine’s Day
With this newspaper advertisement in 1764, the famous publisher John Newbery launched five new books. Naturally only good children who visited his shop in St. Paul’s Church Yard would be allowed to...
View ArticleA Recipe for Mince Pies in The Lilliputian Magazine (1752)
English Christmas continues to be associated with mince pies, even though the recipe has changed a good deal over the centuries. There are no shortage of recipes in the eighteenth century, but the one...
View ArticleThe Earliest Recipe for Turducken in the First Known Reference to “The House...
The ambitious cook can substitute a platter of turducken for the traditional turkey on the groaning Thanksgiving table. This labor-intensive dish made famous by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme...
View ArticleOnce There Was a Man with a Goat, Cabbage, and Wolf and They Had to Cross a...
Lewis Carroll gave his pupils puzzles to make logic and mathematics instruction more interesting. He might have sprung on them the well-known river crossing problem which goes something like this…...
View ArticleThe Clinking, Clanking Sound of Money in 18th-century Children’s Books
If you had been brought up in one of the rising European capitalist economies of the 1700s, how would you have been introduced to the concept of money? There is plenty of material trying to shape...
View ArticleA Woman’s Work at Her Needle Is Never Done
“Work” with respect to girls and women used to be synonymous with “needlework.” Not just the stitching of samplers, but “plain sewing,” the making of shifts and shirts, aprons and babies’ caps for...
View ArticleSome New Thoughts on the Jacob’s Ladder, that Mysterious Toy
The Jacob’s Ladder is an old-timey pastime that has made a surprising comeback recently. Twenty years ago wooden versions were available only from retailers making a stand against modern soulless...
View ArticleTake Your Choice: Mezzotints of Naughty and Nice Girls after Thomas Spence...
A favorite subject in the eighteenth-century was the parallel lives of a pair of boys whose lives diverged after childhood and went in radically different directions. Probably the most famous one...
View ArticleTurducken on the Menu at “The House that Jack Built”: How a Rhyme and a...
A platter of turducken can substitute for the traditional turkey on the groaning Thanksgiving table. This elaborate dish made famous by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme consists of a boned chicken...
View ArticleMade by a Child: Skeletons in The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man
The most celebrated child artist of the skeleton must be Tommy Traddles, David Copperfield’s fellow pupil at Salem House. Or would be if any of his slate drawings had survived… Poor Traddles!…He was...
View ArticleHave Fairies Always Had Wings? The Iconography of a Magical Being
Everyone knows–or ought to–that fairies can fly. All the thoroughly modern tooth fairies illustrated in this summer’s post about “Rewriting the Tooth Fairy’s Job Description,” no matter what they were...
View ArticleThe History of Dental Care for Babies: The Anodyne Necklace for Teething
Frustration is trying to soothe a teething baby. The signs are easy to spot—a bright red cheek, inflamed gums, lots of drool, a fist stuck in the mouth, fussing and more fussing. Rubbing the gums...
View ArticleMade by a Child: A Sampler of Siblings’ Names Stitched in 1778.
An exhibition catalogue of eighteenth-century embroidery would probably pass by this small sampler, which records information about a family in the English Midlands 1767-1787, just purchased for...
View ArticleThe History of Christmasses Past: A Christmas Tree Made of Yew Boughs
Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, is now believed to have introduced the custom of displaying indoors decorated yew branches at Christmas from her native Mecklenberg-Strelitz in northern Germany,...
View ArticleStudents, Teachers, and Classrooms Illustrated in the Catalogue of the Cotsen...
The last two volumes of the Catalogue of the Cotsen Children’s Library, a comprehensive index, have just been published, bringing this huge project to completion. This post will offer a survey of the...
View Article
![[imports/adg/photos/213899875_Police-Car-Lights-2.jpg]](http://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/imports/adg/photos/213899875_Police-Car-Lights-2_t600.jpg?4326734cdb8e39baa3579048ef63ad7b451e7676)
