Marks in Books 7: Home Repairs to Children’s Books nearly Read to Death
This copy of The Toy-Shop is a good example of a book that has almost been read to death. Who was responsible? It’s natural to pin the blame for the book’s poor condition on the owners who wrote...
View ArticleCurator’s Choice: Pen Flourish Figures in a Dutch Boy’s Copybook ca. 1733
This week when I was retrieving some manuscripts, I got distracted and made a discovery. I didn’t remember ever having looked at the materials on the shelf where the one manuscript lived and stopped...
View ArticleHow to Celebrate a Birthday in 1792: Stephen Jones’ The Oracles
Celebrating a child’s birthday at a social gathering was a late eighteenth-century trend that was rather controversial because it undercut the traditional Christian practice of reflecting on one’s life...
View ArticleFrom Far from the Madding Crowd to Back Onto Center Stage
Life is all about serenity, isn’t it? Comfort, peace of mind, and the chance to hang out the “Do Not Disturb” sign when you want a little down time and R&R… But sometimes you can have a little too...
View ArticleThe Newbery Books Anna Green Winslow Read 1771-3
Anna Green Winslow, America’s most famous child diariest, wrote journal letters regularly to her parents in between 1771 and 1773 when she was living in Boston with her paternal aunt Mrs. Deming. Her...
View Article“Of Toys I Scribble:” Christopher Comical’s Lecture upon Games and Toys
Books on children’s games published before 1800 anywhere in Europe tend to survive in remarkably low numbers and the 1789 Lecture upon Games and Toys in two parts is no exception. There is one copy...
View ArticleBored with Nothing to Do in 1799: Projects from The Young Gentleman’s and...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a child with time on its hands must be in need of something to do. This was a truth understood very well by Dr. William Fordyce Mavor, the editor and chief...
View ArticleFor Saint Nicholas’s Review: Children Naughty and Nice
Christmas comes but once and year and when it does it brings….annual performance appraisals of children. This belief that St. Nicholas passes judgment on us may evaporate soon enough, but not before...
View ArticleThe Jacob’s Ladder Toy and Its Mysterious History
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 ArticlePicky Child Eaters Before Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
According to Jennifer Traig, author of Act Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting, there is very little evidence in the historical record for “concerns over children refusing what...
View ArticleStays and other Secrets of perfect Posture
People in eighteenth-century portraits hold their bodies as if they were dancers. Even a squirmy toddler tenuously balanced on his mother’s knee has beautiful posture. Were those gracefully lifted...
View ArticleThomas Boreman’s Tiny, Tiny “Gigantick Histories”
How a “tiny, dumpy volume” altered the concept of children’s books — When Thomas Boreman issued The Gigantick History of the Two Famous Giants, and Other Curiosities in Guildhall, London in 1740,...
View ArticleMore “Gigantick Histories” that “altered the concept of children’s books”
Thomas Boreman’s “Gigantick Histories” were landmark publications in the history of children’s books, as we saw last week. Beginning with the first tiny book — The Gigantick History of the Two Famous...
View ArticleJohn Bewick’s Progress of a Good and a Bad Boy: A New Attribution
A few weeks ago I was cataloging a new addition to the Newbery collection,The History of Jacky Idle and Dicky Diligent, a generous gift of The Friends of the Princeton University Library in 2018. I...
View ArticlePaying for Private School Tuition in the 1730s
The Princeton class of 2019 has just graduated and cleared out of the dorms. Next year’s crop of applicants for spots in the class of 2023 will be touring campus all summer. Parents’ nagging worries...
View ArticleMarks in Books 9: Daydreaming Boys Draw in Their Schoolbooks
Many copybooks do not look especially interesting, until you go through them carefully page by page. This one is tacked into a raggedly limp leather wrapper is a case in point. It was made by a...
View ArticleMarks in Books 10: Sibling Stand-off in a Copybook?
Don’t judge this copybook by its spotted vellum boards. It looks anything but promising, but it is noteworthy on several counts. Elizabeth Harris, who may have lived in South Molton, Devonshire,...
View ArticleThe Voice of the School Boy
The adult writer has the privilege of impersonating the child, throwing its voice as if it were a ventriloquist’s puppet. How often was the child allowed to speak in authentic tones before the...
View ArticleRegistration open for the 2019 Cotsen Symposium on Children’s Books and...
Traditionally research into pre-20th century children’s literature has focused on titles written and consumed in a particular country. However, most 18th- and 19th-century children, parents, and...
View ArticleGobble, Growl, Grunt: The First Alphabets of Animal Noises
Reading any book of animal noises to the baby, where it is obligatory to squeal like a pig or roar like a lion, is one of the most enjoyable assignments of parenthood. It can chase away the fog of...
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