It is the best of all these early
attempts
to purvey
'pleasure with profit duly mixt,' though there is more profit than
pleasure in it.
'pleasure with profit duly mixt,' though there is more profit than
pleasure in it.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v11
The bluestockings congratulated her and
themselves on its extraordinary success, and if they did not 'crown
her, cover her, hide her with laurels,' as Richard Berenger, one of
them suggested, Mrs Boscawen, on its twelfth performance, sent
her a laurel wreath with the 'stems confined within an elegant
ring,' for which she returned thanks in an elegant copy of verses. '
She had almost finished The Fatal Falsehood, when, in 1779,
David Garrick died, and, greatly affected by his death, she deter-
mined to write no more plays. From this time, her thoughts
followed their natural trend towards serious subjects, and, her
letters, she gradually reveals herself as philanthropist and reformer.
She even attempted, said Cowper, ‘to reform the unreformable
Great,' and her Thoughts on the importance of the Manners of the
Great went into many large editions? Her grief at Garrick's
death found some vent in Sensibility, a poem addressed to Mrs
Boscawen, in which several bluestockings are mentioned. The
poem, however, that made the greatest stir in the bluestocking
coteries, was Bas Bleu, or Conversation. It is illustrative of the
fact that Hannah More, with her strong sense of dramatic values,
had the faculty of mentally visualising the significance of the
various movements with which she was connected. This poem, as
she explained in the preface, owed its name to the mistake of
a foreigner of distinction, who gave the literal name Bas-bleu to
a small party of friends that had often been called by way of
pleasantry Blue Stockings. She says further that these little
societies—sometimes misrepresented—were composed of persons
distinguished in general for their rank, talent, or respectable
character, who met frequently at Mrs Vesey's and at a few other
houses for the sole purpose of conversation. She adds a brief
a
tribute to the charm of these gatherings, where, she says, learning
was not disfigured by pedantry, good taste was not marred by
affectation and conversation was as little disgraced by calumny,
levity and other censurable errors as has, perhaps, been known
in any society. The poem is not of permanent value, though
Johnson told her that 'there was no name in poetry that might
6
1 The tracts with which she tried to reform the poor, Village Politics and the
Repository Tracts, had an amazing success, and were found so well-suited to the
purpose that the Religious Tract society was formed to continue the work.
## p. 363 (#385) ############################################
Xv]
Horace Walpole
363
>
not be glad to own it. ' Naturally, this poème à clef had a great
vogue among the bluestockings, as most of them were mentioned
either by their own names, or under some classical appellation. It
was written to amuse Mrs Vesey, and, after circulating some years
in manuscript, was eventually printed in 1786.
Perhaps the most curious friendship in the bas-bleu coteries,
was that between Hannah More and Horace Walpole. She was
not long in discovering that 'Horace liked nonsense talk better
than Greeks or Romans,' but, apparently, she could do her own
share of such conversation. When she spent evenings among the
bluestockings, she frequently mentions that she and Horace Wal-
pole, with another friend or two,ʻmake up a pleasant little coterie
of their own. Friendly correspondence passed between them,
when they were away from London; and, when Hannah More
went to live at her cottage, Cowslip green-cousin in name,
declared Walpole, to Strawberry hill—he collected all his own
works, printed at the Strawberry hill press, to give her 'for
remembrance. As a mark of great distinction, he printed her
Bishop Bonner's Ghost at the famous press, for distribution among
their common friends—in other words, the bluestockings. He gave
her a beautifully bound Bible, which she wished he would read;
but, in spite of the amazing differences of character between the
cynic and the reformer, they remained good friends till his death.
He was on intimate terms with Mrs Carter, too, and both the
famous bluestocking ladies were amazed when his Letters were
published. The Horace Walpole there revealed was an entirely
different person from the bluestocking they had known. When he
talked with them, there were not any traces of 'that truly French,
light and frivolous way of thinking which is so evident in his
printed letters. ' Indeed, it was something of a shock to them to
find that he had actually selected his letters for publication.
Hannah More was the chief chronicler as well as the poet
laureate of the blues. It is from the hasty impressionist sketches
in her letters that we gather the significance of the movement.
Of a bluestocking evening at William Pepys's, she says
There was all the pride of London, every wit and every wit-ess. . . but the
spirit of the evening was kept up on the strength of a little lemonade till
past eleven, without cards, scandal or politics.
A terse description that might serve as a type of most of the
bluestocking meetings. This cult of 'conversation—the pursuit of
ideas,' as it has been defined-acted as a subtle leaven to the
hard brilliant materialism of the eighteenth century. The social
## p. 364 (#386) ############################################
364
The Bluestockings
[CH.
refinement introduced by the bluestocking interest in literature
can be better appreciated by a glimpse at the glaring foil made
by ordinary society.
‘On Monday,' writes Hannah More, ‘I was at a very great assembly at
the Bishop of St Asaph’s. Conceive to yourself one hundred and fifty or two
hundred people met together. . . painted as red as bacchanals; poisoning the
air with perfumes; treading on each other's gowns; not one in ten able to
get a chair. . . ten or a dozen card tables crammed with dowagers of quality,
grave ecclesiastics and yellow admirals. '
It was another advantage of the bas-bleu societies, that 'common
or genteel swearing' was not countenanced : and, as tea, coffee,
orgeat and lemonade were the only beverages offered, intoxication
—then a general vice of society-seldom brought its embarrass-
ments into their midst.
From the somewhat elusive references to the bluestocking
parties, we gather that—unlike the Parisian salons—there was not
a fixed day or date for any of the meetings. A dinner might be
given by Mrs Montagu, after which there would be 'a strong
reinforcement of the Blues'; or, Mrs Vesey would hold an
assembly of rank, fashion and literati: 'so blue it was Mazarin
blue,' as Horace Walpole once described 'a Vesey. Or, Mrs
Boscawen might 'receive,' though parties at her house were
usually more exclusive, and thirty or forty was there considered
quite a large meeting. These were the principal bluestocking
hostesses, to whom came the elite of London both for talent
and fashion. Since the first conversation had been given by Mrs
Vesey, these societies had multiplied, and, from the seventies to
the end of the century, bluestocking meetings were held in many
other London houses. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'the idol of every
company, and his sister had most interesting evenings at their
house in Leicester fields and, later, at Richmond. Here, even
Johnson was 'as brilliant as himself, and as good-humoured as
anyone else,' and there was scarce an expletive man or woman '
among the company. Mrs Thrale, of the little silver tongue,'
welcomed rank and talent to her home at Streatham, and much
good talk was heard in the famous library. Miss Mary Monckton,
afterwards the witty countess of Cork and othôry, had, said
Boswell, the finest bit of blue at her parties. Dressed in fine
thin muslin in the coldest weather, she would nonchalantly receive
her distinguished guests with a nod and a smile and a short
“How do do"? ; and then, without moving from her seat in the
middle of the room, would continue her conversation, lounging
6
rel
## p. 365 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
Fanny Burney
365
on one chair while she leaned on the back of another. At this
house, the guest of honour was Johnson, of whom dean Marlay
once remarked, “the ladies might well be proud when they could
turn a wolf-dog into a lap dog! '
Mrs Chapone, born Hester Mulso, occasionally gave blue-
stocking receptions that were 'rational, instructive and social,
and, also, unfortunately, somewhat spiritless and dull. Though
Johnson thought sufficiently well of her literary talent to include
her among the few contributors to his Rambler, the promise of
her youth never ripened to any noteworthy performance, if we
except Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, which, in its
day, was considered an educational work of the first importance.
The author was, by temperament, argumentative, impulsive, emo-
tional; and, perhaps because of her experience, such qualities are
condemned in her Letters. These are only interesting now as
embodying an acclaimed ideal of eighteenth century feminine
manners. Mrs Chapone was frequently a guest at North End,
where she would earnestly discuss with Richardson his female
characters. Mrs Delany, that ‘fairest model of female excellence,'
asserted that Mrs Chapone was the prototype of some of his
principal heroines, which, she said, “is the reason they are not
really so polished as he takes them to be. '
Perhaps the most charming description of a bluestocking
evening is from the vivid and sprightly pen of Fanny Burney'.
She was a blue, but not of what Hannah More called the old set.
She had not long visited among them-where Evelina and her
own amiable personality secured her a warm welcome—before her
appointment to a post at court. She snatched an evening from her
wearisome duties, however, to visit Mrs Ord, a later but hardly
less distinguished hostess than the original three, and there
found practically all the members of the circle : Mrs Montagu,
Mrs Boscawen, Owen Cambridge, Horace Walpole, Sir Lucas
Pepys, Leonard Smelt, Bennet Langton and Lady Rothes, his
wife, Mrs Carter, Mrs Chapone, William Pepys and others. The
talk was of The Streatham Letters, the correspondence between
Mrs Thrale and Dr Johnson which had just been published, and
many of the blues feared the indiscretions of her too fluent pen.
It is a lively and graceful picture of eighteenth century society,
and an excellent representation of the friendly charm of the
bas-bleu meetings.
· See Hill, Constance, Fanny Burney at the Court of Queen Charlotte (1912), chap. XII.
## p. 366 (#388) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
CHILDREN's books, throughout the history of English literature,
have been in that literature, but not of it. Phrases and persons
from nursery lore have passed irrevocably into the national arsenal
of metaphor and allusion, while the sources of them may not have
had any claim to serious literary consideration. Children, too,
have annexed the books of their elders-Robinson Crusoe is the
standard example—and have almost established a prescriptive
right to the conquered territory. But not many books written
specially for children have also been enduring literature, in any
real sense, though the exceptions are notable. The nursery
library, in fact, has been a separate thing ; developed differently,
furnished from a different standpoint, with works written in a
different vein of inspiration and produced, commercially, with
different limitations and standards. Nor is the criterion of judg-
ment upon it, whether the reader or the historian be the judge, the
same as upon more solemn or artistic performances.
Its history really opens in the eighteenth century. Yet, in the
beginnings, the grown-up' and the child coincide, in a way. The
writers who, in the first volume of this work, treated of the riddles
of Cynewulf, Aelfric and Aldhelm, and of the scholastic labours of
Alcuin at York, were chronicling the very earliest books for
children in the language. Those who, in the same volume”, dis-
cussed the metrical romances of 1200—1500 set forth at large the
adult works whose disjecta membra were still the framework of
the cheapest books for children in the eighteenth century; while
Aesop, and bestiaries, and such a collection as Gesta Romanorum
were certainly, to some extent, read by children as well as by the
older flock at whom the monkish editors aimed.
1 Chaps. IF and v.
2 Chaps. XIII and xiv.
## p. 367 (#389) ############################################
CH, XVI] Educational Books
367
But these early productions are hardly what would be meant
today by the term 'children's books,' which, perhaps, is best and
most conveniently interpreted as 'books read or meant to be read
by children for pleasure or for profit, or for both, in their leisure
hours. ' Children read medieval riddles and schoolbooks, cer-
tainly; but they read them perforce, as part of their education.
So far as the social life of these early periods is clear, it is probable
that children read little out of school, for the simple reason that,
outside learned establishments, there was nothing to read. The
fables and anecdotes of which they acquired a knowledge must
usually, from the same cause, have been communicated to them
either orally or by the chances of tuition. Apart from purposes
of education, children had no books of their own before the
seventeenth century, and very few then.
Educational books deserve brief mention. They are only lite-
rature by accident, but they are, sometimes, not wholly scholastic.
Aelfric's Colloquy and the numerous successors to it have this
feature of artistic composition in them, that they are not merely
tabular; the dialogue form could be given a certain fictitious
vivacity. It long survived the renascence! Erasmus endued it
with fresh popularity and authority, and it persisted until the
eighteenth century. Sententiae Pueriles, a work of this kind
which, in form, goes back to Aelfric, appears in various editions over
a long period, the last being 1728. Pueriles Confabulationculae
—there were two works of the same name, one by Cordier, the other
by Evaldus Gallus—appears in 1693—with a preface dated 1548.
Such works as these—the powder of learning with the jam of
amusement thinly spread—stand midway between the only two
other kinds of written or printed books for children in the Norman,
Plantagenet and Tudor centuries. The pure lessonbook-powder
and no jam—was, of course, a necessity. It is not of great interest
or value here to pursue its history in detail, and its position has
already been discussed? Alphabets were printed in numbers
1 Of one curious instance of longevity no preliminary stages seem to exist. In
1745–6, John Newbery published The Circle of the Sciences, a dialogue manual in
seven volumes. It went into several editions, and other publishers reissued it between
1780 and 1800. The seven volumes comprise seven subjects almost identical with
those of the trivium and quadrivium of scholasticism. Newbery said that he himself
compiled it at great pains; but the choice of subjects implies some pedigree for his
selection. No ancestors for the little books, however, have been discovered. The facts
are an example of the way in which children's books at once preserve and mutilate
very ancient material.
2 See vol. m, chap. XIX; vol. vir, chaps. XIII and xIv; vol. ix, chap. xv; and the
corresponding bibliographies.
## p. 368 (#390) ############################################
368
[CH.
Children's Books
6
from the sixteenth century onwards ; the stationers' records give
many entries. In the same century, the hornbook appeared-an
alphabet, a short syllabary, and, usually, the Lord's prayer, printed
on a little sheet of paper, nailed on a piece of board of the shape
of a spade's head and covered with transparent horn. It conferred
two words on the language-criss-cross-row' and 'ampersand. '
This invention was succeeded, late in the eighteenth century, by
the battledore, a folded card containing, as well as the literary
elements, a few woodblock illustrations ; battledores were still
being manufactured in 1840, so sluggish and yet so long is the
stream of elementary instruction. Alphabetical rimes began to
appear under Elizabeth, though familiar verses or jingles like
'A was an Apple-pie’ did not get into print (they may have been
in oral existence) till at least a century later.
Another early species (of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries)
was neither a schoolbook nor a book of mere recreation : the
succession of books of courtesy,' which became current soon
after the invention of printing. For historical purposes, they
have been admirably grouped (and as admirably edited) in two
publications of the Early English Text Society, The Babees' Boke",
and Queene Elizabethe's Achademy. They provide the antithesis to
monkish or literary education. The pamphlets in them were
written to fit the young gentleman for this world, not for the next;
and for the active life of this world rather than for the contem-
plative. They describe manners, not culture: their ideal is
anticipated in Chaucer's squire. They were not for the poor of
Langland :
Now may each cobbler send his son to school,
And every beggar's brat learn from his book,
Turn to a writer and get into a lord's house.
To that end, you must enter a monastic or cathedral school: there,
you could get learning. Here, in these treatises, you got, instead,
virtue and knowledge of the world. Incidentally, it may be noted,
readers were warned against adult works : 'Keep them from
reading of feigned fables, vain fantasies, and wanton stories,
and songs of love, which bring much mischief to youth? The
alternative was 'good Godly books. But there was not any
special provision of such works.
These educational and semi-educational books have been men-
tioned because, in early periods, they possessed the importance
i See vol. II, p. 341.
? Rhodes's Boke of Nurture (1577); printed before 1554.
## p. 369 (#391) ############################################
xvi]
Hell-fire Tales
369
conferred by isolation. The effect of that isolation is seen when,
in more authentic beginnings of children's literature, good Godly
books' first emerge. The new feature is a natural by-product of
the national life. The end of religious persecution in its more
virulent forms, the Elizabethan diffusion of knowledge and en-
thusiasm, the Jacobean growth of style, the puritan fierce flame
of morality, the vast increase in the activity of the press—all
helped to make the child-mind, not, perhaps, a centre of in-
tensive cultivation, but, at least, not a fallow field. But, since all
previous efforts (except the decayed and, so to speak, illegally
acquired romances, which will be dealt with when chapbooks are
considered) had been, more or less, more rather than less, didactic,
the new product was, also, didactic. Its novelty lay in the fact
that it was not a text-book. It was purely moral, not forensic
nor technical.
It was a grim affair, with few literary merits.
Hell-fire was its chief theme; anything might turn out to be a
faggot for the conflagration of wicked little souls. More than a
century later, Mrs Sherwood was influenced by the same obsession.
The kingdom of heaven might be of children; but children were
;
always dreadfully in jeopardy of another fate.
The best vision of these grisly performances is to be seen in
one of them. Thomas White, minister of the gospel, in A Little
Book for Little Children (1702)a volume of brief moral
addresses-recommends his audience to read
no Ballads or foolish Books, but the Bible, and the Plain-mans path way
to Heaven, a very plain holy book for you; get the Practice of Piety;
Mr Baxter's Call to the Unconverted; Allen's Allarum to the Unconverted;
read the Histories of the Martyrs that dyed for Christ; and in the Book of
Martyrs. . . . Read also often Treatises of Death, and Hell, and Judgement,
and of the Love and Passion of Christ.
Some perfectly horrible stories of martyrdom ensue. Foxe's
Book of Martyrs, as it is colloquially called, was and long con-
tinued to be, perhaps still is in some strata of society, a great
incentive to piety and gateway to religious adventure; and it
must be admitted that many children like such horrors, and do
not suffer any harm from them. Still, White's love of tortured
saints (young ones, for choice) and his readiness to describe their
torments in detail pass the limits of innocuous ferocity.
The religious works catalogued by White as suited to the
young were adult or semi-adult in purpose. More definitely
juvenile was the anonymous Young Man': Calling . . . a Serious
and Compassionate Address to all Young Persons to remember
24
6. L XI.
CH. XVI.
## p. 370 (#392) ############################################
370
[CH.
Children's Books
6
their Creator in the days of their Youth (1685). The author of a
great part of it was, probably, Samuel Crossman, whose initials
are at the end of the preface. “Richard Burton' (ie. Nathaniel
Crouch) wrote the residue. An eighth edition appeared in 1725,
so the book was clearly in demand. Crossman outdoes White in
his examples of martyrdom ; his homilies, also, are longer, but not
at all more valuable or enduring. Like White, he was vigorously
protestant. Some Divine Poems—passably good hymns-were
included in the final pages. Among the advertisements at the
end is one of Winter Evening Entertainments? This, perhaps-
one work alone excepted—is the nearest approach, before the
eighteenth century, to a child's book in the modern sense.
Here's Milk for Children, Wisdom for Young Men,
To teach them that they turn not Babes again,
says a prefatory poem. The 'wisdom' was, presumably, the ten
coarse stories of the jest-book type (“ten pleasant and delightful
relations ') which form the first part; the 'milk,' no doubt, the fifty
riddles of the second part, each of which is adorned with an
explanation, an observation and a moral, to say nothing of dupli-
cated woodcuts. A somewhat similar work was The Father's
Blessing Penn'd for the Instruction of his Children (by W. J. ,
M. A. ), the date of which may be roughly conjectured from one of
the 'riddles in rhyme' which (in addition to thirteen 'lessons')
it contains :
Q. What rare Outlandish Fruit was that of late
Which Heaven sent us to restore our State ?
A. Our Statesmen had the Scurvy deeply, sure
The Princely Orange was a sovereign cure.
It is accompanied by a woodcut of an orange. This cut and
its fellows did duty elsewhere, in another Little Book for Little
Children, also by Thomas White (not dated; the frontispiece,
however, is a portrait of queen Anne). Here, too, is a mixture of
a
education and amusement—a cut of a hornbook, some spelling
lessons, alphabetical rimes and riddles. The volume is notable
for the first appearance in print of A was an Archer, and the
lines displaying the errors of misplaced punctuation, beginning
'I saw a Peacock with a fiery Tail. ' Practically contemporary
1 No copy earlier than 1737 (“Sixth Edition') is available to the writer. But the
description in the advertisement of 1685 exactly coincides with the contents of the
1737 edition, in which the author is given as Richard Burton--Nathaniel Crouch.
Crouch died, probably, before 1725. Winter Evenings, and variants upon it, is &
perpetually recurrent title among children's books,
## p. 371 (#393) ############################################
xvi] • Exemplary’ Compilations 371
with this was The Child's Week's-Work, by William Ronksley
(1712).
It is the best of all these early attempts to purvey
'pleasure with profit duly mixt,' though there is more profit than
pleasure in it. Its simplicity of method and absence of dogmatic
frenzy are remarkable. In four successive series of lessons, each
calculated to occupy a week, it runs up to words of four syllables.
A monosyllabic verse may be quoted :
Hear you a Lark?
Tell me what Clerk
Can match her. He that beats
The next Thorn-bush
May raise a Thrush
Would put down all our lays.
Finally, perhaps the most popular-or, at any rate, most widely
read-of all these oppressive compilations was James Janeway's
Token for Children: being an Exact Account of the Conversion,
Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several young
Children (? 1720): a supreme example of morbid and gloating
piety. The title conveys its scope. It was not alone; three or
four works like it can be discovered; but it was the most highly
coloured.
A more polished type—indeed, pietists might have said a politely
immoral type—is the Chesterfield of the seventeenth century, A
Lady's Gift (1688, published without authorisation, often re-
printed). Halifax—the trimmer-could write admirable English,
and, if his Advice to a Daughter (the sub-title) is worldly, it
is, also, honest and sensible. It had other counterparts in the
next century besides Chesterfield's Letters. Advice to a Young
Nobleman, Letters from a Tutor to his Pupils and similar works
carried out the gentlemanly ideal of making the best of this world
without either despising or making too much of the next.
Works of these types were, if not common, at any rate not
unique. They are not, perhaps, in the direct succession of pure
children's literature: they are but the unennobled ancestors.
But they deserve not to be forgotten by the historian. The more
authentic pedigree follows a line of less unmixed descent-lines,
rather, for the family has, at first, three branches. The older
branches are among the oldest forms of literature preserved to us :
the cadet branch is fathered by two eminent men.
To take the youngest first. The parent work in it has, naturally,
been overshadowed by greater works in the chapter on its author
in a previous volume! All through the eighteenth century, a
1 Vol. VII, chap. VII.
24-2
## p. 372 (#394) ############################################
372
Children's Books
[ch.
work called Divine Emblems; or Temporal Things Spiritualized,
by John Bunyan, was recurrent in little rough editions. It was
not until 1889 that this was identified as a curtailed version of a
longer book-A Book for Boys & Girls: or, Country Rhimes
for Children. By J. B. The first edition contained seventy-four
'meditations'; in 1701, an editor revised it ruthlessly, and cut the
number of emblems down to forty-nine. It consists of short poems
-exceedingly bad poetry, but plain rugged morality-on such
subjects as the frog, the hen, and other common objects, each with
a rimed moral. Bunyan declares his object :
I do't to show them how each fingle-fangle,
On which they doting are, their souls entangle,
As with a web, a trap, a gin, or snare,
And will destroy them, have they not a care.
His 'morals' are as recondite and laborious as those of Gesta
Romanorum. The importance of the book lies in its authorship,
its intention and its method. It reveals not a little of the inspired
tinker's mind. It shows a real desire to provide something special
for children, not merely the old clothes of adult literature cut
down. And it is a deliberate use of a responsible artistic form
and of material not traditional but original.
By Bunyan stands a lesser man but a more skilled artificer-
Isaac Watts. His Divine Songs have already been treated'.
They are quoted every day, and usually misquoted. Some of
them—three or four, at most, it may be; but that is an honourable
percentage-will resound through nurseries for generations yet
to come : the rest are dead, slain by time. For their epoch,
they were not far from perfection, as publishers saw. They were
reprinted endlessly for far more than a century. Mrs Trimmer, in
1789, gave them renewed vogue by a Comment setting forth their
virtues and elaborating their doctrinal teaching. Another writer
adapted their theology to unitarian beliefs. They were at once
carried off into the literary Alsatia of the chapbook. A kind of
imitation appeared in 1751, Puerilia, by John Marchant, 'Songs
for Little Misses, Songs for Little Masters, Songs on Divine, Moral
and other Subjects. ' They had a certain spirit, but did not strike
the imagination of the day: only two editions were issued.
It was the chapbook, that last poor refuge of Middle Age
enchantments, which provided children with what they wanted in
the reign of queen Anne and the first three Georges. They had
to learn the alphabet, they had to read the guides to goodness, the
i Vol. 1x, p. 178.
## p. 373 (#395) ############################################
XVI]
The Chapbook
373
Ollendorfs of petty culture, the anecdotal or poetic allurements
to superior virtue, which, as a matter of fact, young persons are
often quite ready enough to acquire without force. But they were
not less ready to enjoy other fare. A famous passage in The
Tatler (No. 95), in which Mr Bickerstaff describes his little godson
as absorbed in the stories of Bevis and Don Belianis and other
great and famous heroes, sums up the charm of forbidden romance
with the nicest perfection. The chapbook was what the poor
and the young could read familiarly. In these little penny, two-
penny and sixpenny productions-octavo in form, with sixteen
pages, at first, but, after 1726, usually duodecimo, with twenty-four
pages—the last fragments of the old romances were enshrined.
They existed before 1700—certainly early in the eighteenth
century, at least ; but few early copies have survived, and it was
not until the Georgian era that they were profusely manufactured.
Who wrote these versions is not known. They may have been
abbreviations of the manuscript texts of the thirteenth or four-
teenth centuries ; but the discrepancies are so marked that, more
probably, they were oral versions committed to print indepen-
dently in some obscure way. They were issued all over the king-
dom, the centres with the greatest output being, apparently,
London (Aldermary churchyard in particular), Dublin, York,
Glasgow, Newcastle, Stirling and Banbury. The books were not,
in the first instance, meant for children, though, in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, whole series expressly juvenile
appeared (the Banbury set was the best known and, perhaps, best
produced); but children possessed themselves of them. Wood-
blocks were used almost haphazard : Guy slaying a boar in one
booklet was George slaying a dragon in another. The indigenous
heroes of Britain-Tom Thumb, certain Jacks, Hickathrift, Friar
Bacon—were here preserved in a vernacular epic cycle, with such
additions as fashion, fact, or sheer literary piracy from time to
time provided. In some volumes, indecency was the sole point;
others were merely coarse in a natural way; in all, the English
was vile. After 1800, they fell into a decline: better production
ousted them from favour; 'the blocks and types were getting
worn out. . . . Catnach buried them in a dishonoured grave? '
The chief addition to the common stock of chapbook material
made in the eighteenth century were the adventures of Robinson
Crusoe and Gulliver, Watts's poems, the adventures of Philip Quarll
(a pseudo-Crusoe), anecdotes decked out with names invented
1 Ashton, J. , Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century (1882).
6
## p. 374 (#396) ############################################
374
[CH.
Children's Books
by John Newbery for his own much better productions, collections
of nursery rimes (after about 1760) and various versions of
Perrault's fairy tales ; towards the end of the century, eastern and
Arabian tales were added.
It was the chapbook, also, which preserved to us our scant
native fairy lore. Andrew Lang once said that England had but
one authentic fairy-hero-Jack the slayer of Blunderbore and
other giants. But, wherever the stories originated in the long
history of man's mind, many were current, and England once was
'al fulfild of fayerye. ' Popular taste ascribed the decay of Titania's
kingdom to monks : where monks were, ‘farewell, rewards and
fairies. But the stories remained; and a curious allusion in
bishop Corbett's rough but charming seventeenth century poem
shows that they were respected and treasured:
To William Churne of Staffordshire,
Give land and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true:
To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle:
For all the fairies' evidence
Were lost if were addle.
William Churne, whoever he was, perished, and his tales with
him ; and the sad friends of fairy truth must go up and down with
careful search for such relics as they may find in the byways of
folklore. It was from France that the revival of magic came.
Fairy tales reached the French court about 1676, and set a fashion
of simplicity, sometimes real, more often affected. In 1996,
Charles Perrault began to publish (in Moetjen’s Recueil de pièces
curieuses et nouvelles) the famous stories alleged to be written by
his little boy; they came out in a separate volume in 1697, as
Histoires ou Contes du Tems Passé, avec de Moralités ; the frontis-
piece contained the immortal legend, Contes de ma mère l'Oie.
This is not the place to go into the anthropology of fairy tales
in general, or of these fairy tales in particular. It is quite
probable that Perrault's son did actually tell the tales himself to
his father, much as he heard them from his nurse. Their delightful
simplicity made them instantly popular. An English translation
appeared, apparently, in 17291, by Robert Samber. The stories
>
>
1 Advertised in The Monthly Chronicle, March 1729 (Andrew Lang, on the authority
of Austin Dobson, in Perrault's Popular Tales, with Introduction, etc. , 1888). The
earliest surviving copy is the sixth edition, 1764, giving both French and English,
Mrs Trimmer, born in 1741, was familiar with the tales in her childhood.
## p. 375 (#397) ############################################
xvi]
Nursery Rimes
375
passed speedily into chapbooks, as did those of Madame d'Aulnoy
about the same time. It should be added that they were provided
with morals': Red Riding Hood proved that
Wolves for sure there are
Of every sort, and every character;
while Bluebeard exemplified 'curiosity, thou mortal bane. '
So, the fairy tale attained print, and tradition became litera-
ture. About the same period, the other strain of traditional lore,
also, was glorified into printed matter. Nursery rimes have all
manner of origins, and may be detected in allusions long before
they appear whole and unadorned. But, there was, apparently, no
Corpus Poetarum Infantilium till, in 1744, Cooper published
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, in two volumes. Here, for
the first time, some unknown hand established a classic. Here
was the nucleus upon which, in all probability, all later collec-
tions--and there was not much to be added to it, were founded.
The rimes, in themselves, do not call for comment. Except for a
few which would offend modern taste, they are the same-verbally,
for all practical purposes-as nurses use today.
No earlier collection, if one was made, survives ; and it is
sixteen years before another is recorded-The Top Book of All;
the date, 1760, is determined by a little woodblock at the end.
This is not entirely a nursery rime book; it contains nine familiar
rimes, Watts's Sluggard, some riddles and three wellknown short
tales. To the same date-but not with any certainty—is ascribed
the famous Gammer Gurton's Garland, published at Stockport:
it is described on the title-page as a new edition, with additions. '
In or about the same year-here, too, there is not any certainty,
for not one copy of the first edition is known—was born the chief
rival of the alleged Gurton as a rimer, mother Goose? Newbery's
surviving copyrights in 1780 included Mother Goose's Melody.
There is reason to believe the book had been in existence for
some time before, though there is no evidence whatever for a
statement sometimes made that the publisher Fleet first issued it
in 1719.
Such is the archaeology of children's books, before the first
great diaskeuast arrived. There were lessonbooks of several
kinds, there were moral treatises in prose and verse, there was a
1 The instructive full title is given in the bibliography of this chapter.
2 The name is, of course, a translation of Mère de l'Oie,who presided over Perrault's
fairy tales. But it is much older. Gammer Gurton and Tom Thumb have a similar
oral antiquity.
6
## p. 376 (#398) ############################################
376
[CH.
Children's Books
mass of oral tradition just creeping into type, there were decayed
adult works. But, all was without form and void. The appearance
of the books that were produced was mean. The trade in them
was spasmodic and unorganised. No one took them seriously or
thought of them as a necessary branch of the commerce in printed
matter. It was a typical eighteenth century business man, John
Newbery, farmer's son, accountant, merchant's assistant, patent-
medicine dealer, printer and publisher, who saw the possibilities
and the openings. He began to publish books at Reading in
1740, but removed to London in 1744 (first to Devereux court
and then to the address long associated with children's books,
St Paul's churchyard). The first year in the metropolis saw his
first child's book-The Little Pretty Pocket Book. It was a neat,
well-printed volume, with very fair woodcuts. It contains a
dedication 'to the Parents, Guardians and Nurses in Great Britain
and Ireland,' and incitements to games, with moral applications
dragged in. It was designed to 'make Tommy a good Boy and
Polly a good Girl. ' No doubt it did so; and the process must
have been far from disagreeable. It was followed the next year
by three volumes of The Circle of the Sciences. The Lilliputian
Magazine (1751-2), The Governess or Little Female Academy
(by Sarah Fielding, the novelist's sister), The Twelfth Day Gift,
Mother Goose's Melody, her Tales and, most celebrated of all,
Goody Two Shoes', were among his early publications.
The characteristics of Newbery's books were very marked.
They were strongly and yet attractively produced, with good print
and paper. They contained a great variety of matter, and were
thoroughly alive in every way. There is a real personality behind
them, even though they are now as utterly obsolete as their con-
temporary, the dodo (which is illustrated in a Newbery natural
history of 1775). The English is plain and respectable; the
coarseness of earlier, and even some coeval and later, productions
is almost entirely absent. There is a strong vein of honest
vigour running through them---The Twelfth Day Gift has a
frontispiece labelled “Trade and Plumb Cake for ever, Huzza ! '-
and the commercial success of the industrious apprentice is fre-
quently insisted upon. The author-it is not unlikely that
a
1 There is much evidence, amounting almost to certainty, that Goldsmith wrote
Goody Two Shoes, or, at least, had a hand in it. See Welsh's, C. , introduction to his
facsimile reprint of the earliest extant edition (1881). It is also said that Goldsmith
edited Mother Goose's Melody. The evidence is hardly strong enough to make this
nore than a pleasant and credible hypothesis.
## p. 377 (#399) ############################################
>
XVI]
John Newbery
377
Newbery himself is the single individual behind such feigned
benignities as Mrs Lovechild, Tommy Trip and Giles Gingerbread-
is really trying to please children as well as to improve them.
"He called himself their friend, but he was the friend of all man-
kind': Goldsmith spoke from experience.
John Newbery died in 1767, having definitely created a new
branch of literature. His business split into two-one under
Francis Newbery (a nephew) and the other under a second Francis
Newbery (a son) and Thomas Carnan (a stepson). The firms were
not amicable rivals, and Carnan and Francis the younger also
quarrelled and separated, apparently in 1782. Ultimately, 'all the
old publications of Newbery passed into the hands of Elizabeth (the
nephew Francis's widow] and to Harris and his successors? ' The
final legatees of this ancient firm, Messrs Griffith and Farran, sur-
vived into the twentieth century, still publishing children's books.
The trade side of these works is an important one, and it may
be convenient to deal with it at this point. The publisher—in the
eighteenth century still more than half retailer as well as pro-
ducer-had, for obvious reasons, greater power over juvenile books
than over serious adult works. Indeed, he was often the author
himself; the later Newbery's most formidable rivals, Darton and
Harvey, were even artists and engravers (very bad ones) as well.
The publisher determined that momentous detail, the format of
the volume; and it might, with some reason, be contended that his
taste in this direction, from 1750 to 1760 and from 1800 to 1810,
has not been equalled since. Certainly, the gilt and brightly
coloured covers made of Dutch paper-copies so bound are now
rare, and the paper is no longer made—the entire decency and
fitness, as of an Adam house, in margin, type and spacing, the
enduring ink and clean impressions of the best specimens, show a
standard of production at least as well suited to a domestic
interior of Georgian England as more ambitious binding and
typography to more lavish periods. The publisher, too, decided
on the quantity and quality of the illustrations : Bewick, Stothard
and some of the producers of colour-work early in the nineteenth
century reached a very high level of quality, and the quantity was
seldom stinted. He decided, also, as is the custom today, the size
of an edition ; and the numbers, where they can be discovered,
are surprisingly large. One firm, at least, usually printed 2000 for
a first edition, and such works as Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball had
an immediate circulation literally as great as that of a really
1 Welsh, C. , A Bookseller of the Last Century (1885).
## p. 378 (#400) ############################################
378
[CH.
Children's Books
successful novel of today. Moreover, the sales were steady and
longlived. Berquin's Ami des Enfans ran to 20,000 copies in ten
years. A dozen of Priscilla Wakefield's books went into not less
than sixty editions (apart from piracies) in twenty years. Mrs
Trimmer's Robins sold to the extent of two editions every three
years for a whole generation at least. The prices were low, as
expressed in our values ; from sixpence to three shillings and
sixpence, with one and sixpence as a very general average, for
volumes with copperplates; woodblock editions (which tended
to disappear after about 1790, except in chapbooks) were even
cheaper, and coloured plates did not cause any great increase,
mainly, no doubt, because the colouring was done by hand, by
regiments of children, who dabbed on each one colour in one
place! The colours have a "gay grace not always achieved by
more perfect mechanical means. Authors were not highly paid;
but their relations with publishers seem to have been intimate
and pleasant, on the whole : the publisher was a tradesman, but a
man of some dignity as well. After Newbery, many firms specialised
in children's books. The value of juvenile' copyrights was often
considerable ; some works were even worthy of being turned into
'trade' books—issued, that is, by syndicates of publishers. The
story of copyright sales is very suggestive? Piracy abounded.
These business details largely explain the activity that ensued
upon Newbery's death. He and the next generation of his family
made it perfectly clear that there was a chance of supplying
children's books in an adequate format. Commerce was alive to
opportunities, and the creation of a good supply was inevitable
and immediate. And, as for the demand, the epoch which pro-
duced the bluestocking was not likely to omit from its programme
of orderly omniscience the very foundations of taste and learning.
The age of the revolution was an age of education, which was viewed,
on the one hand, as a prophylactic against, and, on the other, as the
most active stimulant of, a new era. But, in some circles, it was
still thought unworthy to write for children. Nearly every author
from 1780 onwards apologises for his or her work in a preface.
One of the best and most popular writers, S. S. , never revealed
that her name was Dorothy Kilner, even though she lived into a
less dignified age. Her Adventures of a Pincushion, Memoirs of
1 This method was still being used by the present writer's grandfather between
1850 and 1860, though, at the same time, Baxter was doing oil-process prints for him.
? See Shaylor, J. , The Fascination of Books (1912), for many examples of sale
catalogues and prices.
## p. 379 (#401) ############################################
xvi)
Sarah Trimmer
379
a Peg-top and Jemima Placid (to name no other works) were all
published either anonymously or under a pseudonym; many pirates
did not even print the pseudonym. They are very unaffected
little tales : ordinary and natural and delightful. , Her sister, as
M. P. , wrote no less popular books. Lady Venn, author of
Cobwebs to Catch Flies, was another secret purveyor to the
nursery : she wrote as Mrs Lovechild and Mrs Teachwell.
To pursue the history of every individual who followed in the
way which Newbery had opened would be endless. Publishers
were eager to publish, the public-full of generous projects and
prolific of new philanthropic societies—not less eager to buy. The
period which ended in 1825 may best be described as one of strife
between two principles. The moral tale,' in those years, reached
its highest development and perished, while the enemy it attacked-
the fairy tale, the element of fantasy and fun--emerged triumphant.
Whatever the drawbacks of the moral tale, it had one con-
spicuous merit, never so fully displayed at other times in the
history of children's books.
themselves on its extraordinary success, and if they did not 'crown
her, cover her, hide her with laurels,' as Richard Berenger, one of
them suggested, Mrs Boscawen, on its twelfth performance, sent
her a laurel wreath with the 'stems confined within an elegant
ring,' for which she returned thanks in an elegant copy of verses. '
She had almost finished The Fatal Falsehood, when, in 1779,
David Garrick died, and, greatly affected by his death, she deter-
mined to write no more plays. From this time, her thoughts
followed their natural trend towards serious subjects, and, her
letters, she gradually reveals herself as philanthropist and reformer.
She even attempted, said Cowper, ‘to reform the unreformable
Great,' and her Thoughts on the importance of the Manners of the
Great went into many large editions? Her grief at Garrick's
death found some vent in Sensibility, a poem addressed to Mrs
Boscawen, in which several bluestockings are mentioned. The
poem, however, that made the greatest stir in the bluestocking
coteries, was Bas Bleu, or Conversation. It is illustrative of the
fact that Hannah More, with her strong sense of dramatic values,
had the faculty of mentally visualising the significance of the
various movements with which she was connected. This poem, as
she explained in the preface, owed its name to the mistake of
a foreigner of distinction, who gave the literal name Bas-bleu to
a small party of friends that had often been called by way of
pleasantry Blue Stockings. She says further that these little
societies—sometimes misrepresented—were composed of persons
distinguished in general for their rank, talent, or respectable
character, who met frequently at Mrs Vesey's and at a few other
houses for the sole purpose of conversation. She adds a brief
a
tribute to the charm of these gatherings, where, she says, learning
was not disfigured by pedantry, good taste was not marred by
affectation and conversation was as little disgraced by calumny,
levity and other censurable errors as has, perhaps, been known
in any society. The poem is not of permanent value, though
Johnson told her that 'there was no name in poetry that might
6
1 The tracts with which she tried to reform the poor, Village Politics and the
Repository Tracts, had an amazing success, and were found so well-suited to the
purpose that the Religious Tract society was formed to continue the work.
## p. 363 (#385) ############################################
Xv]
Horace Walpole
363
>
not be glad to own it. ' Naturally, this poème à clef had a great
vogue among the bluestockings, as most of them were mentioned
either by their own names, or under some classical appellation. It
was written to amuse Mrs Vesey, and, after circulating some years
in manuscript, was eventually printed in 1786.
Perhaps the most curious friendship in the bas-bleu coteries,
was that between Hannah More and Horace Walpole. She was
not long in discovering that 'Horace liked nonsense talk better
than Greeks or Romans,' but, apparently, she could do her own
share of such conversation. When she spent evenings among the
bluestockings, she frequently mentions that she and Horace Wal-
pole, with another friend or two,ʻmake up a pleasant little coterie
of their own. Friendly correspondence passed between them,
when they were away from London; and, when Hannah More
went to live at her cottage, Cowslip green-cousin in name,
declared Walpole, to Strawberry hill—he collected all his own
works, printed at the Strawberry hill press, to give her 'for
remembrance. As a mark of great distinction, he printed her
Bishop Bonner's Ghost at the famous press, for distribution among
their common friends—in other words, the bluestockings. He gave
her a beautifully bound Bible, which she wished he would read;
but, in spite of the amazing differences of character between the
cynic and the reformer, they remained good friends till his death.
He was on intimate terms with Mrs Carter, too, and both the
famous bluestocking ladies were amazed when his Letters were
published. The Horace Walpole there revealed was an entirely
different person from the bluestocking they had known. When he
talked with them, there were not any traces of 'that truly French,
light and frivolous way of thinking which is so evident in his
printed letters. ' Indeed, it was something of a shock to them to
find that he had actually selected his letters for publication.
Hannah More was the chief chronicler as well as the poet
laureate of the blues. It is from the hasty impressionist sketches
in her letters that we gather the significance of the movement.
Of a bluestocking evening at William Pepys's, she says
There was all the pride of London, every wit and every wit-ess. . . but the
spirit of the evening was kept up on the strength of a little lemonade till
past eleven, without cards, scandal or politics.
A terse description that might serve as a type of most of the
bluestocking meetings. This cult of 'conversation—the pursuit of
ideas,' as it has been defined-acted as a subtle leaven to the
hard brilliant materialism of the eighteenth century. The social
## p. 364 (#386) ############################################
364
The Bluestockings
[CH.
refinement introduced by the bluestocking interest in literature
can be better appreciated by a glimpse at the glaring foil made
by ordinary society.
‘On Monday,' writes Hannah More, ‘I was at a very great assembly at
the Bishop of St Asaph’s. Conceive to yourself one hundred and fifty or two
hundred people met together. . . painted as red as bacchanals; poisoning the
air with perfumes; treading on each other's gowns; not one in ten able to
get a chair. . . ten or a dozen card tables crammed with dowagers of quality,
grave ecclesiastics and yellow admirals. '
It was another advantage of the bas-bleu societies, that 'common
or genteel swearing' was not countenanced : and, as tea, coffee,
orgeat and lemonade were the only beverages offered, intoxication
—then a general vice of society-seldom brought its embarrass-
ments into their midst.
From the somewhat elusive references to the bluestocking
parties, we gather that—unlike the Parisian salons—there was not
a fixed day or date for any of the meetings. A dinner might be
given by Mrs Montagu, after which there would be 'a strong
reinforcement of the Blues'; or, Mrs Vesey would hold an
assembly of rank, fashion and literati: 'so blue it was Mazarin
blue,' as Horace Walpole once described 'a Vesey. Or, Mrs
Boscawen might 'receive,' though parties at her house were
usually more exclusive, and thirty or forty was there considered
quite a large meeting. These were the principal bluestocking
hostesses, to whom came the elite of London both for talent
and fashion. Since the first conversation had been given by Mrs
Vesey, these societies had multiplied, and, from the seventies to
the end of the century, bluestocking meetings were held in many
other London houses. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'the idol of every
company, and his sister had most interesting evenings at their
house in Leicester fields and, later, at Richmond. Here, even
Johnson was 'as brilliant as himself, and as good-humoured as
anyone else,' and there was scarce an expletive man or woman '
among the company. Mrs Thrale, of the little silver tongue,'
welcomed rank and talent to her home at Streatham, and much
good talk was heard in the famous library. Miss Mary Monckton,
afterwards the witty countess of Cork and othôry, had, said
Boswell, the finest bit of blue at her parties. Dressed in fine
thin muslin in the coldest weather, she would nonchalantly receive
her distinguished guests with a nod and a smile and a short
“How do do"? ; and then, without moving from her seat in the
middle of the room, would continue her conversation, lounging
6
rel
## p. 365 (#387) ############################################
Xv]
Fanny Burney
365
on one chair while she leaned on the back of another. At this
house, the guest of honour was Johnson, of whom dean Marlay
once remarked, “the ladies might well be proud when they could
turn a wolf-dog into a lap dog! '
Mrs Chapone, born Hester Mulso, occasionally gave blue-
stocking receptions that were 'rational, instructive and social,
and, also, unfortunately, somewhat spiritless and dull. Though
Johnson thought sufficiently well of her literary talent to include
her among the few contributors to his Rambler, the promise of
her youth never ripened to any noteworthy performance, if we
except Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, which, in its
day, was considered an educational work of the first importance.
The author was, by temperament, argumentative, impulsive, emo-
tional; and, perhaps because of her experience, such qualities are
condemned in her Letters. These are only interesting now as
embodying an acclaimed ideal of eighteenth century feminine
manners. Mrs Chapone was frequently a guest at North End,
where she would earnestly discuss with Richardson his female
characters. Mrs Delany, that ‘fairest model of female excellence,'
asserted that Mrs Chapone was the prototype of some of his
principal heroines, which, she said, “is the reason they are not
really so polished as he takes them to be. '
Perhaps the most charming description of a bluestocking
evening is from the vivid and sprightly pen of Fanny Burney'.
She was a blue, but not of what Hannah More called the old set.
She had not long visited among them-where Evelina and her
own amiable personality secured her a warm welcome—before her
appointment to a post at court. She snatched an evening from her
wearisome duties, however, to visit Mrs Ord, a later but hardly
less distinguished hostess than the original three, and there
found practically all the members of the circle : Mrs Montagu,
Mrs Boscawen, Owen Cambridge, Horace Walpole, Sir Lucas
Pepys, Leonard Smelt, Bennet Langton and Lady Rothes, his
wife, Mrs Carter, Mrs Chapone, William Pepys and others. The
talk was of The Streatham Letters, the correspondence between
Mrs Thrale and Dr Johnson which had just been published, and
many of the blues feared the indiscretions of her too fluent pen.
It is a lively and graceful picture of eighteenth century society,
and an excellent representation of the friendly charm of the
bas-bleu meetings.
· See Hill, Constance, Fanny Burney at the Court of Queen Charlotte (1912), chap. XII.
## p. 366 (#388) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
CHILDREN's books, throughout the history of English literature,
have been in that literature, but not of it. Phrases and persons
from nursery lore have passed irrevocably into the national arsenal
of metaphor and allusion, while the sources of them may not have
had any claim to serious literary consideration. Children, too,
have annexed the books of their elders-Robinson Crusoe is the
standard example—and have almost established a prescriptive
right to the conquered territory. But not many books written
specially for children have also been enduring literature, in any
real sense, though the exceptions are notable. The nursery
library, in fact, has been a separate thing ; developed differently,
furnished from a different standpoint, with works written in a
different vein of inspiration and produced, commercially, with
different limitations and standards. Nor is the criterion of judg-
ment upon it, whether the reader or the historian be the judge, the
same as upon more solemn or artistic performances.
Its history really opens in the eighteenth century. Yet, in the
beginnings, the grown-up' and the child coincide, in a way. The
writers who, in the first volume of this work, treated of the riddles
of Cynewulf, Aelfric and Aldhelm, and of the scholastic labours of
Alcuin at York, were chronicling the very earliest books for
children in the language. Those who, in the same volume”, dis-
cussed the metrical romances of 1200—1500 set forth at large the
adult works whose disjecta membra were still the framework of
the cheapest books for children in the eighteenth century; while
Aesop, and bestiaries, and such a collection as Gesta Romanorum
were certainly, to some extent, read by children as well as by the
older flock at whom the monkish editors aimed.
1 Chaps. IF and v.
2 Chaps. XIII and xiv.
## p. 367 (#389) ############################################
CH, XVI] Educational Books
367
But these early productions are hardly what would be meant
today by the term 'children's books,' which, perhaps, is best and
most conveniently interpreted as 'books read or meant to be read
by children for pleasure or for profit, or for both, in their leisure
hours. ' Children read medieval riddles and schoolbooks, cer-
tainly; but they read them perforce, as part of their education.
So far as the social life of these early periods is clear, it is probable
that children read little out of school, for the simple reason that,
outside learned establishments, there was nothing to read. The
fables and anecdotes of which they acquired a knowledge must
usually, from the same cause, have been communicated to them
either orally or by the chances of tuition. Apart from purposes
of education, children had no books of their own before the
seventeenth century, and very few then.
Educational books deserve brief mention. They are only lite-
rature by accident, but they are, sometimes, not wholly scholastic.
Aelfric's Colloquy and the numerous successors to it have this
feature of artistic composition in them, that they are not merely
tabular; the dialogue form could be given a certain fictitious
vivacity. It long survived the renascence! Erasmus endued it
with fresh popularity and authority, and it persisted until the
eighteenth century. Sententiae Pueriles, a work of this kind
which, in form, goes back to Aelfric, appears in various editions over
a long period, the last being 1728. Pueriles Confabulationculae
—there were two works of the same name, one by Cordier, the other
by Evaldus Gallus—appears in 1693—with a preface dated 1548.
Such works as these—the powder of learning with the jam of
amusement thinly spread—stand midway between the only two
other kinds of written or printed books for children in the Norman,
Plantagenet and Tudor centuries. The pure lessonbook-powder
and no jam—was, of course, a necessity. It is not of great interest
or value here to pursue its history in detail, and its position has
already been discussed? Alphabets were printed in numbers
1 Of one curious instance of longevity no preliminary stages seem to exist. In
1745–6, John Newbery published The Circle of the Sciences, a dialogue manual in
seven volumes. It went into several editions, and other publishers reissued it between
1780 and 1800. The seven volumes comprise seven subjects almost identical with
those of the trivium and quadrivium of scholasticism. Newbery said that he himself
compiled it at great pains; but the choice of subjects implies some pedigree for his
selection. No ancestors for the little books, however, have been discovered. The facts
are an example of the way in which children's books at once preserve and mutilate
very ancient material.
2 See vol. m, chap. XIX; vol. vir, chaps. XIII and xIv; vol. ix, chap. xv; and the
corresponding bibliographies.
## p. 368 (#390) ############################################
368
[CH.
Children's Books
6
from the sixteenth century onwards ; the stationers' records give
many entries. In the same century, the hornbook appeared-an
alphabet, a short syllabary, and, usually, the Lord's prayer, printed
on a little sheet of paper, nailed on a piece of board of the shape
of a spade's head and covered with transparent horn. It conferred
two words on the language-criss-cross-row' and 'ampersand. '
This invention was succeeded, late in the eighteenth century, by
the battledore, a folded card containing, as well as the literary
elements, a few woodblock illustrations ; battledores were still
being manufactured in 1840, so sluggish and yet so long is the
stream of elementary instruction. Alphabetical rimes began to
appear under Elizabeth, though familiar verses or jingles like
'A was an Apple-pie’ did not get into print (they may have been
in oral existence) till at least a century later.
Another early species (of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries)
was neither a schoolbook nor a book of mere recreation : the
succession of books of courtesy,' which became current soon
after the invention of printing. For historical purposes, they
have been admirably grouped (and as admirably edited) in two
publications of the Early English Text Society, The Babees' Boke",
and Queene Elizabethe's Achademy. They provide the antithesis to
monkish or literary education. The pamphlets in them were
written to fit the young gentleman for this world, not for the next;
and for the active life of this world rather than for the contem-
plative. They describe manners, not culture: their ideal is
anticipated in Chaucer's squire. They were not for the poor of
Langland :
Now may each cobbler send his son to school,
And every beggar's brat learn from his book,
Turn to a writer and get into a lord's house.
To that end, you must enter a monastic or cathedral school: there,
you could get learning. Here, in these treatises, you got, instead,
virtue and knowledge of the world. Incidentally, it may be noted,
readers were warned against adult works : 'Keep them from
reading of feigned fables, vain fantasies, and wanton stories,
and songs of love, which bring much mischief to youth? The
alternative was 'good Godly books. But there was not any
special provision of such works.
These educational and semi-educational books have been men-
tioned because, in early periods, they possessed the importance
i See vol. II, p. 341.
? Rhodes's Boke of Nurture (1577); printed before 1554.
## p. 369 (#391) ############################################
xvi]
Hell-fire Tales
369
conferred by isolation. The effect of that isolation is seen when,
in more authentic beginnings of children's literature, good Godly
books' first emerge. The new feature is a natural by-product of
the national life. The end of religious persecution in its more
virulent forms, the Elizabethan diffusion of knowledge and en-
thusiasm, the Jacobean growth of style, the puritan fierce flame
of morality, the vast increase in the activity of the press—all
helped to make the child-mind, not, perhaps, a centre of in-
tensive cultivation, but, at least, not a fallow field. But, since all
previous efforts (except the decayed and, so to speak, illegally
acquired romances, which will be dealt with when chapbooks are
considered) had been, more or less, more rather than less, didactic,
the new product was, also, didactic. Its novelty lay in the fact
that it was not a text-book. It was purely moral, not forensic
nor technical.
It was a grim affair, with few literary merits.
Hell-fire was its chief theme; anything might turn out to be a
faggot for the conflagration of wicked little souls. More than a
century later, Mrs Sherwood was influenced by the same obsession.
The kingdom of heaven might be of children; but children were
;
always dreadfully in jeopardy of another fate.
The best vision of these grisly performances is to be seen in
one of them. Thomas White, minister of the gospel, in A Little
Book for Little Children (1702)a volume of brief moral
addresses-recommends his audience to read
no Ballads or foolish Books, but the Bible, and the Plain-mans path way
to Heaven, a very plain holy book for you; get the Practice of Piety;
Mr Baxter's Call to the Unconverted; Allen's Allarum to the Unconverted;
read the Histories of the Martyrs that dyed for Christ; and in the Book of
Martyrs. . . . Read also often Treatises of Death, and Hell, and Judgement,
and of the Love and Passion of Christ.
Some perfectly horrible stories of martyrdom ensue. Foxe's
Book of Martyrs, as it is colloquially called, was and long con-
tinued to be, perhaps still is in some strata of society, a great
incentive to piety and gateway to religious adventure; and it
must be admitted that many children like such horrors, and do
not suffer any harm from them. Still, White's love of tortured
saints (young ones, for choice) and his readiness to describe their
torments in detail pass the limits of innocuous ferocity.
The religious works catalogued by White as suited to the
young were adult or semi-adult in purpose. More definitely
juvenile was the anonymous Young Man': Calling . . . a Serious
and Compassionate Address to all Young Persons to remember
24
6. L XI.
CH. XVI.
## p. 370 (#392) ############################################
370
[CH.
Children's Books
6
their Creator in the days of their Youth (1685). The author of a
great part of it was, probably, Samuel Crossman, whose initials
are at the end of the preface. “Richard Burton' (ie. Nathaniel
Crouch) wrote the residue. An eighth edition appeared in 1725,
so the book was clearly in demand. Crossman outdoes White in
his examples of martyrdom ; his homilies, also, are longer, but not
at all more valuable or enduring. Like White, he was vigorously
protestant. Some Divine Poems—passably good hymns-were
included in the final pages. Among the advertisements at the
end is one of Winter Evening Entertainments? This, perhaps-
one work alone excepted—is the nearest approach, before the
eighteenth century, to a child's book in the modern sense.
Here's Milk for Children, Wisdom for Young Men,
To teach them that they turn not Babes again,
says a prefatory poem. The 'wisdom' was, presumably, the ten
coarse stories of the jest-book type (“ten pleasant and delightful
relations ') which form the first part; the 'milk,' no doubt, the fifty
riddles of the second part, each of which is adorned with an
explanation, an observation and a moral, to say nothing of dupli-
cated woodcuts. A somewhat similar work was The Father's
Blessing Penn'd for the Instruction of his Children (by W. J. ,
M. A. ), the date of which may be roughly conjectured from one of
the 'riddles in rhyme' which (in addition to thirteen 'lessons')
it contains :
Q. What rare Outlandish Fruit was that of late
Which Heaven sent us to restore our State ?
A. Our Statesmen had the Scurvy deeply, sure
The Princely Orange was a sovereign cure.
It is accompanied by a woodcut of an orange. This cut and
its fellows did duty elsewhere, in another Little Book for Little
Children, also by Thomas White (not dated; the frontispiece,
however, is a portrait of queen Anne). Here, too, is a mixture of
a
education and amusement—a cut of a hornbook, some spelling
lessons, alphabetical rimes and riddles. The volume is notable
for the first appearance in print of A was an Archer, and the
lines displaying the errors of misplaced punctuation, beginning
'I saw a Peacock with a fiery Tail. ' Practically contemporary
1 No copy earlier than 1737 (“Sixth Edition') is available to the writer. But the
description in the advertisement of 1685 exactly coincides with the contents of the
1737 edition, in which the author is given as Richard Burton--Nathaniel Crouch.
Crouch died, probably, before 1725. Winter Evenings, and variants upon it, is &
perpetually recurrent title among children's books,
## p. 371 (#393) ############################################
xvi] • Exemplary’ Compilations 371
with this was The Child's Week's-Work, by William Ronksley
(1712).
It is the best of all these early attempts to purvey
'pleasure with profit duly mixt,' though there is more profit than
pleasure in it. Its simplicity of method and absence of dogmatic
frenzy are remarkable. In four successive series of lessons, each
calculated to occupy a week, it runs up to words of four syllables.
A monosyllabic verse may be quoted :
Hear you a Lark?
Tell me what Clerk
Can match her. He that beats
The next Thorn-bush
May raise a Thrush
Would put down all our lays.
Finally, perhaps the most popular-or, at any rate, most widely
read-of all these oppressive compilations was James Janeway's
Token for Children: being an Exact Account of the Conversion,
Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several young
Children (? 1720): a supreme example of morbid and gloating
piety. The title conveys its scope. It was not alone; three or
four works like it can be discovered; but it was the most highly
coloured.
A more polished type—indeed, pietists might have said a politely
immoral type—is the Chesterfield of the seventeenth century, A
Lady's Gift (1688, published without authorisation, often re-
printed). Halifax—the trimmer-could write admirable English,
and, if his Advice to a Daughter (the sub-title) is worldly, it
is, also, honest and sensible. It had other counterparts in the
next century besides Chesterfield's Letters. Advice to a Young
Nobleman, Letters from a Tutor to his Pupils and similar works
carried out the gentlemanly ideal of making the best of this world
without either despising or making too much of the next.
Works of these types were, if not common, at any rate not
unique. They are not, perhaps, in the direct succession of pure
children's literature: they are but the unennobled ancestors.
But they deserve not to be forgotten by the historian. The more
authentic pedigree follows a line of less unmixed descent-lines,
rather, for the family has, at first, three branches. The older
branches are among the oldest forms of literature preserved to us :
the cadet branch is fathered by two eminent men.
To take the youngest first. The parent work in it has, naturally,
been overshadowed by greater works in the chapter on its author
in a previous volume! All through the eighteenth century, a
1 Vol. VII, chap. VII.
24-2
## p. 372 (#394) ############################################
372
Children's Books
[ch.
work called Divine Emblems; or Temporal Things Spiritualized,
by John Bunyan, was recurrent in little rough editions. It was
not until 1889 that this was identified as a curtailed version of a
longer book-A Book for Boys & Girls: or, Country Rhimes
for Children. By J. B. The first edition contained seventy-four
'meditations'; in 1701, an editor revised it ruthlessly, and cut the
number of emblems down to forty-nine. It consists of short poems
-exceedingly bad poetry, but plain rugged morality-on such
subjects as the frog, the hen, and other common objects, each with
a rimed moral. Bunyan declares his object :
I do't to show them how each fingle-fangle,
On which they doting are, their souls entangle,
As with a web, a trap, a gin, or snare,
And will destroy them, have they not a care.
His 'morals' are as recondite and laborious as those of Gesta
Romanorum. The importance of the book lies in its authorship,
its intention and its method. It reveals not a little of the inspired
tinker's mind. It shows a real desire to provide something special
for children, not merely the old clothes of adult literature cut
down. And it is a deliberate use of a responsible artistic form
and of material not traditional but original.
By Bunyan stands a lesser man but a more skilled artificer-
Isaac Watts. His Divine Songs have already been treated'.
They are quoted every day, and usually misquoted. Some of
them—three or four, at most, it may be; but that is an honourable
percentage-will resound through nurseries for generations yet
to come : the rest are dead, slain by time. For their epoch,
they were not far from perfection, as publishers saw. They were
reprinted endlessly for far more than a century. Mrs Trimmer, in
1789, gave them renewed vogue by a Comment setting forth their
virtues and elaborating their doctrinal teaching. Another writer
adapted their theology to unitarian beliefs. They were at once
carried off into the literary Alsatia of the chapbook. A kind of
imitation appeared in 1751, Puerilia, by John Marchant, 'Songs
for Little Misses, Songs for Little Masters, Songs on Divine, Moral
and other Subjects. ' They had a certain spirit, but did not strike
the imagination of the day: only two editions were issued.
It was the chapbook, that last poor refuge of Middle Age
enchantments, which provided children with what they wanted in
the reign of queen Anne and the first three Georges. They had
to learn the alphabet, they had to read the guides to goodness, the
i Vol. 1x, p. 178.
## p. 373 (#395) ############################################
XVI]
The Chapbook
373
Ollendorfs of petty culture, the anecdotal or poetic allurements
to superior virtue, which, as a matter of fact, young persons are
often quite ready enough to acquire without force. But they were
not less ready to enjoy other fare. A famous passage in The
Tatler (No. 95), in which Mr Bickerstaff describes his little godson
as absorbed in the stories of Bevis and Don Belianis and other
great and famous heroes, sums up the charm of forbidden romance
with the nicest perfection. The chapbook was what the poor
and the young could read familiarly. In these little penny, two-
penny and sixpenny productions-octavo in form, with sixteen
pages, at first, but, after 1726, usually duodecimo, with twenty-four
pages—the last fragments of the old romances were enshrined.
They existed before 1700—certainly early in the eighteenth
century, at least ; but few early copies have survived, and it was
not until the Georgian era that they were profusely manufactured.
Who wrote these versions is not known. They may have been
abbreviations of the manuscript texts of the thirteenth or four-
teenth centuries ; but the discrepancies are so marked that, more
probably, they were oral versions committed to print indepen-
dently in some obscure way. They were issued all over the king-
dom, the centres with the greatest output being, apparently,
London (Aldermary churchyard in particular), Dublin, York,
Glasgow, Newcastle, Stirling and Banbury. The books were not,
in the first instance, meant for children, though, in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, whole series expressly juvenile
appeared (the Banbury set was the best known and, perhaps, best
produced); but children possessed themselves of them. Wood-
blocks were used almost haphazard : Guy slaying a boar in one
booklet was George slaying a dragon in another. The indigenous
heroes of Britain-Tom Thumb, certain Jacks, Hickathrift, Friar
Bacon—were here preserved in a vernacular epic cycle, with such
additions as fashion, fact, or sheer literary piracy from time to
time provided. In some volumes, indecency was the sole point;
others were merely coarse in a natural way; in all, the English
was vile. After 1800, they fell into a decline: better production
ousted them from favour; 'the blocks and types were getting
worn out. . . . Catnach buried them in a dishonoured grave? '
The chief addition to the common stock of chapbook material
made in the eighteenth century were the adventures of Robinson
Crusoe and Gulliver, Watts's poems, the adventures of Philip Quarll
(a pseudo-Crusoe), anecdotes decked out with names invented
1 Ashton, J. , Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century (1882).
6
## p. 374 (#396) ############################################
374
[CH.
Children's Books
by John Newbery for his own much better productions, collections
of nursery rimes (after about 1760) and various versions of
Perrault's fairy tales ; towards the end of the century, eastern and
Arabian tales were added.
It was the chapbook, also, which preserved to us our scant
native fairy lore. Andrew Lang once said that England had but
one authentic fairy-hero-Jack the slayer of Blunderbore and
other giants. But, wherever the stories originated in the long
history of man's mind, many were current, and England once was
'al fulfild of fayerye. ' Popular taste ascribed the decay of Titania's
kingdom to monks : where monks were, ‘farewell, rewards and
fairies. But the stories remained; and a curious allusion in
bishop Corbett's rough but charming seventeenth century poem
shows that they were respected and treasured:
To William Churne of Staffordshire,
Give land and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true:
To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle:
For all the fairies' evidence
Were lost if were addle.
William Churne, whoever he was, perished, and his tales with
him ; and the sad friends of fairy truth must go up and down with
careful search for such relics as they may find in the byways of
folklore. It was from France that the revival of magic came.
Fairy tales reached the French court about 1676, and set a fashion
of simplicity, sometimes real, more often affected. In 1996,
Charles Perrault began to publish (in Moetjen’s Recueil de pièces
curieuses et nouvelles) the famous stories alleged to be written by
his little boy; they came out in a separate volume in 1697, as
Histoires ou Contes du Tems Passé, avec de Moralités ; the frontis-
piece contained the immortal legend, Contes de ma mère l'Oie.
This is not the place to go into the anthropology of fairy tales
in general, or of these fairy tales in particular. It is quite
probable that Perrault's son did actually tell the tales himself to
his father, much as he heard them from his nurse. Their delightful
simplicity made them instantly popular. An English translation
appeared, apparently, in 17291, by Robert Samber. The stories
>
>
1 Advertised in The Monthly Chronicle, March 1729 (Andrew Lang, on the authority
of Austin Dobson, in Perrault's Popular Tales, with Introduction, etc. , 1888). The
earliest surviving copy is the sixth edition, 1764, giving both French and English,
Mrs Trimmer, born in 1741, was familiar with the tales in her childhood.
## p. 375 (#397) ############################################
xvi]
Nursery Rimes
375
passed speedily into chapbooks, as did those of Madame d'Aulnoy
about the same time. It should be added that they were provided
with morals': Red Riding Hood proved that
Wolves for sure there are
Of every sort, and every character;
while Bluebeard exemplified 'curiosity, thou mortal bane. '
So, the fairy tale attained print, and tradition became litera-
ture. About the same period, the other strain of traditional lore,
also, was glorified into printed matter. Nursery rimes have all
manner of origins, and may be detected in allusions long before
they appear whole and unadorned. But, there was, apparently, no
Corpus Poetarum Infantilium till, in 1744, Cooper published
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, in two volumes. Here, for
the first time, some unknown hand established a classic. Here
was the nucleus upon which, in all probability, all later collec-
tions--and there was not much to be added to it, were founded.
The rimes, in themselves, do not call for comment. Except for a
few which would offend modern taste, they are the same-verbally,
for all practical purposes-as nurses use today.
No earlier collection, if one was made, survives ; and it is
sixteen years before another is recorded-The Top Book of All;
the date, 1760, is determined by a little woodblock at the end.
This is not entirely a nursery rime book; it contains nine familiar
rimes, Watts's Sluggard, some riddles and three wellknown short
tales. To the same date-but not with any certainty—is ascribed
the famous Gammer Gurton's Garland, published at Stockport:
it is described on the title-page as a new edition, with additions. '
In or about the same year-here, too, there is not any certainty,
for not one copy of the first edition is known—was born the chief
rival of the alleged Gurton as a rimer, mother Goose? Newbery's
surviving copyrights in 1780 included Mother Goose's Melody.
There is reason to believe the book had been in existence for
some time before, though there is no evidence whatever for a
statement sometimes made that the publisher Fleet first issued it
in 1719.
Such is the archaeology of children's books, before the first
great diaskeuast arrived. There were lessonbooks of several
kinds, there were moral treatises in prose and verse, there was a
1 The instructive full title is given in the bibliography of this chapter.
2 The name is, of course, a translation of Mère de l'Oie,who presided over Perrault's
fairy tales. But it is much older. Gammer Gurton and Tom Thumb have a similar
oral antiquity.
6
## p. 376 (#398) ############################################
376
[CH.
Children's Books
mass of oral tradition just creeping into type, there were decayed
adult works. But, all was without form and void. The appearance
of the books that were produced was mean. The trade in them
was spasmodic and unorganised. No one took them seriously or
thought of them as a necessary branch of the commerce in printed
matter. It was a typical eighteenth century business man, John
Newbery, farmer's son, accountant, merchant's assistant, patent-
medicine dealer, printer and publisher, who saw the possibilities
and the openings. He began to publish books at Reading in
1740, but removed to London in 1744 (first to Devereux court
and then to the address long associated with children's books,
St Paul's churchyard). The first year in the metropolis saw his
first child's book-The Little Pretty Pocket Book. It was a neat,
well-printed volume, with very fair woodcuts. It contains a
dedication 'to the Parents, Guardians and Nurses in Great Britain
and Ireland,' and incitements to games, with moral applications
dragged in. It was designed to 'make Tommy a good Boy and
Polly a good Girl. ' No doubt it did so; and the process must
have been far from disagreeable. It was followed the next year
by three volumes of The Circle of the Sciences. The Lilliputian
Magazine (1751-2), The Governess or Little Female Academy
(by Sarah Fielding, the novelist's sister), The Twelfth Day Gift,
Mother Goose's Melody, her Tales and, most celebrated of all,
Goody Two Shoes', were among his early publications.
The characteristics of Newbery's books were very marked.
They were strongly and yet attractively produced, with good print
and paper. They contained a great variety of matter, and were
thoroughly alive in every way. There is a real personality behind
them, even though they are now as utterly obsolete as their con-
temporary, the dodo (which is illustrated in a Newbery natural
history of 1775). The English is plain and respectable; the
coarseness of earlier, and even some coeval and later, productions
is almost entirely absent. There is a strong vein of honest
vigour running through them---The Twelfth Day Gift has a
frontispiece labelled “Trade and Plumb Cake for ever, Huzza ! '-
and the commercial success of the industrious apprentice is fre-
quently insisted upon. The author-it is not unlikely that
a
1 There is much evidence, amounting almost to certainty, that Goldsmith wrote
Goody Two Shoes, or, at least, had a hand in it. See Welsh's, C. , introduction to his
facsimile reprint of the earliest extant edition (1881). It is also said that Goldsmith
edited Mother Goose's Melody. The evidence is hardly strong enough to make this
nore than a pleasant and credible hypothesis.
## p. 377 (#399) ############################################
>
XVI]
John Newbery
377
Newbery himself is the single individual behind such feigned
benignities as Mrs Lovechild, Tommy Trip and Giles Gingerbread-
is really trying to please children as well as to improve them.
"He called himself their friend, but he was the friend of all man-
kind': Goldsmith spoke from experience.
John Newbery died in 1767, having definitely created a new
branch of literature. His business split into two-one under
Francis Newbery (a nephew) and the other under a second Francis
Newbery (a son) and Thomas Carnan (a stepson). The firms were
not amicable rivals, and Carnan and Francis the younger also
quarrelled and separated, apparently in 1782. Ultimately, 'all the
old publications of Newbery passed into the hands of Elizabeth (the
nephew Francis's widow] and to Harris and his successors? ' The
final legatees of this ancient firm, Messrs Griffith and Farran, sur-
vived into the twentieth century, still publishing children's books.
The trade side of these works is an important one, and it may
be convenient to deal with it at this point. The publisher—in the
eighteenth century still more than half retailer as well as pro-
ducer-had, for obvious reasons, greater power over juvenile books
than over serious adult works. Indeed, he was often the author
himself; the later Newbery's most formidable rivals, Darton and
Harvey, were even artists and engravers (very bad ones) as well.
The publisher determined that momentous detail, the format of
the volume; and it might, with some reason, be contended that his
taste in this direction, from 1750 to 1760 and from 1800 to 1810,
has not been equalled since. Certainly, the gilt and brightly
coloured covers made of Dutch paper-copies so bound are now
rare, and the paper is no longer made—the entire decency and
fitness, as of an Adam house, in margin, type and spacing, the
enduring ink and clean impressions of the best specimens, show a
standard of production at least as well suited to a domestic
interior of Georgian England as more ambitious binding and
typography to more lavish periods. The publisher, too, decided
on the quantity and quality of the illustrations : Bewick, Stothard
and some of the producers of colour-work early in the nineteenth
century reached a very high level of quality, and the quantity was
seldom stinted. He decided, also, as is the custom today, the size
of an edition ; and the numbers, where they can be discovered,
are surprisingly large. One firm, at least, usually printed 2000 for
a first edition, and such works as Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball had
an immediate circulation literally as great as that of a really
1 Welsh, C. , A Bookseller of the Last Century (1885).
## p. 378 (#400) ############################################
378
[CH.
Children's Books
successful novel of today. Moreover, the sales were steady and
longlived. Berquin's Ami des Enfans ran to 20,000 copies in ten
years. A dozen of Priscilla Wakefield's books went into not less
than sixty editions (apart from piracies) in twenty years. Mrs
Trimmer's Robins sold to the extent of two editions every three
years for a whole generation at least. The prices were low, as
expressed in our values ; from sixpence to three shillings and
sixpence, with one and sixpence as a very general average, for
volumes with copperplates; woodblock editions (which tended
to disappear after about 1790, except in chapbooks) were even
cheaper, and coloured plates did not cause any great increase,
mainly, no doubt, because the colouring was done by hand, by
regiments of children, who dabbed on each one colour in one
place! The colours have a "gay grace not always achieved by
more perfect mechanical means. Authors were not highly paid;
but their relations with publishers seem to have been intimate
and pleasant, on the whole : the publisher was a tradesman, but a
man of some dignity as well. After Newbery, many firms specialised
in children's books. The value of juvenile' copyrights was often
considerable ; some works were even worthy of being turned into
'trade' books—issued, that is, by syndicates of publishers. The
story of copyright sales is very suggestive? Piracy abounded.
These business details largely explain the activity that ensued
upon Newbery's death. He and the next generation of his family
made it perfectly clear that there was a chance of supplying
children's books in an adequate format. Commerce was alive to
opportunities, and the creation of a good supply was inevitable
and immediate. And, as for the demand, the epoch which pro-
duced the bluestocking was not likely to omit from its programme
of orderly omniscience the very foundations of taste and learning.
The age of the revolution was an age of education, which was viewed,
on the one hand, as a prophylactic against, and, on the other, as the
most active stimulant of, a new era. But, in some circles, it was
still thought unworthy to write for children. Nearly every author
from 1780 onwards apologises for his or her work in a preface.
One of the best and most popular writers, S. S. , never revealed
that her name was Dorothy Kilner, even though she lived into a
less dignified age. Her Adventures of a Pincushion, Memoirs of
1 This method was still being used by the present writer's grandfather between
1850 and 1860, though, at the same time, Baxter was doing oil-process prints for him.
? See Shaylor, J. , The Fascination of Books (1912), for many examples of sale
catalogues and prices.
## p. 379 (#401) ############################################
xvi)
Sarah Trimmer
379
a Peg-top and Jemima Placid (to name no other works) were all
published either anonymously or under a pseudonym; many pirates
did not even print the pseudonym. They are very unaffected
little tales : ordinary and natural and delightful. , Her sister, as
M. P. , wrote no less popular books. Lady Venn, author of
Cobwebs to Catch Flies, was another secret purveyor to the
nursery : she wrote as Mrs Lovechild and Mrs Teachwell.
To pursue the history of every individual who followed in the
way which Newbery had opened would be endless. Publishers
were eager to publish, the public-full of generous projects and
prolific of new philanthropic societies—not less eager to buy. The
period which ended in 1825 may best be described as one of strife
between two principles. The moral tale,' in those years, reached
its highest development and perished, while the enemy it attacked-
the fairy tale, the element of fantasy and fun--emerged triumphant.
Whatever the drawbacks of the moral tale, it had one con-
spicuous merit, never so fully displayed at other times in the
history of children's books.
