Briggs’s Children and their Books: A Celebration of the Work of Iona and Peter Opie (1989:
19–44).
However, the major world collections are being documented: important contributions
have been Gerald Gottlieb’s Early Children’s Books and their Illustrators (1975), and the
catalogue of the Osborne Collection in Toronto (St John 1975); others include Florida
State University’s catalogue of the Shaw Childhood in Poetry Collection (1967).
Equally, there has been a steady output of historical and bibliographically orientated
work, both within such specialist journals as The Library, The Book Collector, Bodleian
Library Record, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Antiquarian Book
Monthly and The Private Library and elsewhere. In Britain, the Children’s Book History
Society began a series of occasional papers with After Henry, an exploration of English
ABCs (Garrett 1994), while the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association’s catalogue of an
exhibition mounted at Oxford, Childhood Re-Collected (Alderson and Moon 1994) is
characteristic of some high-quality work on the scholarly/commercial border. Many
other exhibitions of early books have been mounted by individual collectors and
societies, but most of the catalogues, booklets and articles associated with them are
available through only the most specialist of outlets.
In the USA, the UCLA Occasional Papers have included work on children’s literature,
such as Alderson’s description of an eighteenth-century collection from Warwickshire
(1989) and Andrea Immel’s Revolutionary Reviewing: Sarah Trimmer’s ‘Guardian of
Education’ and the Cultural Politics of Juvenile Literature (1990). The Lilly Library has,
similarly, produced catalogues of exhibitions, such as Linda David’s Children’s Books
Published by William Darton and his Sons (1992), and of material from the Jane Johnson
nursery collection (Johnson 1987). The burgeoning de Grummond Collection of
Children’s Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, occasionally
includes scholarly articles in its journal, Juvenile Miscellany. A major step forward in work
on American children’s literature has been Gillian Avery’s Behold the Child: American
Children and their Books 1621–1922 (1994).
There is much work to do unravelling the intricacies of the early book trade, but
progress is being made. Booksellers who have been examined include Joseph Cundall
(McLean 1976), James Lumsden (Roscoe and Brimmell 1981); James Burns (Alderson
1994), William Godwin (William St Clair, ‘William Godwin as children’s bookseller’ in
Avery and Briggs 1989:165–179) and John Newbery (Townsend 1994; Roscoe 1973).
Outstanding have been Marjorie Moon’s work on Tabart and Harris: Benjamin Tabart’s
Juvenile Library: A Bibliography of Books for Children Published, Written and Sold by Mr
Tabart 1801–1920 (1990), and John Harris’s Books for Youth 1801–1843 (1992).
Some authors, such as Beatrix Potter (Linder 1971) and Carroll (Guiliano 1981) have
been well served bibliographically; others, such as Arthur Ransome, are just beginning
to have their work explored in detail (for example, Wardale 1995). Other studies include
work on George MacDonald (Shaberman 1990) and Richmal Crompton (Schutte 1993;
and see also Cadogan with Schutte 1990), while Hans Andersen’s Eventyr have been
explored by Alderson (1982). A wider range of reference is found in Robert Kirkpatrick’s
Bullies, Beaks and Flannelled Fools: An Annotated Bibliography of Boys’ School Fiction
1742–1990 (1990).
124 THEORY AND CRITICAL APPROACHES