We are all a dry/With drinking ont
We are all a dry/With drinking ont
The piper kisst/The Fidlers wife
And I cant sleep/For thinking ont.Thomas Boreman, who published a set of ten miniature books, the Gigantick Histories,
between 1740 and 1743, also considered a new venture of books for amusement as well
as instruction worthy of some investment, and there are isolated examples of other
publishers issuing significant items for children.
One of the more important was the first English translation of Charles Perrault’s fairy
tales: Robert Samber’s Histories, or Tales of Past Times. Told by Mother Goose (1729).
Fairy tales became established not only in the productions of the mainstream
publishers; the chapbook publishers took them up and distributed them widely beside
the moral and religious tracts. The Contes de Fées of the Countess d’Aulnoy, translated
as her Diverting Works (1707), became popular in chapbooks, and included ‘The yellow
dwarf’, ‘Goldylocks’ and ‘The white cat’. Madame de Beaumont’s Le Cabinet des Fées
(1785–1789) was also published in English versions and her adaptation of ‘Beauty and
the beast’ became a staple of chapbook literature.
John Newbery: 1744–1767However, what all of these endeavours lacked was a coherent approach to the
development of a specifically children’s literature. Before the mid-eighteenth century,
book publishing for children lacked seriousness of purpose. John Newbery’s publishing
activities changed this; he developed the children’s side of his business through a
sustained and forceful exploitation of the market. Newbery began as a provincial
bookseller and newspaper proprietor and also dealt in patent medicines, activities which
continued to be significant elements in his complex business empire. However, soon
after his move to London from Reading he produced A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744).
Verses with wood blocks of children at play comprise most of this slight but significant
offering, which became one of the best known of all the early children’s books. His
Lilliputian Magazine (1751– 1752) was more substantial, although less successful, and
continued the Newbery mixture of light-hearted material—jests, songs, riddles—and
more moral tales. There followed A Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses
(c.1752), and Nurse Truelove’s New Year’s Gift (c.1753), similarly light-hearted in tone
and content. Binding in Dutch floral boards was also his trademark and the overall
quality of their production marked out his books from the cruder reading materials of the
previous century.
Perhaps his most famous book—and certainly the one which drew the admiration of
Charles Lamb—was The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765). This tale of the
‘trotting tutoress’, Margery Meanwell, encapsulated all of Newbery’s emphasis in his
books on the mercantile class, a group in society to whom trade and good sense meant
everything. Margery progresses from penury to a good marriage through hard work,
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