specialising in children’s books alone have been few—which is why, in the twentieth
century, Sebastian Walker’s enterprise in founding Walker Books in 1978 was so
notable.
By 1800 some 600 books for children were being published annually, a figure that had
increased tenfold by 1992, when the total number of books in print—as recorded by
Whitaker—had reached 30,000, issued by over 1,000 publishers.
John Newbery and his successors shared not only a love of reading but a care for the
appearance of books—the design, the typeface, the paper, the binding, the jacket. The
same interests were the motivation of the many individuals who, in the nineteenth
century, set up their own, mostly family-owned, firms. But whereas, in John Newbery’s
time, the publisher had been both bookseller and often printer, publishing now became
concerned solely with the acquisition of material, its editing and advertising, while
printing and bookselling developed as separate activities.
Finding material has always been a matter of serendipity for the publisher, who is
dependent on a sharp eye for the needs of the marketplace, an instinct for spotting
potential in what may look unpromising, a wide circle of acquaintances with similar
interests, and—once the list is established—an image that will entice authors to submit
their work. This kind of networking is demonstrated in the way some nineteenth-century
publishers went about their business.
George Bell, for instance, had known Mrs Gatty as a childhood friend, and thus
became the publisher of her Aunt Judy’s Magazine in 1866. Edmund Evans was an
engraver and printer who, knowing Kate Greenaway’s father, saw her work, recognised
its appeal and persuaded George Routledge to publish her first book Under the Window
in 1879. Routledge had started off as an apprentice to a Carlisle bookseller (direct
experience of selling is still invaluable to a publisher) and went on to publish the Toy
Books of another Evans protégé, Randolph Caldecott. Routledge’s partner was his
brother-in-law, Frederick Warne, who set up on his own in 1865. The artist Leslie
Brooke was so pleased with Warne’s successful publication of his illustrations to Andrew
Lang’s Nursery Rhyme Book (1897) that thereafter he would work for no one else. He, in
turn, encouraged Warne to publish Beatrix Potter, whose Tale of Peter Rabbit had first
been privately printed at the author’s expense.
Publishing had become highly competitive, with children’s books an important part of
the business, though not always a profitable one. Although they may have long lives,
popular books being bought by every generation, and although copies wear out and need
constant replacement, the costing of children’s books is different from that of adult
books. Traditionally, they have always been priced more cheaply, the margin for profit
and allowance for overheads being kept as low as possible. This is partly to do with
perception of the books—most are, after all, shorter than adult books—but it mostly
results from the desire of both publisher and author that the books, through the adult
intermediary of parent, librarian or teacher, should be accessible to as large an audience
as possible.
In the case of England’s best-known children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, published by Macmillan in 1865 at a price of 7s 6d (in today’s decimal
currency 37.5 pence) Lewis Carroll pleaded for a cheap edition, writing on 15 February
1869, ‘The only point I really care for in the whole matter (and it is a source of very real
466 CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHING IN BRITAIN