Afternoon Tea: Rhymes for Children. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons; London: Frederick Warne and Co., ca. 1880. This delicate color-printed illustration of children at play is taken from a book of children’s poetry published jointly in New York and London by the England-based houses of Thomas Nelson and Sons and Frederick Warne. Both publishers were ...
The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin. Philadelphia: Davis, Porter & Coates, ca. 1866-1868. This poignantly humorous image of the owl digging departed Cock Robin’s grave is taken from an “indestructible” picture book that had its pages reinforced with cloth for the hard use of young and eager hands. This hand-colored wood engraving is characteristic ...
This year the American Antiquarian Society will be holding its 7th annual Adopt-a-Book event on Tuesday, May 6th, from 6:00 to 8:00pm. This event has been an entertaining and successful fundraiser for the library’s continued acquisitions of historic material. The money raised helps curators buy more books, pamphlets, prints, newspapers, and manuscripts. On May 6th, participants ...
Editor’s note: In a twist that follows up on Jackie Penny’s account of reading pre-1900 fiction to her children, retired AAS director of book publication Caroline F. Sloat turned to her ten-year-old grandson for an enthusiastic recommendation of Esther Forbes’s Johnny Tremain. Our bags were packed and we were ready to leave for the airport ...
Barrow, Frances. New Little Mittens. New York & London: D. Appleton and Co., 1869. This wood-engraved frontispiece is a comic scene set in the culture clash between a Chinese gentleman going out for a stroll, and an ignorant American sailor who pulls his queue and says “My stars and stripes! What a long tail our pussy ...
Reynard the Fox. After the German Version of Goethe by Thomas James Arnold. London: Trubner & Co.; New York: Theo. Stroeffer, 1870. This is a folio format edition of the celebrated animal adventurer Reynard the Fox. This luxurious metal engraving of Reynard reclining after a busy day of hunting prey was engraved by Rudolph Kahn after ...
Although we might think of Santa and an evergreen Christmas tree as inevitably wedded in nineteenth-century children’s book illustration, that was not necessarily the case. Until about 1840, New Year’s Day was favored over Christmas as the family-appropriate winter holiday in the young American Republic, particularly in New England, where the descendants of the Puritans ...
Howe, Samuel Gridley. The Blind Child’s First Book. Third edition. Boston: New England Institution for the Education of the Blind, 1852. This is a fairly early (and rare) example of printing for the blind using raised type known as Boston Line, developed by the book’s author Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), who gained national fame as the ...
In the most recent issue of the Almanac, we had a feature article about the process of bringing new items into the collection. This got us thinking about some of the interesting ways in which these treasures are found. In the coming weeks, each curator will share one of their favorite stories about finding a ...
Editor's note: In this week's recommended reading for "fiction published before 1900," AAS member and Councilor Chuck Arning, park ranger and AV specialist at the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, talks about a nineteenth-century book that was passed down through his family. Unlike all of the other books in this series (see Philip Gura's ...
Editor's note: In the most recent issue of the Almanac, we asked members of the AAS community to give us their choice of recommended reading for "fiction published before 1900," a series we are continuing here on Past is Present. Last week we heard from AAS member Philip Gura. This week, Jackie Penny, AAS's image ...
?The Adventures of Teasing Tom and Naughty Ned with a Spool of Clark’s O.N.T. Cotton. New York: F.B. Patterson, 1879. Books printed as advertisements were frequently directed at children, as is the case of this chapbook hawking Clark’s cotton thread. Not only do Tom and Ned play hooky from school, but they use a spool of ...
Bullard, Asa. Children’s Book for Sabbath Hours. Springfield, Mass. & Chicago: W.J. Holland & Co., 1873. With the secularization of American society after the Civil War, this book by minister Asa Bullard answered a need to give children something wholesome yet entertaining to read while keeping the Sabbath free from raucous play. This is a selection ...
Mann, Mary Peabody. The Flower People. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1875. First published in the early 1840’s, Mary Peabody Mann’s The Flower People introduced the study of botany to children under the guise of conversations between a girl named Mary and various plants. In this case, Mary is speaking to a leaf that she ...
Kilner, Dorothy. The History of a Great Many Little Boys and Girls.Keene, N.H.: John Prentiss, 1807. English author Dorothy Kilner (1755-1836) targeted these stories specifically to young readers between the ages of four and five. Although her audience is young, Kilner’s subjects are very serious: one young boy who refuses to wear clothes is beaten ...
