Behind the Scenes at Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood: A Look at the Technical Side of Accessing Collections

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Sarah Dunnigan

What secrets can the skills of a cataloguer unlock about a book collection? In this blog, Kathryn Downing, MSc student in Book History and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh, shares some fascinating insights from her experience working with some of the oldest books in the Museum of Childhood’s archive in the ongoing process of making its treasures more accessible.

One of the biggest barriers to conducting research can be an un-catalogued collection. It is not often – if ever – that libraries and museums let you peruse their stacks or stores to your heart’s desire. Researchers, then, often become experts at navigating catalogues and databases in an effort to locate the right resources. In many cases, the strength of someone’s research is dependent on the strength of the records they can access.

If you’ve been following SELCIE’s work at Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood, then you’ve witnessed one of those rare times when a museum does let researchers into a store to peruse its contents. During the SELCIE team’s time collaborating with the museum, they have produced a publication and an exhibition in addition to pursuing individual research topics. More valuable than even these tangible outcomes, however, is the process they began of sorting and organising the thousands of books residing in the City Chambers. Simply knowing the extent of the collection is the first step towards facilitating public access to it.

Although SELCIE has made great strides in uncovering the treasures of the City Chambers book store, much still remains hidden. The sheer extent of the Museum of Childhood’s book collection (an estimated 15,000 items) has means that many important details associated with the books remain unrecorded. While publications and exhibitions are a fantastic way to bring collections to the community, knowing what to write or display next can be challenging when there are thousands of items and no way to search through them efficiently.

Enter the cataloguer! Continue reading →

The Books of Our Lives: A Reading Memories Project

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Sarah Dunnigan

Introduction

“The way that you start reading as a child is the way that you will read for the rest of your life.” (Emily Howarth, interviewee)

SELCIE worked alongside the city’s Museum of Childhood to curate the Growing Up with Books. A History of Children’s Literature exhibition. This ran from the 1st of June to the 9th of December 2018 at the Museum, and displayed material from the Museum’s vast archive, with material ranging from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Growing Up with Books was designed to display snapshots of the reading interests and experiences of children across these centuries, but the SELCIE team also hoped that these books would stir the memories of those who saw the exhibition, recalling their own experiences as readers in childhood. Lois Burke, Sarah Dunnigan, Danielle Howarth, and Joanna Witkowska spoke to some of those who came along to the exhibition, and recorded these rich memories and reflections in the following series of interviews.

From a wide range of ages, countries, and backgrounds, the interviewees who agreed to share their experiences as young readers reveal the wide-ranging influence and appeal of children’s literature. Indeed, the interviews comprise an important record of the reading phenomenon which have shaped the reading experiences of children not only in Scotland but all over the world, from the Unites States and Australia to China, in living memory. From those whose libraries at home were filled with the explosion of Enid Blyton novels for children which came out in the 60’s and 70’s, to the millennial generation whose early reading was incontrovertibly shaped by the Harry Potter phenomenon, these reflections reveal the influence of children’s fiction on a broad, even global, scale. However, the interviews also reveal the significance of less well-known, perhaps more culturally specific, stories, as many of our speakers include fairy tales and annuals amongst their childhood favourites.

Time and again, the interviews emphasise reading in childhood as a shared experience, one which brings together siblings, friends, and parents and grandparents with children. We hear of, and from, mothers who have read aloud to their children, grandparents who have shared their childhood favourites with their grandchildren, siblings who fought over who got to read the next Harry Potter book first, and friends who joined together in writing their own stories. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of those who contributed their testimonies here went on to have careers in education, and speak of how they share their love of reading with the children they teach.

Each interviewee reflects upon these memories with fondness, telling of the happiness which reading brought to their childhood, and indeed their adult years. Growing up with books, they explain, inspires a life-long love for the written word and storytelling, and, in many cases, imparts values integral to survival in the adult world. As one of our interviewees, Emily Howarth, so eloquently puts it, “The way that you start reading as a child is the way that you will read for the rest of your life.”
Anna McKay

Interview 1 – Emily Howarth

Emily discusses her early experiences as a reader, recalling her earliest encounter with reading in Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and her teenage years growing up with Harry Potter. She draws attention to the ways in which her experiences as a young reader have shaped and structured her life as an adult, inspiring creativity and teaching her how to live in and engage with the world.

Interview 2 – Sze-Man Chan

Sze-Man tells us about her reaction to the Growing Up with Books exhibition, and of her favourite book as a young reader, Alice in Wonderland. She recalls the ways in which her love of the book led her to watch the film adaptations and collect toy memorabilia, and reflects upon the ways in which it shaped her understanding of British culture.

Interview 3 – Maureen Whiteman

Maureen Whiteman tells us about her reaction to the Growing Up with Books exhibition, and shares with us her love of reading as a child. She tells us of her earliest memories reading the children’s pages of The People’s Friend and enjoying her mother’s childhood books at her grandmother’s house, and lists her favourite books to read at home, including Eleanor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books, Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven and Famous Five series, the Emma books, written by Honor Arundel and set in Edinburgh, and her personal favourite, the Jill’s Gymkhana books. Maureen reflects upon the profound influence that these books have had on her adult life as a teacher now, and speaks of the solace that returning to them bring in moments of sadness and upset.

Interview 4 – Min-Hsuan Chiang

Min Chen tells us of her early fascination with book illustrations as a young child, and her favourite childhood book, Peter Pan. She speaks of her love of adventure in the novel, and its ongoing influence in her current work as an art teacher in a nursery.

Interview 5 – Yun Sheng (Serene)

In this interview, Yun speaks a little about her early experiences as a reader growing up in Taiwan. She tells us about the novelty which she found in English nursery rhymes at pre-school, and in particular the charm and enjoyment which she found in singing these rhymes to her sister, and making up her own songs. Reading, Yun explains, gave her a freedom of imagination which she couldn’t find in television as a child, and she tells us about some of the stories which she most enjoyed.

Interview 6 – Anne Brodie

Anne Brodie speaks to us about how the Growing up with Books exhibition reminds her of the books that she read as a child growing up on the Isle of Lewis. She tells us some of her childhood favourites, in particular Enid Blyton’s much-loved Secret Seven, Famous Five, Malory Towers, and St. Clair’s series, and the immense joy which she found in getting lost in these stories, and indeed writing her own short stories. Anne speaks a little about the challenges and pleasures she has found in sharing this love for books with her own children.

Interview 7 – Clara Fidelis

Clara tells Danielle about her interest in the gendered nature of the books written for boys and girls in the Growing Up with Books exhibition, and speaks about her earliest memories of reading as she grew up in Austin, Texas. She recalls reading Dr Seuss when she was practicing English with her father, and enjoying the rhymes in her particular favourite Green Eggs and Ham. She reminisces over her enjoyment of action-driven novels such as Percy Jackson and Cherub as she grew into adolescence, and speaks about how she admired and aspired to the courage of the protagonists.

Interview 8 – Katie Couba

Katie tells Danielle and Sarah about her love for reading as a child, and her fascination as a History graduate with the older books in the Growing Up with Books exhibition. She tells SELCIE about how her particular love for Harry Potter is bound up with her memories of her family, as her mother used to read the books to her and her brother, and speaks of how her fascination with Rowling’s books has stayed with her as an adult, leading her to research the films and inspiring her to travel and see their locations first-hand. She speaks of how this has shaped her reading as an adult, as reading has continued to inspire her to travel, for example the Outlander books brought her to Scotland.

Interview 9 – Elaine Murphy

Elaine speaks to SELCIE of her great love for reading as a child, and reminisces over reading raffles at school. She tells Danielle and Sarah of her particular love for the books of Enid Blyton, and comics including the Bunty, explaining the joy which she found in anticipating and escaping in each new adventure in the books. As a mother now, she tells of how her experience of reading has changed and adapted.

Interview 10 – Linda Abela

Linda speaks of her early childhood memories of reading books such as Janet and John, and winning book prizes at school for her good attendance. She tells Danielle and Sarah of her later love for Enid Blyton as she matured, and how she has shared these books and her love for reading with her grandchildren, and reflects upon the ways in which her childhood reading has shaped her career as a teacher.

Interview 11 – Anne MacDonald

Danielle and Sarah interview Anne about her reaction to the Growing Up with Books exhibition, and love of reading as a child. Anne recalls her favourite childhood books and genres, including fairy tales, the novels of Enid Blyton, and annuals, and speaks about sharing this love for reading with her children and grandchildren.

‘myn yonge barne’, or the Child on the Shore: Growing Up in Medieval Scots Literature

Posted on June 21, 2019 by Sarah Dunnigan

Initial C: The Massacre of the Innocents; Unknown; Paris, France; about 1320 – 1325; Tempera colors, gold leaf, and ink on parchment; Leaf: 16.7 x 11.1 cm (6 9/16 x 4 3/8 in.); Ms. Ludwig IX 2, fol. 142

Certain things stay with you. I have always been touched by this description which I came across a long time ago. It’s from a narrative of the life of Mary Magdalene — found in a late 14th century Scots collection of saints’ lives — and portrays a moment of child’s play.

& as thai yed one the sand,

A child thai saw hym playand,

As yonge childir ar wont to do

And as they went onto the sand/they saw a child playing/just as young children are inclined to do…

This is no ordinary little boy — he’s the offspring of a king and queen, a longed-for child miraculously granted by the Magdalene in return for their conversion to Christianity. This vision is a key moment for the story’s medieval listeners and readers, expressive of a specific spiritual framework – confirmation of the saint’s intercession and of divine grace. But it is also a humanly beautiful one, for the father had believed that his child was dead. Instead, the little boy is very much alive, playing in an unselfconscious, instinctively child-like way, as the storyteller notes. This is a religious marvel; but also a little wonder of love resurrected.

Coming across this image again made me think about where else, if at all, we find children in medieval Scottish literature. Where do we see states of infancy, childhood and youth, and the bonds between parents and children, portrayed? Much work has been done in the past two decades to recover the material and social lives of children and adolescents in a range of medieval cultures, and thereby to begin the vital work of restoring visibility to a group traditionally so underrepresented in historical and cultural scholarship.

Yet it was only in 2015 that a volume solely devoted to Scotland’s medieval and early modern young was published; this is Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent’s groundbreaking collection, Children and Youth in Premodern Scotland. As they write in their introduction ‘young people were everywhere, and their experience and lives have much to reveal about medieval and early modern society’. Amongst many things young lives, as Ewan and Nugent point out, recalibrate our understanding of ‘urban economic development, consumption patterns, clan politics, personal piety, medieval kingship, court life, slavery, constructions of gender, the history of emotions, and the dynastic concerns of noble houses’ (p. 3).

As the volume’s essays illustrate, imprints and traces can be mined from records, archives, and other material sources, though it is harder to hear directly hear the voices of children and young people themselves. The image of the boy on the shore seemed to crystallise that sense of how the child-figure in medieval writing is somehow remains elusive, vivid yet just out of reach. Perhaps in literary texts above all, this sense of near absence, or distant intimacy, is heightened.

Literature, of course, isn’t straightforwardly mimetic of historical experience. So a poem composed in the voice of a father to his son, as we shall see later, can only suggest how representations of the young are mediated through a series of aesthetic conventions and ideological viewpoints, frequently shot through with uncertainties about authorship and transmission. In that respect, any portrait of the young in medieval Scots writing is a partial and cracked mirror. But for that very reason even the most fragmentary surviving text can tell us much about the imaginative matrix of desires — emotional, social, cultural — which cluster around children and young people. And, at the end, I’ll return to the ‘yonge barne’, the little boy, on the shore.

For this short post, I have chosen a small handful of texts for illustration from imaginative literature composed in Scots from the 14^th to the early c16th centuries. ‘Medieval Scottish literature’, of course, encompasses much more linguistically and culturally than this. The rich and diverse body of Gaelic material in this period needs a post of its own so is not, for the moment, discussed here. For simplicity’s sake, I have modernised Scots orthography and provided English translations; all references to primary sources are given at the end. My thanks to Jane Bonsall who provided the illustrative images for this post.

The allegorical child

We needn’t look far before we find the figure of the child portrayed in emblematic and allegorical ways. William Dunbar’s well-known and bleak poetic litany of death’s powers, familiarly known as ‘Lament for the Makaris’ [Lament for the Poets], shows us ‘the bab full of benignite’ [the baby full of goodness] lying at his ‘moderis breast sowkand’ [sucking at his mother’s breast] — a fragile symbol of mortal innocence.

Dance of Death: Image of child dying of the plague. Hans Holbein (1497-1543) Woodcut, before 1538. Facsimile, London, 1892. Annotated by Shona Kelly Wray.

In one of Robert Henryson’s lyric poems, ‘The Thre Deid Pollis’ [The Three Death Skulls] , the young are darkly exhorted to remember their mortality by gazing on the ‘gaistly sicht’ [horrible sight] of their ‘holkit ene, oure peilit pollis bare’ [our hollowed-out eyes, our skinned, bare heads] which, once upon a time, were much more alive and lovely. Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid famously gives us one of the most potent and horrifying visions of death and the maiden.

Now is deformit the figour of my face;
To luik on it na leid now lyking hes.
Sowpit in syte, I say with sair siching,
Ludgeit amang the lipper leid, `Allace!’

[Now the outline of my face is disfigured/Noone is now inclined to gaze upon it/Absorbed in sorrow, I say with a heavy heart, ‘Alas!’, resident amidst the leper folk]

If the child/youth-figure in these moralistic poems is a haunting reminder of the ruthless potentiality of death, we find a counterpoint in vernacular religious literature. There is a strong Marian lyric tradition in late medieval Scots poetry which ornately evokes adoration both of the Christ-child, and the maternal love of the Virgin Mary: liturgy, prayer, and nurture can be tenderly combined, as in this example:

Blist be thi haire hed eyne face & neise

Blist be ye halss breast bane bak & rib

Blist be thi palpis yat couth this one appleiss

Blist be thi handis that wande him in the crib […]

Blessed be the hair, head, eyes, face, and nose/Blessed be the neck breast bone back and rib/Blessed be the breasts that could satisfy the son/Blessed be the hands that embraced him in the crib […]

Nativity of Mary:
A midwife presents St Anne, naked except for a white cap, with the baby Mary. Ranworth Antiphoner, (1400s) fol 257.

The temptations of youth

Looking beyond these allegorical and emblematic representations brings us to an imaginative world where the focus is fixed on the very human and earthly dimensions of the bond between the young and adults – parents, caregivers, teachers in loco parentis. We find boys and young men being instructed, implored, and besieged in all kinds of ways in medieval Scots writing. In The Spectakle of Luf, for example, ascribed to one ‘M.G. Myll’, in St Andrews on the 10^th day of July in the year 1492 (the epilogue is very specific!). The text is presented as an example of ‘wisdom’ literature based on an unnamed Latin source which, for ‘gud and proffitable’ [good and instructive] purpose, needed to be translated ‘in to our wulgar and matarnall toung’ [vernacular mother tongue] — and, he adds, if any ‘ladyes and gentillwemen’ [ladies and gentlewomen] in particular want to complain, they can do so to the Latin author, not himself. The reason why they might soon becomes clear.

The young male reader of the treatise is subject to a fierce litany of advice, all of which largely pivots on the central core frailty of susceptibility to desire — explicitly defined as the ‘delectatioun of luf of wemen’ [salacious pleasure in the love of women]. In that sense, the Spectacle reads as an angry echo-chamber of the standard warnings, caveats, and expedient advice encased in the traditions of medieval antifeminist writings. Conceived as a conversation between a father and son, ‘a gud old knycht’ and a ‘yong squyer’ [a good old knight and a young squire], it’s divided into seven discreet sections. These neatly reflect the successive ‘categories’ of womanhood — increasingly stratified by age, social class, and religious status — who are bound to set about the son’s corruption.

Artfully, the father summons the toppling weight of scriptural, philosophical, and literary exempla to convince his son how reasonable he is. So he implores that ‘for in this warld Is na maire evillis na thar Is in young wemen quhen thai be set thereto as I sall mak ye till understand and thar be ressoun in thi brest’ [for in this world there are no greater evils than those in young women when they are so inclined, as I shall make you understand, and thereby implant reason in your breast]. Then he reaches first for his book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Here, he tells his son how he can read of Stella, the ‘dochter of young age’ [the young daughter] of King Nysus who beheaded her father whilst he slept because she desired the love of King Mynos who, at the time, happened to be besieging her father’s city.

The son remains wonderfully obtuse throughout his seven stages of learning — he thinks it’s best to ‘luf in sic a place quhar It may be kepit secreit that akk be it childer be gootyn’ [love in such a way that it can be kept secret in case children are conceived]; his patient father suggests otherwise. At the end the latter presents himself as a model of how not to live a fully ‘masculine’ life: a man exiled from the ‘hushald’ [household] which he didn’t govern with enough ‘maistrye’ [power], now left with three gifts from his wife: ‘ane ald harr and dotand heid, ane emptyff and twme purss, and ane pair of beidis of sabill’ [an old daft weak-minded head, an empty and denuded purse, and a pair of mourning beads ie rosaries]. The Spectakle, then, manifests a great deal of anxiety around the process of growing up. The adolescent male is the site of such projected anxieties and fears but women are entirely to blame for this predicament.

Child’s play

Another, much lengthier ‘father-son’ dialogue exists in medieval Scots literature, entitled Ratis Raving, composed anonymously in the second half of the 15th century. But, at least in its prologue, seems to portray a much more curious and compassionate interest in childhood. Its prologue portrays maturation as a process as natural and organic as the growth of a tree — those figurative branches can grow strong and healthy provided there is the properly nourishing soil in which to take root; or become misshapen and withered if the proper moral and spiritual path isn’t followed. Although a conventional metaphor, the condition and potentiality of each stage in the young life-cycle is fascinatingly laid bare. In particular the poem charts the two defined stages of infancy and early childhood: from birth to 3 years old; and from 3 to 7. In the first we see how:

Than buskis child to spek ore ga,

And to wyt quhat is na & ya,

Sa lang can nocht ellis cheld think

Bot one the met, and one the drink,

On noryss, and on slep, thai thre;

Syk is the formest propyrtee,

Rycht as a best child can no mare,

Bot lauch ore gret for Joy & care,

Then the child attempts to speak / And to know what is no and yes / For so long the child can only think about food and drink / on nourishment and sleep, those three;/Such is the most definitive quality / that a child can do no more / But laugh away / heartily for joy and care

The infant’s basic primal instincts (for nourishment), and the capacity to articulate contentment or unhappiness, are here described, simply but engagingly, I think, in language which is almost gently rhythmic.

Holy Family at Work:
Holy Family at work in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves; Netherlands (Utrecht), c. 1440; Morgan Library MS M.917/945, p. 149.

In the next stage, the child’s developmental capacities are elaborated, and here we find — in a treatise so intent on the fostering of ethical and moral sense — what is a rather beautiful elaboration of child’s play. This is explicitly not the age in which the child’s morally reflective capacity or agency is yet developed; rather

Sa lang havis child wyl alwaye

With fluris for to Jap and playe;

With stikis, and with spalys small

To byge up chalmer, spens and hall;

To mak a wicht horss of a wand;

Of brokin breid a schip saland;

A bunwed tyll a burly spere;

And of a seg a swerd of were;

A cumly lady of a clout;

For a long time a child will always play with flowers / With sticks, and with small twigs / To build a bedroom, pantry, and hall / To make a strong horse out of a slender branch/or a sailing ship out of a piece of broken bread / A ragwort [makes for] a fiercesome spear / And a sedge a sword for war / a lovely lady [ie a doll] out of a cloth

Dolls, ships, swords, and the like ‘grow out of’ of the most ordinary everyday things. Naturally, given such creativity, the child’s day, the poem, acknowledges, is quite filled up; but there is no sense that this is not part of that ‘tree-like’, natural growth; these are activities which do not expressly nurture ‘gud Judgment’ (l. 1143) and make it neither the ‘best’ nor the ‘verst’ [worst] stage of human life. Rather, it simply accepts that the young child has a capacity for curiosity and inventiveness, for making and discovering ‘play’. It is very definitely not, I think, a negative depiction of ‘ignorant childhood’.[i]

But just as this child grows swiftly into the next stage of maturity (7 to 15), and into the period when ‘resone’ firmly implants ‘her’ roots (she is a feminised power in this text) instructing ‘quhat to do, and quhat enschew’ (l. 1227), so too does the text ultimately grow into a work of conventional, exemplary wisdom, akin to the Spectacle’s moral worldview. Still, Ratis Raving is very significant for the attention it pays to a distinct concept of early childhood and its developmental cognitive stages; and for doing so with an imaginative sympathy which brings ‘childlike-ness’ into nearer focus.

Girl with hobby horse and bells; youth with instruments
Bodleian Library MS. Douce 118, Psalter. fol. 034r, 13th century (end), France, Artois, Latin. “Marginalia. Crowned female with hobby horse rings handbells, and youth, in jester’s hood with bell, plays pipe and tabor.”

Children and emotion

I’d like to return to where this post began with the genre of the saint’s life. This was, of course, one of the most powerful and popular narrative forms of affective devotion in the Middle Ages. The traditions of insular hagiography in northern Britain have deep roots in the Latin, Irish, and Gaelic languages. Intended to praise, inspire, and teach these are, naturally, didactic texts, describing the miraculous work of saints. And if these lives portray the saint as a child or youth, they do so in ways which usually indicate their potential divinity or grace.

Yet — as shown by the opening example of the boy on the shore reunited with his father — we also witness the portrayal of children in ways which depict them as the locus of love, tied to parents and caregivers by bonds of affection, not just authority or chastisement. In the late 14^th century Scots collection of saints’ lives, children are quite often an essential part of the narrative arc within each life. This is partly because of the close generic affinities between saint’s life and romance (and folktale too) for children are the agents of separation and reunion between families; longed for by childless kings and queens; or unwanted and cast off to sea in a casket to be ‘foderit’ [fostered] elsewhere. Here we also see children as ‘affective agents’ — possessed of emotion.

In the legend of ‘Theodera’ [St Theodora], the titular saint says goodbye to the child, whom she has fostered for nine years, when she knows death is near:

for-thi the barne scho tuk hir til,

& kyssit It with gud wil,

& sad: “dere sone, wit thu

That I mon pas of this lyf nou;

Thar-for to god I commend the,

That he thi helpe & fayre be.

& thu til hme pray Ithandly

& faste, as thu ma, gudely,

& to this brethyre of this abbay

Thou serwe treuly, I the pray!’

and then she took the child to her/And kissed him with good intention/and said, ‘Dear son, you need to know that I’m going to pass out of this life now/Therefore I commend you to God/that he help and look after you/and you have to pray very diligently to Him/ and intently and excellently/and I pray that you must faithfully serve the brothers of this abbey!

Later, the child is discovered grieving, or ‘gretand’ [weeping] beside her lifeless body. Even though she’s been received into the community of saints, she is still dead to the child. That irreducible knowledge registers poignantly in the child’s instinctive response towards Theodera — new-made saint but in that moment his surrogate-mother and carer.

This is an apt time to return to the little boy who plays on the shore in the life of Mary Magdalene. I suggested that this was significant in portraying a child instinctively at play. As we saw, this was also a celebratory moment for his father: the ‘resurrected’ child is the sign of new life and joy where previously he had been the bearer of death. In this earlier part of the story, the dying child is not portrayed as a static emblem or allegory but rendered in a vividly poignant way. Unable to care for the ‘yonge barne’ [little child], the king lays him to rest in the grave of his mother, at the breast which cannot nurture:

For to make a gannand grawe;

Thar-for thai socht & fand a cawe,

& of It in the maste priwe place

Thai lad that body, that ded was,

In riche atyre & dressit wele,

Wappyt in a furrit mantele;

& layde the chylde til hir breste,

Hed & mouthe the papis neste;

& gretan sar thine passit away, […]

They looked for a suitable grave, and found a cave, and in the most secluded place they laid the dead body; [she was] beautifully attired and dressed, wrapped in a fur mantle; they laid the child to her breast, his head and mouth nearest to her nipples, and then they moved away in tears […]

The loss of the child, as well as his mother, precedes (and, indeed, is the precondition of) the king’s penitential journey to the holy land and the visitation by St Peter. Both journey and vision bolster his wavering faith but the ‘lost child’ hauntingly remains an imagistic and emotional memory throughout this part of the narrative before the final reunion scene. The young boy is therefore a symbolically charged figure, invested with a great deal of the text’s spiritual and emotional energies.

I would suggest, however, that this isn’t a reductive symbolism. Whilst he is the site of affect, he is also an ‘affective agent’, possessed of emotion himself. We watch the little boy withdraw when he sees the father (whom of course he doesn’t recognise), and the boat’s crew, approach the shore:

& quhare his modir lay he socht,

& crape vndir hyre mantil rath,

In hope to hyd hym fra thar [the shipmen and father] skath….

and he sought out where his mother lay/and in distress crept under her cloak/hoping to hide himself from the danger they might bring

The men too are afraid, the story notes, unsure what they are seeing. Following the little boy, they find him seeking intuitive refuge in the body of his mother, laid out as she was when they left her:

Thai lyftyt upe the mantil-lape,

& fand the child at the pape,

lyand rycht as he sukit had,

bot he cane gret, for he was red.

They lifted up the flap/hem of the cloak/and found the child at the breast/lying as if he were sucking [at her breast] but he was crying because he was afraid.

This is another poignant and powerful visual moment, bringing the figures of child and mother into fetishised and distressing focus. But it leads to the further discovery that the Magdalene has assumed the role of foster mother, nourishing the child throughout the king’s two-year absence. He thanks her simply: ‘Thu has me gyffine this litil knafe,/& fed hyme twa yere one this hil.’ [You have given me this little fellow/whom you’ve fed for two years upon this hillside]. And, feeling ‘sa Ioyful’ [so joyful], he kisses ‘his sone, that he na cuth fyn’ [he kisses his son so much that he can hardly stop].

We don’t know for sure for whom these Scots saints’ lives were composed. They are likely to have been popular, being based on the most widely collected and translated collection of Latin saints’ lives in medieval Europe, Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend. And the fact that they exist in the vernacular already suggests a lay audience given the official position of Latin in the church. We know, too, that vernacular female saints’ lives were often intended, or held a particular appeal, for women; these saintly women were not only ‘aspirational role models’ but in their earthly struggles potential sources of emotional and empathic affinity. (Interestingly, a woman’s name — ‘Katherine Grahame’ — is inscribed in c17th century hand in the manuscript, suggesting one of its post-medieval owners).

I therefore wonder whether the particular narrative care with which these particular lives expound grief for lost children, and the grief of children, might be a consequence of this. This is not intended in a reductively essentialist way; grief is not exclusively gendered. I also recognise the problematic way in which these texts portray ‘mothering’, and the ideally productive female body as the adulatory locus of nurture, both physical and spiritual. Indeed, all the texts briefly touched upon here may only reflect back the prescriptive, authoritarian nature of models of youth and adolescence demanded by society, culture, and religion.

But if we look carefully in the corners or margins of these Scottish texts, we can also find surprisingly attentive configurations of play and creativity. And imaginatively they help us grow closer to understanding those relationships of being and belonging, love and grief, felt reciprocally between children and those who care for them.

This post written by Sarah

[i] As Takami Matsuda suggests in her study, Death and Purgatory in Middle English Didactic Poetry (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997) ,p. 184.

References

Legends of the Saints in the Scottish dialect of the fourteenth century, edited by W.M. Metcalfe, Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh, 1896), 3 vols

Ratis Raving and other early Scots poems on morals, edited by R. Girvan, Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh, 1939)

‘The Spectakle of Luf’ and the Marian poem ascribed to Walter Kennedy can be found in The Asloan Manuscript: a Miscellany of Verse and Prose, Scottish Text Society, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1923-5)

Elizabeth Ewan and Janey Nugent (eds), Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)

Elizabeth Ewan and Janey Nugent (eds), Children and Youth in Premodern Scotland (Martlesham: The Boydell Press, 2015)

Aspects of this work were first presented at the symposium, ‘Parenthood and Childhood in the Middle Ages’, University of Edinburgh 8-9 October 2015. My thanks to Dr Rachel Delman and Dr Phoebe Linton, co-organisers of the event, and all those who attended it for their advice and suggestions.

Book Launch

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Sarah Dunnigan

SELCIE is delighted to announce that a new publication – The Land of Story-Books: Scottish Children’s Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Sarah Dunnigan and Shu-Fang Lai (Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2019) – will be launched on Friday 14th June at 5pm at Edinburgh University, kindly hosted in association with the Department of English Literature’s SWINC [Scottish Writing in the Nineteenth Century], alongside the launch of Edinburgh University Press’s Commemorating Peterloo. Please join us for this joint celebration.

Location: 50 George Square, second floor, in the space outside room 2.43.

Please contact Sarah for more information: s.m.dunnigan@ed.ac.uk

For details on the 1819 symposium which precedes the event, see http://www.swinc.englit.ed.ac.uk/events/scotland-in-1819/

This collection of twenty essays is the first extensive study of the range and diversity of Scottish children’s literature in Gaelic, Scots, and English, encompassing chapbooks, poetry, popular fiction, fairy tales and more by both well-loved and unknown writers. It also includes a chapter by some of our very own SELCIE team on some treasures from the Museum of Childhood’s archive. Beautifully illustrated, it brings to life the materiality of children’s reading lives and culture in the period.

Dealing with Dragons, or learning to become one?

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Sarah Dunnigan

In today’s blogpost, Michelle Anjirbag shares a personal reflection about childhood ‘reading memories’ – the particular stories which have had a formative and longlasting influence, shaping who she was then and now….

My PhD might be on Disney and fairy tale adaptations now, but the princess I looked up to when I was younger (and still, now) was never found on the shelves of one of their stores, or in their animated films. I was about seven years old when I found the blue and grey and black hardcover books in my elementary school library: Patricia C. Wrede’s The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Inside their pages I met my earliest role models that didn’t walk out of folklore or history books: Princess Cimorene and King Kazul. Most of all I learned the one set of skills that has remained important throughout my life: how to deal with dragons. But more on that later.

The series is comprised of four books: Dealing with Dragons (1990), Searching for Dragons (1991), Calling on Dragons (1993), and Talking to Dragons (1985). Though it is now the last book in the series, Talking to Dragons was originally written as a standalone, and was followed up by the short story “The Improper Princess” in the Jane Yolen edited Spaceships and Spells collection – which then became the first 27 or so pages of Dealing with Dragons.

Cimorene was a princess who fenced, and who didn’t want to do what princesses were somehow meant to do, like learn the appropriate volume to scream when kidnapped by giants. She ran away to avoid an arranged marriage, sure, but at the same time, she found herself through being practical and useful, and using her mind no matter what people thought she ought to do. But, because I started with what is now thought of as the last book, I met Cimorene as a grown woman first. She was, in Wrede’s own words “strong, smart, self-assured, practical, curious, and willing to take on and solve all sorts of problems” (Wrede, iii).

Something about that resonated with me – it could have been the influence of a solidly New England upbringing where we’re taught to just get on with what’s needed, or a bit of the home my mom built, where pursuit of knowledge and skills were celebrated and there was no breakdown of gendered tasks. Likewise, the idea of a dragon kingdom where “King” was merely a job title and had nothing to do with gender, and where the king was practical and not just aloof and wise, or somehow evil or misunderstood, appealed to me. Either way, as a child with no concept of what a twisted fairy tale was, I really enjoyed the way Wrede played with tropes about princess, dragons, and the rules of fairy tales. It was fun to be able to pick through things and recognize them, especially as I read more vastly and returned to the books at different stages of my life.

Beyond Cimorene, though, I loved Kazul. She was the king; she ruled. She became the king of the dragons not because it was handed to her, but because, despite adverse situations, she proved herself. She was incredibly intelligent, she knew a bit of everything and had a library and treasure room too big to bother cataloguing herself. She recognized the value of others, the potential of someone who didn’t quite fit in. She knew her own mind and wasn’t apologetic about it; in short, she, too, reminded me of the kind of women who were in my life – as older generations of teachers, and community service coordinators, swimming instructors, and Girl Scout troop leaders – and who I could see pieces of my future self in. Women who got on with the business of living and leading and didn’t pay any mind to what they should or shouldn’t be able to do. They were doting grandmothers, stern taskmasters when necessary, and could do everything from bake and garden to manage carpentry and roofing and plumbing issues themselves if needed. They were resilient, they thrived both in the cold grey winters and the baking, basking summers of New England. And yes, in many ways, they dealt with dragons – if they weren’t the dragons themselves. I was lucky to find them both on and outside the pages; these women left their mark on a young girl, and I became stronger for it, and had that strength affirmed in both my internal and external life.

Michelle as a reader then, with her younger sister Ashley

… and now

Looking back on this series now, I’m happy to be able to still enjoy them, if not in the exact same way. Of course, now I know all of the references and all the tropes being played with. I have the knowledge to problematise the ways in which gender dynamics are not completely disrupted across the narrative, but also the knowledge to understand the nuanced space within which this kind of narrative still operates. I know at what point I’d like to see more of the narrative expanded in different ways, or interrogated. I know that we’ve both moved on from and need more of these sorts of stories.

But despite what I know, or think I might know, there still remains the wonder of discovery, the joy of growing up – and continuing to grow up – with books. The covers might have changed, and I might read deeper, but the only thing that has truly changed, is me. But nevertheless, I still see the threads of the woman I hoped I’d one day grow into in these books: self-assured, intelligent, eager to learn, capable, passionate, and fearless, and ready to push back against the wrongs and injustices of the world in a way that is fair and just. And thankfully, I continued to grow up with books – and with people – that never told me that this would be impossible.

Which leads us back to the beginning: learning how to deal with dragons. My positionality in any of the fields that I’ve worked in – be it academia, specialty running, outdoor education, or hyperlocal journalism – means that I hear “no” a lot. I hear “you can’t”, “you’re not supposed to”, and “someone like you shouldn’t” or “someone like you can’t”, or perhaps the most telling: “someone like you should be more careful” about what I think or feel and how and how loudly I say it. I hear about the ceilings I will hit, and how much harder I will have to work – and I see it in the lives and the careers of the women who have gone before me. But importantly, I see women who meet the noes, the cannots, and the nevers, and pressed on. They answer them with “so whats?”, and “I wills”.

Because they do these things – and because writers like Patricia C. Wrede and her generation of female fantasists dared to imagine women who were indomitable, who ruled as kings, who were themselves the wise dragons and witchy women filled with strength and curiosity – I can sit at the University of Cambridge as an ethnic-religious minority woman, eldest child of an immigrant single mother, on the opposite side of the ocean from home. And sitting here, I can not only imagine the ways in which we can be better, but I know I have the will and the strength to be part of the process of getting there.

Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing with Dragons: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles Book One (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 1990).

Michelle Anya Anjirbag is a PhD student at the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature at Cambridge, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Having earned her MSc at the University of Edinburgh and her BA at the University of Connecticut, her research interests include adaptations of fairy tales and cross-period approaches to narrative transmission across cultures and societies, and her current research is on depictions of diversity in Disney’s fairy tale adaptations from 1989 through the present.

A Thinking Space

Posted on June 22, 2018 by Sarah Dunnigan

In this blogpost, Niamh Keenan presents a personal perspective on what the Museum of Childhood exhibition, Growing Up With Books, means — and how it can be a space for our personal reflection on the books that made us, and a way of connecting us with others.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you should be aware that the SELCIE exhibition had its launch on 31st of May. As one of the team, I was allowed to bring a plus one to the evening and I brought a person who was the one really to introduce me to the world of reading. My choice of guest was my mother. How could I not bring the woman who got rid of the television at home and instead insisted on books, with stories on tape being the order of the day during supper time? Being my parent, she was always going to insist how special the exhibition was but it was apparent to me that she was actually intrigued by the nature of the books on display inside the cabinets and how they had been curated. We had a long discussion about that.

While my mother grew up in 1950s Co. Antrim, and I am an Anglo Irish baby from the 1990s, we shared many books that defined us. One such example is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, found in the Other Worlds case; it is extremely close to both of our hearts and yet we appreciate different facets of it. Her funny bone is tickled with the jokes regarding logic and the mathematics that underpin it and I am brought to laughter by the nonsense verses.

This is what makes SELCIE so powerful, namely that it brings into focus how books create a sense of commonality, despite the threads of difference that, inevitably, run amongst us. At the launch, and now as the exhibition runs, visitors mill around and, rather than contain themselves as individual members of the public, anonymous to each other, men and women, families with young children, older couples, exchange reminisces about how this book meant something significant during his or her formative years or about that that volume is akin to one that provoked a visceral reaction when a child.

The quotation attributed to Edmund Wilson that ‘no two persons ever read the same book’ has a lot of truth to it and yet, in some ways, it is a rather superficial comment. It says nothing about how it is through these points of dissimilarity that texts impart to readers the attribute of common understanding.

There may be truth to the statement that we are more divided than ever and yet there is no need for fear in a world where people are open to literature. Books have the ability to bring people together to discuss differences in a completely non-hostile way, exploring who we are and why we are that way inclined. The SELCIE exhibition itself, just as with the volumes in it, provides a chance to look backwards, take stock and project forwards ideas and opinions. One can come to an understanding of another through his or her reading and interpretation and, from there, have discussions on the bases of the findings. Akin to a university tutorial, where various students express what a particular text means to them, the SELCIE exhibition creates a special space, where each person can explore what the text or the components of a case awaken in him or her.

I speak as someone who is fully aware of her bias when I recommend that you, dear reader of the SELCIE blog, visit our exhibition in the Museum of Childhood. Once there, perceive yourself through the texts and then engage with the inner world of another visitor.

This post written by Niamh

For events inspired by the Growing Up With Books exhibition at the Museum of Childhood this summer, please see here for more details! The SELCIE team will also be at the Museum in July and would love to hear your own reflections, reminiscences, and reflections about your childhood reading! More information coming soon!

The First World War Through the Eyes of a Child

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Danielle Howarth

There are many elements of the Museum of Childhood collections that reflect what was happening in the world at the time they were made – fashion can be followed in the costume collection, technology in toy manufacture and popular film stars in dolls and magazines.

The book collection, however, offers a unique insight into not just what adults were communicating with children about the world, but also what the child thought about what was happening and what they were being told. Through inscriptions, drawings and hand-made publications by children we have access to their perspective on the world around them. The Museum holds a series of magazines called The Pierot made by a group of children across Britain in 1910-1914.

The authors were spread across the UK, with given addresses for Essex, Edinburgh, near Bristol, Yorkshire, County Down, County Derry, Fife, Suffolk, Kent and Hampshire. The magazine was circulated by post, the cost of the stamp being the subscription fee, and each child would add their own contributions, remarks and advertisements, before passing it on to the next contributor. Those who held onto the magazine for more than 3 days were charged a fine of one pence for each additional day, which would be passed on to Dr Barnado Homes. There is an awareness of charitable acts represented throughout the magazines. It was common at this time to encourage children to raise money for charitable organisations and be aware of those less fortunate than themselves.

Seen throughout the editions of the magazine is the influence of the popularity of fiction and romantic stories, an interest in fashion with colour illustrations in watercolours, and poetry. The magazines are a creative output for the children, and they are also seeking validation from their peers on their efforts with pages for comments and votes for the best submissions at the back of the magazine – comparable to ‘likes’ on social media today.

The Camp at Lyndhurst written by Miss R Dent of Beacon Corner, Burley, Hampshire, on the edge of the New Forrest near the village of Lyndhurst, is a perfect example of the other subjects in the magazine, that of the children having an awareness of world events and an interest in them. As well as this article, there are several other references to the ongoing conflict in this edition and an advertisement that offers the sale of wooden toys with funds raised going to the Belgian Relief Fund.

The war had started in July of 1914, and by the autumn when this issue was circulated, the true horrors of what was to come had not even been grasped by the adults, let alone filtered down to children’s consciousness.

The Camp at Lyndhurst is written as a jolly tale of chatting to the soldiers and the men are making jokes about what will happen at the front – was this what the men naively believed war was to be like or were they making the best of it for the benefit of the children? The author describes the landscape: ‘The whole of the moor and links are covered with hundreds and hundreds of tents, soldiers are to be seen everywhere & the road which runs through the camp is blocked by every kind of traffic. Last week the 7^th division was temporarily encamped there previous to starting for the front via Southampton – they were delayed owing to the presence of German submarines in the Channel.’ This shows a good level of knowledge about the activities at the camp and the shipment of troops, gleaned from newspapers or adult conversations.

‘The first time we went over to see them we took about 100 appleswhich we threw to any soldiers we saw along the road. One apple was badly thrown & it knocked off one of the men’s caps and hit him on the head A passing soldier said I hope the bullets won’t do that! Everyman we asked if they were looking forward to going to the front answered with faces lighting up “I should think so” or “The sooner the better”’. The author goes on to describe what batallions were in the camp, that they were marching in full kit for hours, what they wore, how there were big guns covered up and they were practising fixing bayonets: ‘It made one realize how very near the war was.’

There is a fascinating postscript saying that since writing the article the Scottish troops had left for the front and have been replaced in the camp by Indian troops, reflecting the fact that soldiers from all over the British Empire were brought into the conflict. The author describes in detail what they are wearing, how they ride bareback, and that their shoes were heelless. It is possible they hadn’t been given their uniforms for the front yet and were still wearing clothes more suited to the warmer climate of India: ‘They nearly all have bare legs and heelless slippers and they look rather cold.’ They are described as wearing turbans and were probably part of the 130,000 Sikhs who saw active service in the conflict. Although accounting for just 2% of the population of British India at the time, the Sikhs made up more than 20% of the British Indian Army at the outbreak of hostilities.

On page 29 of the magazine, Elegy of a Dying War-Horse by C. Turton shows a more realistic idea of what war must be like – ‘All around us lie bodies of dead men and dying, Some passive, and others contorted with pain, And one Highland laddie – a mere boy of twenty, Is groaning, and moans for his “mither and hame”‘. The poem speaks of the hot sun in the Indian valley. The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson and tales of Clive of India would have been familiar to children at this time and would inspire heroic ideas about British soldiers and battles in faraway lands.

This September to October 1914 edition of The Pierot is the last one in the Museum’s collection. It isn’t clear if this was the last one made or not, but certainly as the authors got older their interests would have moved on. The magazines offer a wonderful insight into the lives of the children who contributed – their interests, concerns and creative talents – as well as a window into the world around them.

This post was written by Lyn

The Art of Labeling

Posted on March 2, 2018 by Sarah Dunnigan

As preparation for Growing Up With Books, opening at The Museum of Childhood on June 1st, busily continues, Niamh presents a personal reflection on the art of writing about the collection’s treasures.

This week finds the SELCIE team typing up museum-appropriate labels for our respective cabinets at the exhibition. This activity has presented me with an excellent opportunity to learn a new skill, that of writing for an audience made up of the general public. So very often I find that I have to check myself as my writing veers towards verbosity with its colour verging on purple. This self-censoring grounds my prose and prevents it from flying off into swirls of academic affectation. The most important aspect for me is that the tone is appropriate for the readership. This exhibition is all about children’s literature and therefore it aims to cover the gamut of ages, with texts suitable for little ones as well as for more adult readers. That being so, writing in a register more appropriate for a monograph would exclude a great number of the visitors. A child wants to know what he or she is seeing but does not need to be drowned in information. As such, a happy medium has to be struck.

Along with Sarah Dunnigan, I am in charge of the Other World cabinets. One of my research interests is fairy tales and another is national identity in the arts and therefore I can very easily find myself going to town with details that would interest only a very specific group. This occasion was no exception but, thankfully, I managed to notice where I was going and rein myself in before getting too far down the rabbit hole. No one likes extreme didacticism! Lyn Stevens has been so very helpful with providing museum guidelines, as well as numerous hints and tips on what to do. The most useful trick Lyn furnished me with is to think of the case as a story and the label as the narration of that tale. I absolutely adore creative writing but this activity is no mean feat. I have been trying to find a story to tell. It took me a while to narrow down the many ideas that I had bouncing around in my head. I decided that I wanted the viewer to expand their appreciation of what was already present in their literary knowledge, whether it be about authors already famous in Scotland or about the style of illustrations, already recognisable. Consequently, I have chosen to talk about … well … you, dear reader, shall have to come to our displays and find out. With that enigmatic ending, I am going to finish this blogpost. I do so hope that you visit our exhibition, which is opening very soon now.

This post written by Niamh

Dear Mrs Shillabeer

Posted on November 17, 2017 by Danielle Howarth

While working in the book archives of Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood, we sometimes find books that hold traces of their authors. This usually takes the form of an authorial inscription, as is the case with the charming Mr Barnacles and His Boat book that appeared in a previous blog post. It is also always very exciting when we find traces of illustrators, as was the case recently when we found this 1960 copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses:

Child's Garden of Verses Cover

This edition is illustrated by Mary Shillabeer, who was based in Edinburgh. She was known both for her children’s book illustrations and for her beautiful marionette puppets, which you can see here and here, for example. Our own Museum of Childhood here in Edinburgh even holds some of her puppets! She also sketched and painted Edinburgh’s Rehearsal Orchestra for many years; you can see some of those paintings here. The book we found certainly shows how skilled she was:

Shillabeer illustrations

However, the most interesting thing about this book is that it was owned by Mary Shillabeer herself. Tucked into the front cover is a letter from Martin Dent, the publisher. It is addressed to “Mrs Shillabeer” at her address in Edinburgh:

Letter to Mrs Shillabeer

The letter contains the publisher’s opinion about a “question of colour”; he states that he “will happily leave it for you to put it right in whatever way you wish after Christmas”. This is a lovely little glimpse into the life and work of this talented illustrator that we were very happy to find. As the season approaches for us to start wishing each other “a very happy Christmas”, we hope that you find this as interesting as we do!

Shillabeer illustrations

This post written by Danielle

From the Library of Mr. D.A.W.

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Danielle Howarth

At times it is clear in our archives that a group of books was donated by the same person or institution, and often they have a paper trail of some sort – a letter included in the book or a note made by the librarian who received them as a donation. Many children sign their name or even their addresses at times, and these inscriptions give us a sense of the memories of their childhood preserved within the book. One book ‘collector’ in particular has come to our attention in bits and pieces throughout the two years that we have been uncovering and cataloguing the books in the archives, a mysterious man by the name of David, who signs his books with his initials: D.A.W.

The first book of D.A.W. that caught my attention is a beautiful copy of Hans Andersen’s fairy tales, and though the cover is elegant, the treasure of this item is truly found within. Inside of the front cover there are various newspaper clippings about Hans Andersen’s fairy tales and their reception in England, and glued carefully onto the first few blank pages are postcards from Copenhagen with scribbles of dates and thoughts about them in the hand of D.A.W. Carefully tucked under the front cover is our first clue as to who the owner of this book might have been, a small note written from a loving aunt to her ‘darling David’:

‘June 2: 36
Darling David
Many happy (underlined 7 times!) returns of your birthday. It is lovely to be five. Presently you will get a lovely Fairy Book called Hans Anderson. It is from me. And I do hope you will like it especially the pictures which are drawn by a friend of mine. I hope Mummy will bring you to stay here. We must arrange it. Many x x x from Auntie Gwen.’

Hans Andersen Newspaper & Letter

I immediately fell in love with this book, and imagined the story of the 5-year-old boy David as his eyes were opened to the magic of fairy stories, and later, the 18-year-old David who ventured to Copenhagen, saw the statue of den lille Havfrue (The Little Mermaid) of whom he had read about from a young age, and bought a postcard which he then pasted into this book. Even now, I like to imagine the way in which this book would have shaped the life of David, and how he may have even read it to his own children or grandchildren.

Hans Anderson Mermaid Postcard

Recently, David’s scrawled ‘D.A.W. 1937’ popped up again in one of the many copies of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame that we have in the collection, which, if we follow the pattern laid out by the first book, may have been a gift for his sixth birthday.

DAW Inscription

While it was thrilling to find another book from D.A.W.’s library, a final book fell into our hands, from the same box as The Wind in the Willows, which provided us with a further glimpse into the life of David: Grahame’s The Golden Age. This book did not have ‘D.A.W.’ written in it, but rather, on facing blank pages were written two inscriptions. On the left page is written: ‘From Auntie Gwen and Uncle Jim, for Edna’, and on the right page: ‘To David, With love from Mummy, June 3^rd, 1944’. As this date (presumably David’s birthday) is the day after the letter found in the Hans Andersen book, I am sure this book would have belonged to D.A.W. Auntie Gwen must have gifted this book to David’s mother, Edna, who then, for David’s 13^th birthday, gifted it to him, adding to his growing collection of beloved books.

The two inscriptions

The discovery of these three books provides a special lens through which we can glimpse the life of one man and the profound impact that these two women, his Auntie Gwen and his mother Edna, would have had on his childhood and his education. How many of us have books like these, books that were gifted and then influenced the trajectory of our lives through their stories, their illustrations, and their messages of magic, love, and friendship? Though David’s books were long forgotten in storage, his childhood is preserved in their pages, and as my finger traces his initials and unfolds the carefully pasted newspaper clippings, I will remember him and cherish his life and the gift he has given to SELCIE: an appreciation for nostalgia and the importance of growing up with books.

‘All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.’ – The Wind in the Willows

The ‘Wind in the Willows’ book owned by David

This post written by Morgan

Scotland's Early Literature for Children Initiative

Category Archives: readers & book owners