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A cosy image from one of our favourite illustrated pop-up books, with a little library in the corner!<\/p><\/div>\n
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The books in the collection range from 17th Latin grammar guides to the classics of 20th<\/sup> century children\u2019s fiction. The special collection has been categorised as pre-1850, and includes titles such as Claudius Mauger\u2019s French Grammar With Additions <\/em>(1698), Andrew Tooke\u2019s The Pantheon, Representing the Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Gods<\/em> (1791), Thomas Mavor\u2019s Elements of Natural History <\/em>(1807), and Anna Laetitia Barbauld\u2019s The History of a Goldfinch<\/em> (1808).<\/p>\n Some books in the collection contain particularly interesting paratextual features, such as bookplates, inscriptions, and marginalia. A significant number of late c19th and early c20th century books were originally awarded as educational prizes to children, not just in local Edinburgh schools, from further afield including Papa Westray in the Orkney islands). The wealth of books published by Scottish publishing houses \u2014 for example, Nelson & Sons, Blackie, Gall & Inglis, Nimmo Hay & Mitchell, to name only a few \u2014 are a reminder of the key role which Scotland played in the production of children\u2019s books in the c19th and 20th<\/sup> centuries. The collection also includes Victorian picture books, school text books, pop-up and mechanical books, ABC books, poetry and nursery rhyme books, as well as texts which can be categorised under the following genres.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fiction<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n The Museum of Childhood\u2019s book collection is particularly rich in women writers, many of whom wrote specifically for girl readers, particularly from the late-Victorian era and the early 20th<\/sup> century. Angela Brazil\u2019s school stories portray girlhood trails of school and friendships are represented in the collection, as are the school stories of Scottish writer Dorita Fairlie Bruce. The books of Irish writer and editor of the girls\u2019 magazine Atalanta<\/em> L. T. Meade (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith) are also in abundance in the collection. Meade published hundreds of books for young readers, and many of these are contained within the museum\u2019s book collection.<\/p>\n Scottish women writers represented in the collection include Jessie M. Saxby and Annie S. Swan. English writers include Ellinor Davenport Adams, Grace Aguilar, Juliana Horatia Ewing, Mary Louisa Molesworth [\u2018Mrs Molesworth\u2019], and A. L. O. E (\u2018A Lady of England\u2019, or Charlotte Maria Tucker). The books of Louisa May Alcott are found in abundance The \u2018Pansy\u2019 book series by Pansy (American author Isabelle Macdonald Aulden) are also present in the collection.<\/p>\n There are also many stories of adventure aimed at boy readers, including those by the English novelist and war correspondent George Alfred Henty and Scottish writer John Buchan. The collection contains many of the novels of the prolific Scottish adventure author R. M. Ballantyne. Adventure stories by Herbert Strang, which was the pseudonym of two English authors, George Herbert Ely and Charles James L’Estrange are also represented in the collection.<\/p>\n The collection contains books which might be considered \u2018classics\u2019 of the children\u2019s literature genre. These were mostly published during the first golden age of children\u2019s literature, which is generally regarded as beginning in 1865 with the publication of Lewis Carroll\u2019s Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> and ending around 1920. These books include Frances Hodgson Burnett\u2019s Little Lord Fauntleroy <\/em>(1885), L. M. Montgomery\u2019s Anne of Green Gables <\/em>(1908), Anna Sewell\u2019s Black Beauty <\/em>(1877), Thomas Hughes\u2019 Tom Brown\u2019s School Days <\/em>(1857), Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s Treasure Island <\/em>(1882), J. M. Barrie\u2019s Peter and Wendy <\/em>(1911); Kenneth Grahame\u2019s The Wind in the Willows <\/em>(1908); George MacDonald\u2019s At the Back of the North Wind<\/em> (1871). <\/em>Some notable exceptions which date from much earlier include Daniel Defoe\u2019s Robinson Crusoe<\/em> (1719) and John Bunyan\u2019s The Pilgrim\u2019s Progress <\/em>(1678), both of which were hugely popular with child readers and were reproduced in abundant editions throughout the 19th century.<\/p>\n Adaptations and abridgement suitable for child readers are also a feature of the book collection. These allowed difficult reading material to be communicated to a young audience. There is an edition of Edith Nesbit\u2019s Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare <\/em>(1907) as well as Lamb\u2019s Tales from Shakespeare <\/em>(1807) by brother and sister duo Charles and Mary Lamb. <\/em>There is also Ivanhoe, re-told by Elizabeth Hardie <\/em>(1909) and Chaucer\u2019s Stories Simply Told <\/em>by Mary Seymour (1896).<\/p>\n There is a substantial selection of foreign-language fiction books. For example, the collection holds Les Enfants de la Mer<\/em>, a French translation of The Water Babies <\/em>by Charles Kingsley, part of a series of translations published by Nelson c.1920, which also includes Cendrillon <\/em>(Cinderella<\/em>); folktale collections from Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere; two beautifully illustrated Japanese books (of the folktales Momotaro<\/em> and The Grateful Crane<\/em> by Masakazu Kuwata from 1965).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fairy tales <\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n There are many beautiful editions from the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> centuries of classical fairytale collections by Charles Perrault, the Grimms, and Hans Christian Andersen, as well as those famously published by Andrew Lang as the Coloured Fairy Books<\/em>. There are lesser known collections too. Wilhelm Hauff was another German collector of fairy tales; Hauff\u2019s Fairy Tales<\/em> (1903) which was translated by Cicely McDonnell is included in the collection. Gaelic Fairy Tales <\/em>(1908) was published in Glasgow and written and illustrated by three women: Winifred M. Parker, Katharine Cameron and Rachel Ainslie Grant Duff. Donald A. Mackenzie\u2019s Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend <\/em>(1917) also offers Scottish mythology. Fairy tales from around the world are also represented, including Indian Fairy Stories <\/em>(1915) written by Scottish folklorist and writer Donald A. Mackenzie, Czech Folk Tales <\/em>by Josef Baudi\u0161 (1917) and The Hungarian Fairy-Book <\/em>(1913) by N\u00e1ndor Pog\u00e1ny.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chapbooks<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n The collection holds up to 100 chapbooks, mostly from the mid-to late-19th century, although many carry no date. Chapbooks were small, cheap, and popular editions of stories which were sold on the street from the early modern period, and appealed to both adults and children. Miniscule chapbooks in the collection include several published by John Golby Rusher, a printer who was based in Banbury, Oxfordshire. These Banbury chapbooks include \u2018Nursery Rhymes from the Royal Collection\u2019 and \u2018The Cries of Banbury and London and Celebrated Stories.\u2019 There are also some chapbooks from Alnwick-based publisher William Davison, such as \u2018The History of Robin Hood, Captain of the Merry Outlaws of Sherwood Forest\u2019 which would have cost one halfpenny. There are also a small number of chapbooks published in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Annuals<\/u> <\/strong><\/p>\n Many different annuals are represented in the collection, from the early-Victorian Peter Parley\u2019s Annual<\/em>, the brainchild of the American writer Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793-1860) to an extensive range of volumes of The Girls\u2019 Own Annual <\/em>and The Boys\u2019 Own Annual<\/em>. These annuals and their magazine counterparts were hugely popular with children in the later nineteenth century and early twentieth century. There is also Chatterbox<\/em>, Blackie\u2019s Children\u2019s Annual<\/em>, The School Girls\u2019 Own Annual<\/em>, The Captain: A Magazine for Boys and Old Boys<\/em>, Herbert Strang\u2019s Annual<\/em>, Mrs Strang\u2019s Annual for Girls<\/em> and Chums. <\/em><\/p>\n The popularity of annuals continued into the mid-20th century, and reflected youth fascination with celebrity, media and consumerism in their leisure culture.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Educational and instructive books<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n There is a large selection of grammar books in the collection, particularly in Latin, French and German. The collection contains various science books, particularly from the late 19th<\/sup> century. Women writers are also well represented; for example, there are books by Arabella B. Buckley, who was a science communicator. Her book The Fairy-Land of Science <\/em>(1878) was based on her touring lecture series. Other titles of interest include the geological book The Story of the Earth in Past Ages<\/em> by the paleontologist Harry Govier Seeley (1896) and The Elements of Natural History, chiefly intended for the use of schools and young persons <\/em>(1808) by the Scottish educationalist and writer, William Fordyce Mavor (1758-1837).<\/p>\n There is a large collection of books relating to religious and moral instruction. For example there is a selection of small Sunday school books, and improving fiction such as Emily Steele Elliot\u2019s Reuben Inch<\/em>, or the Power of Perseverance <\/em>(1889), Maria Edgeworth\u2019s Moral Tales for Young People <\/em>(1801) Joseph Johnson\u2019s Self Effort; Or, the True Method of Attaining Success in Life <\/em>(1883).<\/p>\n The collection contains various popular encyclopedias and educational miscellanies for children, including those edited by Arthur Mee, an English writer and journalist. He began writing The Children\u2019s Encyclopedia <\/em>as a magazine in 1908, and it was eventually published as a 10-volume series. In 1919 Mee began the newspaper for children, The Children\u2019s Newspaper<\/em>, which ran until 1865. There are also a significant number of Wonder Books, with titles such as The Wonder Book of Empire <\/em>and The Wonder Book of the Navy. <\/em>These books were published throughout the 1930s and 40s, by the publisher University of Knowledge Incorporated, based in Chicago.<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Lois Burke<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n For more information about the archive, please see:<\/em><\/p>\n Sarah Dunnigan and Danielle Howarth (eds), Growing Up With Books. A Little History of Children\u2019s Literature as seen through the Collection at Edinburgh\u2019s Museum of Childhood<\/em> (2018)<\/p>\n Lyn Stevens, \u2018The Story of the Museum of Childhood\u2019, in Dunnigan and Howarth (eds), pp. 9-13<\/p>\n Sarah Dunnigan and Shu-Fang Lai, The Land of StoryBooks. Scottish Children\u2019s Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century<\/em> (2019)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is estimated that the book collection in Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood archive numbers around 20,000 items, making it one of the most significant collections of children\u2019s books in Scotland. The collection represents Scottish writers, publishers, and readers, as well … Continue reading