![\"Flyleaf](\"http:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/files\/2016\/09\/Peter-Pan-e1484563501514.jpg\")
<\/a>Flyleaf from a mid-c20th inscribed copy of J.M. Barrie’s *Peter Pan* from the Museum archive<\/p><\/div>\n
SELCIE<\/em> (Scotland\u2019s Early Literature for Children Initiative) is a collaborative research project, founded by Valentina Bold and Sarah Dunnigan in 2016, dedicated to exploring Scotland\u2019s forgotten history of children\u2019s literature.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Danielle, Morgan & Joanna – in the Museum archive and amongst its treasure store of books!<\/p><\/div>\n It has grown to encompass a dedicated team of postgraduate researchers and volunteers (for who we all are, see under ‘People<\/em>‘) who are working with Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood.<\/strong> Our consortium brings together researchers, scholars, teachers, and students interested in this rich but neglected heritage. We seek to renew and inspire attention not only to the most famous Scottish creators of imaginative children\u2019s literature such as J.M. Barrie, R.L. Stevenson, and George MacDonald but also to bring to light new voices and texts from the past \u2014 in English, Scots, and Gaelic from printed and oral traditions, from different regions of Scotland, and from the neglected historical wealth of Scottish women’s writing\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 who write for and about children. Our work is also concerned with the readers, owners, and collectors of children’s books in Scotland, and with what the material culture of this heritage can tell us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Danielle and Morgan discover a much loved Winnie-the-Pooh pop-up book!<\/p><\/div>\n The owner of this Victorian nursery rhymes collection has been doing some colouring-in!<\/p><\/div>\n Our major project of 2018 was an exhibition held at\u00a0Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood in 2018<\/strong> which will showcase for the first time the treasures from the Museum\u2019s book archives (see under ‘Exhibition and Events’<\/em>).\u00a0Our blog and twitter feed shared our passion and curiosity for the fairy tale collections, adventure stories, picture books, folktales, chapbooks, and encyclopaedias (to name only a few things) as we discover them in the Museum\u2019s City Chambers basement archive. Loved and cherished once upon a time, these texts also tell stories about the young Scottish readers and book-owners who once held them in their hands. Our posts from the vault are not only about the most precious, fascinating, and quirky of these finds but the little imprints left in them \u2014 inscriptions and dedications, handmade bookmarks and flowers \u2014 of their readers\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n “Santa Claus has been looking for Eric and sends this book with much love. By Grandfather Greybeard. His old friend. Xmas 1909”<\/p><\/div>\n Dedications and inscriptions help to evoke a book’s history and its once-upon-a-time reader(s)<\/p><\/div>\n Danielle Howarth<\/strong>, SELCIE\u2019s Principal Research Assistant<\/strong>, introduces the archiving project and forthcoming exhibition on our Homepage.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ______________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n One of many little, and beautifully illustrated, c19th chapbooks from the Museum’s collection<\/p><\/div>\n SELCIE<\/strong> aims to increase knowledge, awareness and understanding of Scotland\u2019s heritage of children\u2019s literature. Through this dedicated website and our various collaborations and initiatives \u2014 building on the success of Valentina and Sarah\u2019s conference, \u2018Scottish Children\u2019s Literature\u2019<\/strong>, held in Dumfries in June 2015 in collaboration with Peter Pan Moat Brae<\/strong>, and our current work with Edinburgh\u2019s Museum of Childhood \u2014 we seek to bring together academics, writers, museum people, readers and lovers of children\u2019s literature. The SELCIE<\/strong> site will build a database of people and resources in the area, communicate knowledge and information about work and projects in development, and nurture new exchanges and affiliations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n About a girl, a pixie &\u00a0some water-lily frogs…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n SELCIE’s banner image <\/strong>is taken from the front cover of one of the Museum’s loveliest copies of Hans Christian Andersen\u2019<\/strong>s Fairy Tales Told for Children<\/em>. This is an image\u00a0of Thumbelina<\/strong>, the first\u00a0tale in his second collection, Eventyr, Fortalte for B\u00f8rn, <\/em>published in Copenhagen in 1835.<\/p>\n Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina, adrift on a waterlily amidst toads and pixies…<\/p><\/div>\n The story of a tiny girl, born out of a tulip-flower, the image captures the moment of her riverbank encounter with the mother toad who insists that she marries her son \u2026\u00a0but just before she\u2019s set free by the little fishes to sail onto a fairytale ending where true love grows through kindness.\u00a0 There’s another Andersen connection to Edinburgh: a lover of Romantic Scottish literature, and a visitor to Edinburgh\u00a0in 1847, he described the Old Town (now home to the Museum of Childhood) as ‘so picturesque and magnificent, so old, so murky, so distinctive’!\u00a0 (qtd in Paul Binding’s Hans Christian Andersen. European Witness<\/em> [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014], p. 269).<\/p>\n SELCIE is very grateful to Dave Oulton of the College Web Team for creating and designing this website, and for photographing the Andersen volume, our Twitter owl, and many other books and artefacts unearthed from the Museum’s vault.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SELCIE (Scotland\u2019s Early Literature for Children Initiative) is a collaborative research project, founded by Valentina Bold and Sarah Dunnigan in 2016, dedicated to exploring Scotland\u2019s forgotten history of children\u2019s literature. It has grown to encompass … Continue reading <\/a>
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