{"id":443,"date":"2017-04-21T13:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/?p=443"},"modified":"2017-05-09T20:40:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T20:40:20","slug":"443","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/2017\/04\/21\/443\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapbooks for Children: the missing link in the history of Scottish children’s literature?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"little-jack\"

‘The Entertaining and Instructive History of Little Jack’. Courtesy of GUL Special Collections<\/p><\/div>\n

Children\u2019s literature has a long history of being \u2018entertaining and instructing\u2019. I\u2019ve taken this week\u2019s blog title from a specific chapbook: The Entertaining and Instructing History of Little Jack<\/em>.\u00a0 This copy belongs to Glasgow University Library\u2019s Special Collections, and I am very grateful for their permission to include some images from their Scottish children\u2019s chapbooks here.<\/p>\n

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The story of Aladdin was a favourite amongst Scottish chapbook makers! Courtesy of GUL Special Collections.<\/p><\/div>\n

I first came across children\u2019s chapbooks myself while working alongside David Hopkin, on chapbooks and broadsides for adults. As part of a teaching project, we digitised two hundred items from the David Murray collection: http:\/\/www.gla.ac.uk\/0t4\/~dumfries\/files\/layer2\/glasgow_broadside_ballads\/.<\/u><\/a>\u00a0 I noticed one or two titles which might appeal to children\u2014a version of \u2018Cinderella\u2019<\/strong>, for instance, as \u2018Catskin\u2019<\/strong>, and mentions of pieces such as \u2018Aladdin, or the Magical Lamp\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"little

A selection of beautiful little chapbooks. Courtesy of GUL Special Collections<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the more sensational chapbooks produced by the Glasgow company, J. Lumsden. Courtesy of GUL Special Collections<\/p><\/div>\n

Later, I discovered that some chapbook printers specialised in materials for children. James Lumsden & Sons of Glasgow, for instance, active between 1783 and 1892 produced a variety of material aimed at children, including \u2018dabbities\u2019, or coloured pictures\u2014children would stick a pin into a book and if they found a picture, they won it. They also printed \u2018Toy Books\u2019. These are small, around 8 inches long by 4 wide. There are Fairy tales and well known children\u2019s tales we would recognise today: Cinderella, Jack the Giant Killer, the story of Aladdin<\/strong>. They also printed Abridgements, for instance of Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em><\/strong>, and sensational tales, such as Obi, or Three-Fingered Jack, <\/em>dealing with a Jamaican outlaw of the late nineteenth century. There is a large set, too, of moral and didactic tales, including the \u2018Entertaining and Instructing Histories\u2019 of my title.<\/p>\n

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This is an under-collected, and under-researched type of chapbook literature\u2014perhaps, because of their intended audiences, they were particularly ephemeral. With a few exceptions\u2014Walter Scott\u2019s library at Abbotsford contains over one hundred children\u2019s titles, some from his own childhood\u2014Scottish children\u2019s chapbooks are underrepresented in what can be really sizeable collections.\u00a0 Moreover, the only substantial consideration of Scottish cheap print literature for children, to date, is an unpublished M.Phil dissertation by Kirsteen Connor, \u2018Youth\u2019s poison?\u00a0 The creation and evolution of children\u2019s chapbooks in Scotland, 1800-1870\u2019 (2010): http:\/\/theses.gla.ac.uk\/1938\/<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

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Scottish children\u2019s chapbooks raise more questions than they answer. Parallels could be drawn, for instance, between the more humorous illustrated chapbooks and the work of Julia Donaldson, between tales of adventure and John Buchan and, perhaps, between some stories of dark magic and the work of J.K. Rowling. \u00a0I\u2019m not going to suggest that either writer has a deep knowledge of chapbook literature but I do wonder if, perhaps, children\u2019s chapbooks are a missing link between early children\u2019s books in Scotland, and children\u2019s literature today.<\/p>\n

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\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\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<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This post written by Valentina<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00a0 Children\u2019s literature has a long history of being \u2018entertaining and instructing\u2019. I\u2019ve taken this week\u2019s blog title from a specific chapbook: The Entertaining and Instructing History of Little Jack.\u00a0 This copy belongs to Glasgow University Library\u2019s Special Collections, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,13,51,15,6,33,18,35,21,20],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boys","category-girls","category-chapbooks","category-education-learning","category-fairy-tales","category-european-folktales","category-history","category-illustrated-books","category-scotland","category-scots","tag-chapbooks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/selcie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}