Number of books known to be published

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Number of books known to be published for
children or read by them 1621 to 1740
17 entries 1741 to 1800 135 entries
Source Be Merry and Wise Origins of Childrens
Book Publishing In England, 1650-1850
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• Social Developments leading to aMarket for
• Childrens books
• Lockean Ideology John Newbery and His
  Successors
• The Popular Market Chapbooks and Forbidden
  Lore
• The Ideological versus the Popular
• New Tendencies in Childrens Books

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Social and economic factors conducive to the
rise of a book market for children in mid 18th
C England 1. Increase in the child
population 2. Rapid growth in educational
provisions and hence, a rise in the literacy
levels 3. Commercial prosperity and social
mobility following a larger middle-class social
sector, more people could afford books and
education than before 4. Reading developed as a
pastime books were not only sources of education
but were increasingly looked upon as a way of
spending leisure
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John Locke and the subject of educating the
child   Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690) Some Thoughts Concerning Education
(1693) I have always had a fancy that learning
might be made a play and recreation to
children and that they might be brought to
desire to be taught, if it were proposed to them
as a thing of honour, credit, delight, and
recreation, or as a reward for doing something
else and if they were never chid or corrected
for the neglect of it.   Thus children may be
cozend into a knowledge of the letters be
taught to read, without perceiving it to be any
thing but a sport, and play themselves into that
which others are whippd for.   When by these
gentle ways he begins to read, some easy pleasant
book, suited to his capacity, should be put into
his hands, wherein the entertainment that he
finds might draw him on, and reward his pains in
reading. To this purpose, I think Æsops Fables
the best, which being stories apt to delight and
entertain a child. If his Æsop has pictures in
it, it will entertain him much the better, and
encourage him to read   Teach him to get a
mastery over his inclinations, and submit his
appetite to reason.
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• disciplining the mind through rational judgement
• distrust of imagination
• instruction through diversion

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The History of Little Goody Two-shoes (1765)  
Who from a state of rags and care
And having shoes but half a pair
Their fortune and their fame would fix And
gallop in a coach of six
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They take all kinds of names and forms almanacks
for children, newspapers for children, journals
for children, stories for children, comedies for
children, dramas for children, geography for
children history for children physics for
children, logic for children, catechisms
for children, travels for children, morals for
children, grammars for children and reading books
in all languagespoetry, sermon, letters, talks
for children and unlimited variation on the same
theme, so that the literary doll-shops are
crammed all year round with them (A German
Schoolmaster writing in 1787, source Muir
Percy , English Childrens Books)
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Newberys advertisement for a new book   Nurse
Trueloves New Years Gift or the Book of
Books for Children, adorned with cuts and
designed as a Present for every little Boy who
would become a great Man and ride upon a fine
Horse, and to every little Girl who would become
a great Woman and ride in a Lord Mayors
gilt Coach. Printed for the Author who has
ordered these books to be given gratis to all
little Boys at the Bible and the Sun in St Pauls
Churchyard, they paying for the binding which is
only Twopence each Book.
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At Harris St Pauls Churchyard Good children
meet a sure reward In coming home the other day I
heard a little master say For evry threepence
there he took He had received a little book With
covers neat and cuts so pretty Theres not its
like in all the City And that for threepence he
could buy A story book would make one cry For a
little more a book of riddles Then let us not buy
drums or fiddles Nor yet be stopt at
pastry-cooks But spend our money all in books For
when we have learnt each book by heart Mama will
treat us with a tart. Advertisement by John
Harris (London) and Joseph Johnson (Philadelphia)
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Newberys books and those of his successors, were
aimed at the middle class of young citizens, for
the young gentlemen and ladies Mary Coopers
Tommy Thumbs Song Book for all the little
Masters and Misses to be sung to them by
their Nurses till they can sing them themselves.
By Nurse Lovechild (advertised in London Evening
Post, March 1744)   Nurse Trueloves Christmas
Box (1760) Nurse Trueloves New Years Gift
(1760) Twelfth Day Gift (1767) Whitsuntide Gift
(1767)
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• Banishment of the faerie realm
• feigned fables, vain fantasies, wanton stories
  and
• songs of love
• to the Puritans they were ungodly and untrue,
• to Locke and the Age of Reason they were
  irrational
• and dangerous, (Fairy and fairy-lore, goblins
  and
• spirits with other superstitions Locke regarded
  as
• useless trumpery)
• to Rousseau and the moralists they were utterly
  useless.

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• Chapbooks were inexpensive publications designed
  for
• the poorer literate classes
• Hawked by itinerant pedlars or chapmen in
  remote parts
• of the country where there were no bookshops
• the chapbooks had to be brief,
• without refinements of book production, roughly
  printed
• on coarsest and cheapest paper, without wrapper
  or cover
• of any sort and an entire book printed on a
  single sheet,
• folded to make eight, sixteen, or twenty-four
  pages

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History of the Seven Champions of Christendom
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The Children in the Wood
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The Most Excellent and Delightful History of Guy
Earl of Warwick
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The Life and Death of Fair Rosamond, Concubine to
King Henry the Second...
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The Story of the Cruel Bluebeard and His Many
Wives
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A True Tale of Robin Hood
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The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
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Adventures of Captain Gulliver
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History of Jack the Giant Killer
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James Boswell noted in 1763 Having when a boy,
been much entertained with Jack the Giant-Killer
and such little Store Books, I have always
retained a kind affection for them   John
Clare, born in 1793, describes in his
autobiography what such reading material meant to
a child growing up in a poor, rural home, with a
barely literate father who was very fond of
superstitious tales that are hawked about the
streets for a penny. gleaned from the sixpenny
Romances like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood
or Jack and the Beanstalk.   Wordsworth, The
Prelude(V, 364-9, 1805-6 version) Oh, give us
once again the wishing-cap Of Fortunatus, and
the invisible coat Of Jack the Giant-killer,
Robin Hood, And Sabra in the forest with St
George!   Encompassing witchcraft, superstition,
street cries, dragons, ogres, fairies and every
kind of magic shunned by the age of reason, for
many generations the chapbooks gave children a
wide range of easily digestible reading matter
that could not be found elsewhere.
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The Most Excellent History of Argalus and
Parthenia
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Simple Simon's Misfortunes and His
Wife, Margery's Outragious Cruelty
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• Impact of the respectable and the popular
  books giving
• rise to new tendencies in the childrens book
  market
•  
• Respectable Market
•  
• mood grows more lighthearted
•  
• fairy tales are printed officially for children
•  
• chapbook content explored and chapbook
  format imitated by several
• respectable publishers (Elizabeth Newberys 1800
  catalogue contained thirteen
• penny and fourteen two penny items, James Lumsden
  Son of Glasgow had
• at least twenty-seven of these)
•  
• Chapbook Market
• chapbooks for children better quality of print
  and cuts, contents designed
• to suit child readers
•  

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Whittington and His Cat
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Mrs. Lovechild's Golden Present, for all Good
Little Boys and Girls
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Secondary Sources 1.Pickering, Samuel F. John
Locke and Childrens Books in Eighteenth Century
England 2. Townsend, John Rowe. Written for
Children 3. Hunt, Peter (ed). Childrens
Literature An Illustrated History 4. Muir,
Percy. English Childrens Books 5. Alderson,
Brian and Felix De Marez Oyens. Be Merry and
Wise Origins of Childrens Book Publishing In
England, 1650-1850 The Chapbook facsimiles used
have been accessed online from the Edith Nesbit
Chapbook Collection at http//www.library.pitt.edu
/libraries/is/enroom/index.html
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Thank You