href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@17857@[email protected]#img21" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">A Virginian

174 Illustration from “People of all Nations,” printed in Philadelphia by Jacob Johnson in 1807 A Baboon 174 Illustration from “A Familiar Description of Beasts and Birds,” printed in Boston by Lincoln and Edmands in 1813 Drest or Undrest 176 Illustration from “The Daisy,” published by Jacob Johnson in 1808 Little Nancy 182 Probably engraved by William Charles for “Little Nancy, or, the Punishment of Greediness,” published in Philadelphia by Morgan & Yeager about 1830 Children of the Cottage 196 Engraved by Joseph I. Pease for “The Youth’s Sketch Book,” published in Boston by Lilly, Wait and Company in 1834 Henrietta 200 Engraved by Thomas Illman for “The American Juvenile Keepsake,” published in Brockville, U. C., by Horace Billings & Co. in 1835 A Child and her Doll 206 Illustration from “Little Mary,” Part II, published in Boston by Cottons and Barnard in 1831 The Little Runaway 227 Drawn and engraved by J. W. Steel for “Affection’s Gift,” published in New York by J. C. Riker in 1832

 
 

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CHAPTER I

Introductory

Thy life to mend This book attend.

The New England Tutor

London (1702-14)

To be brought up in fear And learn A B C.

Foxe, Book of Martyrs

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Forgotten Books of the American Nursery

CHAPTER I

Introductory

A shelf full of books belonging to the American children of colonial times and of the early days of the Republic presents a strangely unfamiliar and curious appearance. If chronologically placed, the earliest coverless chap-books are hardly noticeable next to their immediate successors with wooden sides; and these, in turn, are dominated by the gilt, silver, and many colored bindings of diminutive dimensions which hold the stories dear to the childish heart from Revolutionary days to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then bright blue, salmon, yellow, and marbled paper covers make a vivid display which, as the century grows older, fades into the sad-colored cloth bindings thought adapted to many children’s books of its second quarter.

An examination of their contents shows them to be equally foreign to present day ideas as to the desirable characteristics for children’s literature. Yet the crooked black type and crude illustrations of the wholly religious episodes related in the oldest volumes on the shelf, the didactic and moral stories with their tiny type-metal, wood, and copper-plate pictures of the next groups; and the “improving” American tales adorned with blurred colored engravings, or stiff steel and wood illustrations, that were produced for juvenile amusement in the early part of the nineteenth century,—all are as interesting to the lover of children as they are unattractive to the modern children themselves. The little ones very naturally find the stilted language of these old stories unintelligible and the artificial plots bewildering; but to one interested in the adult literature of the same periods of history an acquaintance with these amusement books of past generations has a peculiar charm and value of its own. They then become not merely curiosities, but the means of tracing the evolution of an American literature for children.

To the student desiring an intimate acquaintance with any civilized people, its lighter literature is always a great aid to personal research; the more trivial, the more detailed, the greater the worth to the investigator are these pen-pictures as records of the nation he wishes to know. Something of this value have the story-books of old-fashioned childhood. Trivial as they undoubtedly are, they nevertheless often contain our best sketches of child-life in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,—a life as different from that of a twentieth century child as was the adult