At the January, 2016 meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) in New York City, the winner of BSA’s tri-annual Justin G. Schiller Prize for Bibliographical Work on Pre-20th-Century Children’s Books was announced…

“Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-book : the First Collection of English Nursery Rhymes” (Cotsen Occasional Pres, 2013) – Rare Books (Ex) Oversize Item 6573272q

And the envelope please…

The winner was the Cotsen Occasional Press publication, Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book: The First Collection of English Nursery Rhymes, by Andrea Immel, Curator of the Cotsen Children’s Library, and Brian Alderson, children’s book historian, critic, author, and editor.  The publication includes an illustrated, book-length essay (Nurse Lovechild’s Legacy) by Immel and Alderson and three facsimiles of eighteenth-century children’s miniature-book-sized publications: Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book, vol. 2 (London: Mary Cooper, ca. 1744); Tommy Thumb’s Song Book (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1788); and The Pretty-Book (London: George Bickham, ca. 1750).

The originals of these three early children’s books are rare books, indeed: only one copy of The Pretty-Book and only two copies of Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book are now known to exist.

In making the award, BSA termed the 2016 prize-winning publication a “valuable contribution to the ongoing revision of children’s book history” and noted how Immel and Alderson:

contextualize Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book within the histories of nursery rhymes, oral lore and earlier children’s books [and] also locate publishing for children as a mainstream activity, challenging longstanding assumptions about who was publishing for children at this time. Reconstructing the social geography of London, they demonstrate links between Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book and adult literature, antiquarianism, music, theater, politics, and numerous other aspects of mid-eighteenth century society.

Nurse Lovechild’s authors also argue for the foundational importance of Cooper’s “revolutionary” Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book in the history of children’s literature, rather than John Newbery’s more well-known book, The Little Pretty Pocketbook, which has traditionally been accorded pride of place in terms of being the “first” book created specifically for children.

“Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-book”: Detail of the three miniature facsimiles, with “Tommy Thumb’s Song Book” opened to show its title page and frontispiece.

Cotsen Library — and the Princeton University Library — would like to congratulate the prize-winning authors!

The set is available from Brill.