Category Archives: Bindings

Picture Bibles for Children from the 1760s: John Newbery versus Edward Ryland in the Marketplace

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Everyone has heard of John Newbery, the first publisher of the modern children’s book and namesake of the American Library Association’s annual award for the most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature.  It is more or less taken for granted that he set the gold standard for children’s books of his own times because of his success in associating his name with quality.

There was someone who made more elegant and expensive books for young readers than John Newbery,  but his career is not discussed in the standard histories of English children’s books.  Only a few collectors know the name of engraver Edward Ryland, whose shop was at No. 67 in the Old Bailey and his beautiful books are highly desirable and expensive when they come on the market.  This post will highlight his first publication for young readers: An Abridgement of Scripture History Designed for the Amusement and Improvement of Children: wherein the most Striking Actions in the Old Testament are Made Plain to the Youngest Capabilities (1765).  Cotsen is lucky enough to have two copies: a rebound one with plain engravings and another one with hand-colored engravings bound with its companion volume on the New Testament in an edition binding of gold tooled red leather.

The front board of Cotsen 1907. The volume with both titles illustrated with a total of 124 engravings was available for 5 shillings. Newbery’s little Bible abridgment had sixty-four relief metal cuts, was half as tall and cost six pence.

Each of the Ryland Bible abridgments also boasted a handsome “book plate”  for a young owner to proudly inscribe her name, as Miss Elizabeth Bentham did.

Here is the title page spread, with an allegorical frontispiece designed by the well-known artist Samuel Wale and engraved by the equally famous Charles Grignion.  The description below the picture explains that Science, the lady in the cloak, is leading the young Bishop of Osnaburg to Wisdom seated on the dias.  The toddler bishop was the second son of George III, Prince Frederick, Duke of Albany and York.  The book’s dedicatee, he was twoish when it was published.  He was intended for a career in the military…

Wale and Grignion’s engravings measure 75 x 88 mm or 3 x 3.5 inches and there is one on every page.

Plate II “The History of the Fall.” This and the following image are more or less actual size. (Cotsen 1907)

Plate VII “The burning of Sodom and Gomorrah.” (Cotsen 1907)

For purposes of comparison, here are two additional plates from Cotsen’s other copy, whose engraved plates are not hand-colored.

Plate IV “The History of the Flood, or General Deluge.” An Abridgement of Scripture History… London: Edwd. Ryland, MDCCLXV [1765]. (Cotsen 357)

Plate V “The Confusion of Tongues” (aka the tower of Babel). (Cotsen 357)

Put John Newbery’s History of the Holy Bible Abridged (1764) next to Ryland’s and the differences in production values are immediately obvious.  Newbery’s volume measures just 10 x 7 centimeters as opposed to the 18  of Ryland’s.  Newbery’s History has 61 soft metal relief cuts, but they are tiny.  At just 45 x 35 mm, the quality of the cutting is workmanlike.   Reproduced larger than actual size here, their shortcomings are cruelly exposed.

The Fall of Man from The Holy Bible Abridged. London: John Newbery, 1764. (Cotsen 34087)

The burning of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Cotsen 34087)

Then as now, consumers got what they paid for.  But far more people in the 1760s could afford six pence for a Newbery Bible abridgment that would fit in a pocket.  The Newbery was cheap enough that some families could put down the money for a copy for each of their children (subscribers’ lists often reveal several children with the same last name at the same address).   Far fewer could invest in a children’s Bible designed to flatter a little prince.  And that may go a long way to explain why Edward Ryland’s children’s books survive in so few copies that almost no one knows how splendid they were…

Good Job! Reward of Merit Bookplates and Labels to School Children

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If you know your Tom Sawyer, you probably remember the chapter where the hero swops the detritus in his pockets for any reward of merit tickets his mates have in theirs.  Tom reports to Sunday School, where he proudly presents his stash of tickets–nine yellow, nine red, and ten blue for a total of ten–to Mr. Walters and claims his prize, a Bible illustrated by Gustave Dore.

Did the Dore Bible also have a reward of merit bookplate pasted inside with a neat inscription noting that it was presented to Thomas Sawyer on the occasion of his having “warehoused two thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom?”  That detail isn’t mentioned by Twain, unfortunately.  Imagine the price that copy would sell for at auction!

No famous children owned any of Cotsen’s nineteenth-century British books with reward of merit plates . The British labels I’ll highlight here are not as heavily illustrated or color-printed like the better known American reward of merit tickets and bookplates.  The examples in Cotsen may be more modest, but are interesting as relics from particular schools.

A master at Mr. Clarke’s Academy at Enfield for dissenters presented one of Mrs. Wakefield’s tours to different parts of the globe to a pupil.  The names of the recipient and the teacher are written on the blue engraved label, but they are now so faded as to be very difficult to make out.  The signature at the head of the title page may be that of another owner.   Incidentally the poet John Keats was a schoolboy at Clarke’s Academy.

The Traveller in Africa. London: Darton, Harvey, and Darton, 1814. (Cotsen 52847)

(Cotsen 52847)

This neat little abridgment of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was given to a Master Trafford for excellent marks on his final Greek exam by his two clergyman teachers, who may have been private tutors like Fielding’s Thwackum and Square. The little manuscript plate has been carefully designed and elegantly calligraphed, perhaps in imitation of the engraved ones.

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. London: Printed for J. Harris, 1818. (Cotsen 20588)

(Cotsen 20588)

A full-length biography of Dick Whittington for young readers was thought suitable for presentation to Master Wilkinson of J. H. Abraham’s Milk Street Academy in Sheffield  late June 1816.  Milk Street was another dissenting academy with a good reputation. The master J. H. Abraham (1777-1846) was a Quaker. A member of Sheffield’s scientific community, he was among the first teachers in England to integrate modern science instruction into the curriculum.

The Life of Sir Richard Whittington… Harlow, Printed by B. Flower for M. Jones, 1811. (Cotsen 87156)

School masters might paste printed or engraved labels in the books they presented to good students, but some teachers personally inscribed copies.  A teacher noted that Miss Caroline Weston was receiving The Picture Gallery Explored, with the awe-inspiring frontispiece of a father and his three daughters taking in the canvases hung floor to ceiling, for “good behavior and attention to her studies in school.”   There’s not enough evidence in the book to even hazard a guess as to the location of the school, there having been several schools named “Albion House” in Victorian England later in the century.

The Picture Gallery Explored… London: Harvey and Darton, 1825. (Cotsen 83475)

(Cotsen 83475)

A recently acquired prize book from the 1890s bound in red calf stamped with the school’s arms shows that the practice of giving books to outstanding students had been reduced to a fine art.  The large printed reward plate states that Annie Rawbone of the upper third form received this adaptation of Josephus for getting first place in arithmetic with a mark of  93.  Annie’s school, which was founded in 1873, still exists today in a different location.

The Story of the Last Days of Jerusalem, from Josephus. London, Seeley, 1892. (Cotsen N-002512)

You can see more examples of rewards of merit in a post by my colleague Julie Mellby on her Graphic Arts blog!