Category Archives: British children’s books

James Catnach’s Fancy Chapbooks in the Series of Large Books

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The disreputable printer Jemmy Pitts was highlighted in the post for Twelfth Night 2013, but he was not the only no-good early nineteenth-century job printer in the seedy Seven Dials district near Covent Garden in London’s West End.  Seven Dials marked the convergence of Little and Great White Lyon streets (now Mercer), Little and Great Earl (now Earlham), Little and Great St. Andrews (now Monmouth), and Queen (now Shorts Garden).

Seven Dials was also home to Jemmy Catnach (1791-1841), who was vilified quite correctly for catering to the reading public’s insatiable appetite for rude ballads, accounts of violent crimes, sensational divorce cases, etc.  He was the subject of the chapter “Catnachery, Chapbooks & Children’s Books” in Percy Muir’s Victorian Illustrated Books (1971).  Muir, who knew how to turn a phrase, damned Catnach for having printed his stuff with “mean and old typefaces” and adorning them with blocks “worn to a degree of indecipherability that hid their almost complete irrelevance to the text they were supposed to illustrate.”  Never one to mince words was Muir.

In Cotsen there’s a stout volume consisting of thirty-odd  pamphlets, many issued by Catnach, which make a liar out of  Muir.   Bound in are several titles in the so-called Catnach “series” of Large Books.   Here is a typical list, from the rear cover for Little Tom Tucker, [ca. 1835?].

pamphlet advertisement

Little Tom Tucker. London: J. Catnach, [between 1813 and 1838]. (Cotsen 5038)

The advertisement gives no clues as to the production values of the pamphlets.  If Muir is to be believed, then it should be taken for granted that a job printer like Catnach always produces a shabby product with the tell-tale signs of recycled cast-off type and blocks from other prints.

Given Catnach’s reputation for slipshod design, these delightfully exuberant covers on the nursery favorites in the Large Books come as a quite a surprise, with not a broken font to be found.

nursery favorites

Mother Goose and the Golden Egg. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 8793)

The style of the typefaces and wood-engraved blocks suggest the Large Books must have been issued relatively late in Catnach’s long career.

A Visit to the Zoological Gardens

A Visit to the Zoological Gardens. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 5035)

Dame Trot and Her Comical Cat

Dame Trot and Her Comical Cat. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 5035)

But once a rogue, always a rogue.  The rear cover of another Large Book in the Cotsen volume is illustrated with a block John Bewick made for the frontispiece of  Richard Johnson’s False Alarms (London: E. Newbery, ca. 1787).   And where did old Jemmy come by the block?  Was it purchased from John Harris, Elizabeth Newbery’s successor, or his son, John junior?

frontispiece

A fine puzzle for someone interested in learning more about the largely neglected children’s books published early in Victoria’s reign…

Marks in Books #4: Graffito in The Child’s New Play-Thing.

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Moseley's frontispiece of the future George III.

Moseley’s frontispiece of the future George III. The Child’s New Play-Thing. London: T. Cooper, 1742 (Cotsen 34058)

An eighteenth-century writer could try to realize some cash by dedicating a work to an important person, who might return the favor with some remuneration.  Perhaps the anonymous author of the innovative speller, The Child’s New Play-Thing (London: T. Cooper, 1742), was angling for a teaching appointment when he dedicated it to little George, the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1709-1751).

A portrait engraved by Charles Moseley of the future George III (1738-1820) in a jaunty tricorne faced the third edition’s title page.  Holding a rose, an emblem of the youth’s brevity, the stolid boy is the picture of solemn innocence.  At the time around four years of age, little George was still wearing skirts and would not be breeched for another  two or three years, as was usual in the days before the invention of the washing machine or of disposable diapers (the reasons don’t need to be detailed here).

George as reimagined as a bearded lady by a child-artist?

George as reimagined as a bearded lady by a child-artist? The Child’s New Play-Thing. London: M. Cooper, 1745 (Cotsen 26950)

Being in skirts hardly granted immunity from the slings and arrows of disgruntled subjects if one happened to be second in line of succession to the British throne,  as was the little prince.   Long before George was crowned, plagued by his unruly brood of sons, and finally incapacitated by porphyria, he was disrespected by the unruly pen of a peer.

In the Cotsen copy of the 3rd edition of The Child’s New Play-Thing (1745), a previous owner traced the prince’s image in reverse on the frontispiece’s recto, adding scraggly whiskers and body parts (which look suspiciously female) the bodice is supposed to cover.  The amateurish quality of the drawing suggests a child’s hand and perhaps that of a child from a family that hoped for the triumph of the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion (the year the 3rd edition of The Child’s New Play-Thing was published) that was eventually quelled by George II’s son, William, Duke of Cumberland.

Hogarth's homage to children's "art" on The Analysis of Beauty

Hogarth’s homage to children’s “art” on The Analysis of Beauty

But of course the defacement of the little prince’s portrait may not be a youthful expression of disloyalty against the Hanovers (as tempting as it is to jump to conclusions).  It may be nothing more profound than the tell-tale sign of the childish urge to doodle on any flat surface whether on paper or walls–an urge that William Hogarth must have known very well as a boy himself, having immortalized it in the lower right hand corner of the frontispiece to The Analysis of Beauty or in the foreground of “The First Stage of Cruelty.”