Little books to amuse and instruct....18th century children's books

'The Child's Plaything

I recommend for Cheating

Children into Learning'

     N. Lovechild, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, 1744)

Mrs Trimmer credited the development of instructive yet amusing books for children to the educational pioneer and philosopher John Locke.  (Mrs. Trimmer, The Guardian of Education, 1802-6 vol. 1 This was the first journal to review books for children)

Sarah Trimmer, the influential critic of children's literature,
Painted by Henry Howard, 1798
(Wikipedia)

Before the 18th  century there had never been many books designed specifically for children, and those that were tended to be a bit uninviting.  Perhaps the earliest writer to write amusing little stories for children was Sir Roger L'Estrange, who adapted the famous Fables by the Ancient Greek author Aesop(c. 620-564 BCE).  L'Estrange's famous 1692 edition is too large and too splendid to have been intended as a children's book.  He observed in the preface, however:

'...it is beyond Dispute, I suppose, that the Delight and Genius of Children, lies much towards the Hearing, learning, and Telling of Little Stories...we love to be instructed, as well as physick'd with Pleasure'
(Quoted in F.J. Harvey Darton Children's books in England, 1931 p.21)

Cheaper children's editions of his sugared pills, illustrated with crude woodcuts, became one of the books most widely read by children in the first twenty years of the 18th century, although his version of Aesop was eventually largely superseded by Samuel Croxall's, first published in 1722 with an extremely underhand attack on his rival translator in the preface:
'Pensioner to a Popish Prince..the Tool and Hireling of the Popish Faction.'(see Harvey Darton op.cit above)

The Croxall edition was, however, the one to be illustrated with woodcuts by Thomas Bewick around 1774 and is the many-times reprinted version most lucky children would have known.

'It is a maxim in the schools
That Flattery's the food of fools'
(Bewick illustration for Aesop, Aesopica.)

Croxall's edition was published by  John Newbery, to whom Mrs. Trimmer gives the credit for the great increase in the variety of books available for children by the end of the 18th century:
'But at length Mr. Newbery, of famous memory, stepped forth the professed friend of infancy and childhood...and he furnished a great supply of engaging books, by which curiosity was gratified, at the same time that religion, loyalty, and good morals were inculcated. '
(The Guardian of Education vol 1. p.62)

Newbery was active as a children's book publisher from c.1750 but he was not the first though he is the best known 18th century publisher of children's books.  Harvey Darton mentions A little book for little children by T.W., a spelling book dating from between 1702 and 1712, of which only one known copy survives.  It includes the famous rhyme 'A was an Archer and shot at a Frog' and the punctuation puzzle:

                                           'I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail

                                            I saw a blazing star that dropt down hail

                                            I saw a Cloud begirt an Ivy round

                                            I saw a sturdy Oak creep on the Ground...'

                                            (see Harvey Darton op.cit p. 60 and
                                             Thwaite, M.F. From Primer to Pleasure, 1963)

A Little Book for Little Children, 1702,
with a picture of Queen Anne, reigned 1702-14
(British Library

William Ronksley's The Child's Week's work, or,

Page showing 'A was an Archer'

(British Library)

A Little Book, so nicely suited to the Genius and Capacity of a Little Child...that it will infallibly allure and lead him onto a Way of reading, published in 1712 by George Conyers is a similar work, and so is William Jole's The Father's Blessing, also published by Conyers.  This suggests there may have been others published of which not a single copy has survived the rough handling of small owners and the other hazards which threaten the life of small, cheap books.
(see Harvey Darton op.cit p. 62-3)

The publisher Thomas Boreman's miniature books for children also predate the earliest known children's books published by Newbery.  His 'Gigantick histories', less that two inches high, describe the sights of London, and their aim is set out in the preface to Curiosities in the Tower of London, 1741:

                                        'Too rigid precepts often fail,
                                         Where short amusing tales prevail.
                                         That author, doubtless aims aright,
                                         Who joins instruction with delight...!'

One of Thomas Boreman's little books
(Parker collection, Library of Birmingham)

Mrs. Trimmer herself was fond of fairy tales as a child.  She was born in 1741 and remembers 'as the delight of our childish days' Mother Goose's Fairy Tales, Aesop,  Gay's Fables and The Governess, or Little Female Academy by Sarah Fielding, sister of the novelist Henry Fielding, first published in 1749, a narrative containing several linked fairy stories. (Guardian of Education op.cit p.62)
Mrs. Trimmer also mentions reading as a child The Spectator, The Guardian, The Tatler and, 'we are sorry to add', she says, novels.

Mrs. Thwaite in From Primer to Pleasure (1963)  describes The Child's New Plaything, published by Mrs. Mary Cooper at the Sign of the Globe, Paternoster Row.  A copy of the 2nd edition, 1743, has survived.  The first surviving collection of nursery rhymes for children was also published by Mrs. Cooper.
 A single copy of volume two of Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, 1744? is in the British Library.  It is bound in coloured and gilded paper boards of the kind later known as 'Dutch flowered' and printed in red and black on alternate pages, decorated with crude woodcuts.  It includes the well known Lady Bird, Lady Bird fly away home, Oranges and lemons, Hickere, Dickere Dock, and London Bridge is falling down.  On the last page is an advert for The Child's Plaything:

                                                   'The Child's Plaything
                                                    I recommend for Cheating
                                                    Children into Learning'
                                                                    N. Lovechild
                                                                    Sold by M. Cooper
                                                                    Price one shilling
                                                          THE END

Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, 1744?
(British Library)

Children's board games and jigsaws

'Dear Papa...I beg the favour of you...that you will desire my dear Mama to send me a little Tea and Sugar, as also a pair of Battledores & Shuttlecock...'
(Verney letters of the 18th century, Vol. 2)

Board game: Historical pastime or, A new game of the History of England...London, J. Harris 1803.
Hand coloured.  A very popular historical board game reprinted many times.  It is a race game played with dice or a teetotum and counters
(Parker collection, Library of Birmingham)

Dice and bat and ball games are mentioned in documents such as letters from the 16th century on.
For example the bills for little Lord Tavistock and his sister Lady Caroline Russell for 1751-53 include battledores and shuttlecocks, paint and prints, a box of drawings, fireworks, whips and tops, cups and balls; the game was to catch the ball in the cup.  Also peewits, a kind of bird, and a dormouse.  (Gladys Scott Thomson The Russells in Bloomsbury 1669-1771, 1940)

Children also enjoyed building bricks, the predecessors of Lego.  John Ruskin (1819-1900) had two magnificent sets with which it was possible to build something as complex as a replica of Waterloo Bridge, complete with steps down to the water. (Ruskin, Praeterita, Vol. 1.  1900) Games such as this were popular with educationalists because they taught children the principles of construction.

The Golden Bottom of Trade, c.1850.  A game intended to teach children
to value necessary trades and despise the unnecessary,
and to teach the names of occupations in French and German.
The delightful hand coloured figures are designed to stand upright.
(Parker collection, Library of Birmingham)

By 1800 large numbers of educational games were available.  Mrs. Trimmer, writing in 1802 gives the credit for this new development to the educational philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) :
'When the idea of uniting amusement with instruction was once started by such a writer as Mr. Locke, books for children were soon produced of various sorts; Fables, fairy tales, &c &c.  Every spelling book had now pictures and stories, as incitements to learning; and Infants were taught the alphabet by means of ivory letters and teetotums.' ( Mrs. Trimmer, Guardian of Education Vol. 1, 1802)  A teetotum is a four to eight sided spinning top with numbers or, I suppose, letters, round the sides. She is probably wrong to give all the credit for this idea to John Locke, although he was certainly extremely influential.

The New Parlour Spelling Game; or, Reading made Easy.  c.1870?
(Parker collection, Library of Birmingham)

Probably the most significant educational games to emerge in the 18th century were board or table race games and  jigsaws, originally known as dissected maps.

A selection of 19th wooden century jigsaw boxes and board game wallets
(Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Children's board games were an offshoot of gambling games for adults such as the Game of Goose which had been popular in pubs for some time.   Gambling, once a quite acceptable pastime even in quite strict religious circles, was now frowned on in strict circles and  considered unsuitable for children, leading them into dishonest and extravagant habits, though, reading between the lines of the extract below many adults were quite happy to include children in on gambling games.  Says John Newbery's Master Telescope:
'...he started from his seat, and begged they would think of some more innocent amusement.  Playing at cards for money, says he, is so nearly allied to covetousness and cheating that I abhor it, and have often wondered, when I was at Bath wit my papa, how people seemingly of years of discretion, could so far mistake themselves, and abandon common sense, as to lead a young urchin just breeched, or a little doodle-my-lady in hanging sleeves (like leading reins) up to a gaming table, to play and bet for shillings, crowns and perhaps guineas, among a circle of sharpers.' John Newbery, (Tom Telescope). The Newtonian system of   philosophy, Newbery, 1761)  The use of board games as educational aids was first pioneered  in France and  a shopkeeper and printer, John Jeffery, introduced the idea to London.

Jigsaw. The Principal Events in English History, Wallis & Skinner, 1830
(Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Children's board games were consequently often played not with dice like adult versions but with a teetotum, a six or eight sided top. Like the earliest jigsaws they were generally geographical or historical in content; beautifully hand coloured engraved paper pictures with the racing tracks, backed onto linen to strengthen them and sold, like maps, folded into small wallets.  Players moved counters or 'pillars' round the map of Europe or Britain with accounts of the chief manufactures and places of interest cunningly inserted into the rule book, or spiralled round and round a series of little pictures showing scenes from English history, ending at a central portrait of George III in a blaze of glory.

Or the games might be morally edifying.  A very well known one is the Game of Human Life c. 1790, which takes the player from babyhood to old age through the different stages of life and different characters; the Mischievous Boy, shown chasing hens, the Volunteer, in scarlet military uniform, the Trifler with a love-letter between his fingers.  Various careers are shown; the Tragic Author, the Geographer, the Thoughtful Man, the Ambitious Man, represented by the Prince Regent, the Orator, represented by William Pitt the politician.  The final square shows Heaven, with a blaze of light and the one word GLORY!

The New Game of Human Life, Wallis, London, c.1820, invented c. 1790
(Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

A moral board game which slightly resembles Snakes and Ladders is The Mount of Knowledge, c.1820 which starts with the Horn Book, for learning the alphabet and Lord's Payer, and has 'ladders' such as Application and Patience and pitfalls such as 'Truants' Corner, Pride, Rocks of Difficulty and Castle of Indolence, and a beautifully engraved Flowery Path of Pleasure. The rule book is full of the terrors of the schoolroom eg: 'No. 21, Truant's Corner.  Having been unfortunately seen by the Schoolmaster while peeping round the corner, you must be flogged back to Birch Wood, and there stay 2 turns to recover, and also pay 2 counters to the Pool, for having wasted your time.'

Board game: The New Game of the Mount of Knowledge, Greenwich, W. Richardson, c.1820.  Hand coloured game, rather like Snakes and Ladders with moral pitfalls instead of snakes.
(Parker collection, Library of Birmingham)

The value of these board games purely for amusement was soon recognised and in the 19th century many delightful variants were introduced. The Locomotive Game of Railroad Adventures, c., 1845, published by the firm of Wallis, celebrates the coming of railways.  It has delightful pictures of primitive engines, trucks and carriages all round the board.  The rule book illustrated the pleasure and pain of early rail-travel:
'Derby Terminus.  This is the largest station in the kingdom.'  'Train run away with the bride.  Alas poor Bridegroom! You had better have lost your luggage.  Stop while all draw, and mourn your misfortune.'  'Take in coke and water.  Receive one from each player.' (Examples from games in the Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham  see also F.R.B Whitehouse Table games of Georgian and Victorian days, 1951)

Wooden jigsaw, A New Map of the World, London, Wallis c.1800.
Cut round the countries.
(Parker collection, Library of Birmingham)

It is possible that it was the appearance of children's board games which stimulated John Spilsbury's invention, the jigsaw, for his shop in London was near John Jeffery's and they may have had other connections.  For whatever reason, in the 1760s John Spilsbury, who was a map-engraver, hit upon the idea of pasting down a map onto a sheet of wood and cutting round the outlines. He called the results dissected maps and they were sold as geographical aids, like many of the early board games.  As with the board games, their other possibilities were gradually realised and historical and religious subjects appeared. They were generally cut round each scene shown, with the caption separate, or cut round the edges of countries or counties, or even simply cut at random.  With historical and religious subjects a paper picture sheet was provided as a guide.  The firm of Peacock did a profitable line in 'double dissections', a map jigsaw with a historical one on the reverse side.  The earliest jigsaws came in plain wooden boxes until the attraction of a coloured picture on the lid was realised. By the mid 19th century they were associated as much with pure pleasure as with education, and numerous different designs were available. (Examples from the Parker Collection, see also Linda Hannas The English Jigsaw Puzzle, 1760-1890, 1972) 

Wooden jigsaw, Coming out of School, c.1820?  Hand coloured.
A very early example of a non-educational jigsaw
(Parker collection, Library of Birmingham)

Children's toys: Dolls and Dolls Houses

'Trade and Plum-Cake forever. Huzza!'

(John Newbery, Nurse Truelove's New-Year's Gift, c. 1770)

Louise Juliana of Orange-Nassau
 by Daniel van den Queborn, 1582
(Pinterest)

Not only were adults clearly getting much enjoyment from their children but the gradual appearance of a larger leisured class with the money and inclination to indulge their children encouraged the development of a new market in products to please and satisfy their demands.  Leslie Gordon,  in Peepshow into paradise, a history of children's toys says the first toy shop to open in London was the Parrot and Star, set up in the 1720s by Robert Waite in Bow Lane, Cheapside, London.

Cheap toys were being hawked and sold by pedlars long before this, and were probably also sold in other shops, while many children had home-made toys.  Sir William Petty in his Epistle to...Master Samuel Hartlib, 1647, described children playing games of make-believe with guns made from elder sticks and ships of nut shells.  Both British and American family portraits from the mid 16th century often show little girls clasping a doll and occasionally show other toys.  There is one much-travelled Puritan doll in Kirkstall Abbey Museum, Leeds, who appeared in a portrait of 1688 wit her owner, then went with the family to America, returning with a descendant of the same family after the American War of Independence.  Simple carved wooden dolls were among the presents Sir Walter Raleigh took for the Native Americans on his ill-fated attempt to colonise Virginia in 1607, and there, as well as in Britain there were already home made dolls made from a variety of materials.  The Native Americans were said to be 'greatlye delighted with puppets and babes which are brought oute of England (Mary Hillier, Pageant of toys, 1965)

Florence Upton's Dutch dolls, 1895

Florence Upton grew up in Britain and America.  Her 1895 children's book about the adventures of two Dutch dolls included  Golliwogg, based on an American black rag doll.  Her success led to a whole series which were very popular till the 1960s when the racist implications were finally realised and led to Gollowog's sudden disappearance from the toy-cupboard and children's book shelves.

Hitty, The life and adventures of a wooden doll, 1932 by the American children's author Rachel Field describes the adventures of a doll carved from mountain ash which must have been typical of the playthings of 17th century British and American children.  She stood six and a half inches high and had a painted face like what were later called Dutch dolls.  Her first clothes were of stout calico and were sewn by her little owner, for little girls were encouraged to dress their dolls as a way of getting them to practise their needlework, much more interesting than sewing shirts for the poor or hemming handkerchiefs.

Ann Proctor by Charles Willson Peale, 1789
(RubyLaneblog)

Charlotte Yonge, the Victorian novelist, was given a wooden Dutch doll, Miss Eliza as a reward for completing a piece of needlework as a child in the 1820s:
'My biggest doll would be scorned nowadays.  She was made of apple-wood, with a painted face, black eyes inserted, a wig nailed on, and a pair of leathern arms, much out of proportion.'
 (Georgiana Battiscombe, Charlotte Mary Yonge.  1943, quoted from an autobiographical fragment by Charlette Yonge)

Charlotte Yonge had an ungratified yearning for one of the really splendid and expensive dolls with china heads.  However, Charlotte 'was told how many poor children could be fed on the price, and knew it must be given up.'  She had about sixteen others, 'some about a foot long with waxen heads, some of the old-fashioned Dutch dolls, but the most beloved was Anna, who was well made of white leather with a very pretty papier mache face, a novelty sixty years since...'

German doll with a china head,
(Pinterest)

Dolls, which at this date were called 'babies' are quite often mentioned in everyday letters from about 1700 on:
'Mrs. Richardson would lend her a wax baby in swadels which she was very fond of but att last down came ye baby and broke to peces; your daughter did fall astorming and squeaking that ye baby was broke...there was to have ben a great cristning of it and Pen was to have been ye Godmother but ye life was very short.' Elizabeth Hamilton, The Mordaunts, 1965.  Quote from 1701)
'My children buried one of their Babbies with a great deal of Formallity.  They had  a Garland of flowers carried before it, and at least twenty of their playfellows and others that they invited were at the Buriall. (1712.  Margaret Blundell ed., Blundell's diary and letter book, 1702-1728. 1952)

Dolls with delicately mounded wax faces  would unfortunately melt if left too near the fire, or in the sun:

'One summer's day, 'was in the month of June,
The sun blaz'd down in all the heat of noon:
My waxen doll, she cry'd, my dear! my charm!
You feel quite cold, but you shall soon be warm.
She plac'd it in the sun, - misfortune dire!
The wax ran down, as if before the fire!
Each beauteous feature quickly disappeared
And melting left a blank all soil'd and smear'd...'
  (Ann and Jane Taylor, Original poems for infant minds, 1804)

Wax headed doll, c.1890
(e.bay)

Many accidentally shared the fate of Jane Carlyle's doll, which, inspired by the story of Dido of Carthage, she formally sacrificed when she began to study the Aeneid.  Changing her mind, Jane rushed to save her doll from the flames, too late!
(in Mrs. F. Neville Jackson, Toys of other days, 1908)

Dolls with china heads were fairly common by the mid 19th century and in 1825 speaking mechanisms and eyes that opened and shut were available.  In spite of being called 'babies', dolls at this time were generally modelled as adult women, often with generously curved figures.

In 1902 the Teddy Bear was created when Morris Michtom, in the USA, made a toy teddy bear and named it after President 'Teddy' Roosevelt.  He founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company to produce them.
The German firm of Steiff hit on the idea at almost the same time in 1903.

A Golliwog, a French doll with a china head, and a c.1908 Steiff Teddy Bear

The dolls house, as we know it, seems to have begun life as an extremely elaborate work of art.  The earliest recorded example was commissioned by Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria for his daughter in 1558 but ended up in his art collection.  It has four floors, seventeen doors, and sixty-three windows all fitted up in the first style of elegance with embroidered and gold tapestries, gold and silver fitments in the state rooms, even a well fitted bathroom and a lion house for the 'Bavarian armorial animal'.
(Flora Gill Jacobs, A history of dolls' houses, 1954)  Quoted from Karl Grober, Children's toys of bygone days, trans. Philip Hereford, 1928)

Although there may have been unrecorded dolls houses made for children in the 16th and 17th centuries adults do seem to have kept the best for themselves.  In 16th century Germany, Augsburg, Nuremburg and Ulm were particularly celebrated for their production and fitments in the 16th and 17th centuries, but dolls houses were not common in Britain till the 18th century.  The earliest British example is probably Mrs. Humphrey's dolls house, a copy of the 1567 Sparrowe's House in Ipswich, complete with elaborate pargetering, which may have been made for the owners at any time during the first 200 years after the house was built.
In 2016 a very important early British dolls house turned up on the BBC Antiques Roadshow.  It was made in 1705 on the Isle of Dogs for a Miss E. Westbrook, has panelled, well-furnished rooms, and dolls in their original Georgian clothing.

BBC Antiques Roadshow dolls house

It became fashionable to commission architects to design elaborate dolls houses, replicas of actual town or country houses.  A specially fine one at Uppart was described in Country Life: 'The house itself has an accurately designed Palladian facade, of three storeys, seven bays wide, resting on a stand modelled on the arcade of Covent Garden paizza...'  Inside are some delightful dolls:  'Taking an  unpardonable liberty, we discovered that the ladies are wearing three petticoats...The party, their heads flung back, saeem to be enjoying a joke.  These Georgians have a hearty sense of humour.  Can it have anything to do with the lady upstairs?  Poor thing, she is confined to bed, and we can see why: at the foot of the gorgeously canopied bed is a wicker cradle, within is an nobviously very young doll...'
(Christopher Hussey, Country Life 6 March 1942, quoted in Flora Gill Jacobs A history of dolls houses 1954)

The Uppark dolls house, (National Trust Archives)

A proper children's dolls house is mentioned in the Mordaunt letters, 1726 when Peg or Dolly was given a piece of furniture for it:  'Miss desires her Duty to her aunt and a great many thanks for her fine hearth which is put in the Drawing room in her baby house.' (op.cit)

Queen Anne gave her god-daughter Ann Sharp, born in 1691, a nine room dolls house, described in detail in Flora Jacobs History of dolls houses.  In the kitchen there was a plum pudding in a copper pot bubbling on the fire, and a sucking pig roasting on a spit.  The dolls who lived in it were My lord Rockett, his lady, his son and daughter, Sarah Gill, 'ye child's maid', Fanny Long, the chambermaid, Roger, 'ye butler, Mrs. Hannah, ye housekeepers', cook, footman, Lady Jemima Johnson, Mrs. Lemon, Sir William Johnson and a lady.  (op cit)

The dolls house Queen Victoria had as a little girl was described in Girl's Realm for 1899.  It was well played with and a little tatty by then but had all the right dolls' furniture.  In the kitechn 'An ample dresser shows rows of shining pewter plates, and there are frying pans, saucepans and other culinary utensils placed neatly upon the walls or shelves.  There is a capacious knife-box, filled with iron spoons and forks and wooden-handled knives.  There are flat-irons, an iron-stand, a warming-pan, a coffee mill, and a clock.  The grate is one of the old-fashioned kind, and an iron kettle is on the hob.  On each side of the fireplace stand doll servants.  I grieve to state that they are neither clean or trim...'
(Jacobs op.cit, quoted from Girl's Realm 1899)

 Princess Victoria was also very fond of full size dolls and had a hundred and thirty-two, of which she dressed thirty-two herself.

Princess Victoria's dolls house
(BBC archives)