Banbury Chap Books and Nursery Toy Book Literature / [of the XVIII. and Early XIX. Centuries]

This e-text reproduces the design and layout of the printed book as exactly as possible. Each illustrations is individually linked to a larger version. A few typographical errors, mostly involving punctuation, have been corrected. They are marked in the text with mouse-hover popups . Misspellings were generally left uncorrected; they are marked in the same way. The name “Branston” was randomly spelled with or without a final e .
anbury Cakes,” and “Banbury Cross,” with its favourite juvenile associations, with the Lady with bells on her toes, having music wherever she goes, are indissolubly connected with the early years not only of ourselves but many prior generations. In fact, the Ancient Cross has been rebuilt since the days, when in Drunken Barnaby’s Journal, we are made familiar with the puritan “who hanged his cat on a Monday for killing of a mouse on a Sunday.” The quaint old town and its people are rapidly modernizing; but they cling to the old traditions. Both in pictorial and legendary lore we have some Banburies of another kind altogether, viz., Banbury Blocks, or in plain English, Engraved Woodcut Blocks, associated with the Local Chap Books, Toy Books, and other Histories, for which this quaint old Oxfordshire town is celebrated. The faithful description of the Blocks illustrating this volume has led to numerous descriptive digressions, apparently irrelevant to the subject; it was found however that in tracing out the former history and use of some of the “Bewick” and other cuts contained in this volume, that the Literary, Artistic, Historical, Topographical, Typographical, and Antiquarian Reminiscences connected with the early Printing and Engraving of Banbury involved that of many other important towns and counties of Great Britain, and also America. A provincial publisher about the beginning of the present century would reflect more or less the modus operandi of each of his contemporaries in abridging or reproducing verbatim the immortal little chap books issued from the press of John Newbury’s “Toy Book Manufactory,” at the Bible and Sun (a sign lately restored), 65, Saint Paul’s Church Yard, near the Bar.