This series was called the Copperplate Series. In due course a copy of No. 1, The King and Queen of Hearts, was found in the library of Miss Edith Pollock, bought by her at the sale of the late Mr. Andrew W. Tuer, an authority upon old children's literature and the publisher to whose enterprise we owe the facsimile editions of Prince Dorus and Poetry for Children. Mr. Tuer, however, had not suspected Lamb's authorship. The cover of Miss Pollock's copy bears the date 1809, which means that the little book was re-bound as required with the date of the current year upon it. Copies of the first edition have since been discovered and sold for enormous sums. The date is 1806.
In a copy of The Looking Glass, another of Godwin's books, The King and Queen of Hearts is thus advertised, with a new quatrain, probably also from Lamb's pen:—
"Price 1s. Plain; or 15. 6ed. Coloured,
The King and Queen of Hearts,
With the
Rogueries of the Knave who stole away the Queen's Pies.
Illustrated in Fifteen elegant Engravings:
Agreeably to the famous Historical Ballad on the Subject.
"I write of Tarts; how sweet a tale!
You'll lick your lips to hear it told:
I show you mighty Kings and Queens,
Robes of scarlet, Crowns of gold."
This little book, The Looking Glass, which relates the early life of William Mulready (1786-1863), was issued in facsimile by Mr. F.G. Stephens in 1885, with an interesting account of its history. Therein Mr. Stephens wrote: "Mr. Linnell told me that the cuts to the once well-known Nongtong Paw [Vol. 6 of "The Copperplate Series;" see above], The Sullen Woman and the Pedlar [Vol. 2 of the same series], Think before you speak, and The King and Queen of Hearts, were designed by Mulready." We thus discover who was the illustrator. My own feeling is that the plates came first and Lamb's verses later.
The King and Queen of Hearts cannot be said to add anything characteristic to the body of Lamb's writings. But its discovery is historically valuable in establishing—by the date 1805 on the engraved title-page—the fact that before the Tales from Shakespear, which are usually thought to be the brother and sister's first experiment in writing for children, Charles at any rate had tried his hand at that pastime. The King and Queen of Hearts thus becomes his first juvenile work.
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Page 404. POETRY FOR CHILDREN.
This little book, attributed on the title-page merely to the author of Mrs. Leicester's School, was published in two minute volumes at three shillings by Mrs. Godwin in 1809.
Robert Lloyd, writing from London to his wife in April, 1809, says of Charles and Mary Lamb: "If we may use the expression, their Union of affection is what we conceive of marriage in Heaven. They are the World one to the other. They are writing a Book of Poetry for children together." Later: "It is task work to them, they are writing for money, and a Book of Poetry for Children being likely to sell has induced them to compose one." Writing to Coleridge of the Poetry for Children, in June, 1809, Lamb says: "Our little poems are but humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents would not have found so many." Charles Lamb, by the way, was then thirty-four, and Mary Lamb forty-four. In sending the book to Manning, Lamb said that his own share of the poems was only one-third.