Bewick’s frontispiece to Goody Two Shoes.
Here are two early examples of Thomas Bewick. They were used in a York edition of “A Pretty Book of Pictures for little Masters and Misses, or History of Beasts and Birds by Tommy Trip,” etc.
| Miss Polly Riding in a Coach, from Tommy Trip. | The Student, from Tommy Trip. |
There was an American edition of Goody Two Shoes, and is very interesting indeed, having a woodcut frontispiece engraved by Thomas Bewick, and was printed at Worcester, Mass., U.S.A., by Isaiah Thomas, and sold wholesale and retail at his book-store, 1787. A copy of this little book sold in London for £1 16s.
We also give two other specimens from the J. Newbery editions of Tommy Trip and Goody Two Shoes, both engraved by John Bewick.
| The Student, from Tommy Trip. | Margery, from Goody Two Shoes. |
The packmen of the past [see frontispiece of a pack-horse in First Edition only of Bewick’s Quadrupeds, 1790] carried in their packs the ephemeral literature of the day, Calendars, Almanacks, and Chep-Books. The Leicestershire pronunciation to this day at markets is “Buy Chep” for Cheap, hence the Chep-side, or Cheape-or Cheapside; otherwise derivation of Chap Men, or Running, Flying, and other mercurial stationers, peripatetic booksellers, pedlers, packmen, and again chepmen, these visited the villages and small towns from the large printers of the supply towns, as London, Banbury, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc. The “History of John Cheap, the Chapman,” “Parley the Porter,” “Stephen of Salisbury Plain,” and other favourite tracts, with John Bewick’s and Lee’s square woodcuts were written by the quaker lady, Hannah More, about 1777, and were first published in broadsheet folio. Some were done by Hazzard, of Bath, others by Marshall, of Bow Lane, Aldermary Church Yard. A most curious collection of chap books did they print, reviving the quaint old “Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green,” “Guy, Earl of Warwick,” “Seven Champions,” “Mother Shipton’s Life and Prophecies,” “Wise Men of Gothan,” “Adam Bell,” “Robin Hood’s Garland,” “Jane Shore,” “Joaks upon Joaks,” “Strapho, or Roger the Clown,” “Whetstone for dull Wits,” “St. George and the Dragon,” “Jack Horner:” and hundreds of ballads, garlands, carols, broadsheets, songs, etc., were in the collection.
The “Great A and bouncing B Toy Book Factory,” was somewhere near Little Britain, the proprietor being John Marshall, who published the famous “Life of a Fly.”
