The Lilliputian Magazine; or, the Young Gentleman and Lady’s Golden Library.
From the preface:—“the Authors concerned in this little Book have planned out a Method of Education very different from what has hitherto been offered to the Public: and more agreeable and better adapted to the tender Capacities of Children”.
In Mr. John Newbery’s list for 1762, A Pretty Book of Pictures for little Masters and Misses has the alternative title of “Tommy Trip’s History of Beasts and Birds, with a familiar Description of each in Verse and Prose”.
To this was added “The History of little Tom Trip himself, his Dog Jowler, and of Woglog the Great Giant”.
This was the earliest edition known to Mr. Welsh; but an edition of 1752 was afterwards discovered and noted in The Times Literary Supplement, Dec. 18, 1919, under “Notes on Sales”. This seems to be the first edition of Tommy Trip’s History; but an earlier account of him is given in The Lilliputian Magazine, first advertised in 1751. Goldsmith came to London after his travels on the Continent, in 1756, so that he could not have written Tommy Trip, although the rhyme of “Three Children”, as Mr. Welsh observed, is remarkably like the “Elegy on a Mad Dog”.
Note on Novels and Plays abridged or adapted for children:—
Among these were Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, with a prefatory address “To the Parents, Guardians and Governesses of Great Britain and Ireland”. (E. Newbury’s list, 1789); and Tom Jones, the Foundling (the story of his childhood only), published about 1814 by Pitts of Seven Dials, with a foreword to the “little Friends” for whom it was designed.
Plays were also fashioned into children’s books. Garrick’s Masque from Dryden’s King Arthur (1770) produced a “Lilliputian” romance closely modelled on Dryden: The Eventful History of King Arthur; or, the British Worthy. London, printed for H. Roberts & W. Nicholl. Price 6d., in Dutch paper boards. (A.S. Kensington copy is dated 1782.)