It would be very easy to over-estimate the intrinsic merit of these books, but when you consider them as pioneers it would be hard to over-rate the importance of the new departure. To enlist the talent of the most popular artists of the period, and produce volumes printed in the best style of the Chiswick Press, with bindings and end-papers specially designed, and the whole "get up" of the book carefully considered, was certainly a bold innovation in the early forties. That it failed to be a profitable venture one may deduce from the fact that the "Felix Summerley" series did not run to many volumes, and that the firm who published them, after several changes, seems to have expired, or more possibly was incorporated with some other venture. The books themselves are forgotten by most booksellers to-day, as I have discovered from many fruitless demands for copies.
The little square pamphlets by F. H. Bayley, to which allusion has already been made, include "Blue Beard;" "Robinson Crusoe," and "Red Riding Hood," all published about 1845-6.
ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE QUEEN OF THE PIRATE ISLE." BY KATE GREENAWAY (EDMUND EVANS. 1887)
Whether "The Sleeping Beauty," then announced as in preparation, was published, I do not know. Their rhyming chronicle in the style of the "Ingoldsby Legends" is neatly turned, and the topical allusions, although out of date now, are not sufficiently frequent to make it unintelligible. The pictures (possibly by Alfred Crowquill) are conceived in a spirit of burlesque, and are full of ingenious conceits and no little grim vigour. The design of Robinson Crusoe roosting in a tree—
And so he climbs up a very tall tree,
And fixes himself to his comfort and glee,
Hung up from the end of a branch by his breech,
Quite out of all mischievous quadrupeds' reach.
A position not perfectly easy 't is true,
But yet at the same time consoling and new—
reproduced on [p. 13], shows the wilder humour of the illustrations. Another of Blue Beard, and one of the wolf suffering from undigested grandmother, are also given. They need no comment, except to note that in the originals, printed on a coloured tint with the high lights left white, the ferocity of Blue Beard is greatly heightened. The wolf, "as he lay there brimful of grandmother and guilt," is one of the best of the smaller pictures in the text.
Other noteworthy books which appeared about this date are Mrs. Felix Summerley's "Mother's Primer," illustrated by W. M[ulready?], Longmans, 1843; "Little Princess," by Mrs. John Slater, 1843, with six charming lithographs by J. C. Horsley, R.A. (one of which is reproduced on [p. 11]); the "Honey Stew," of the Countess Bertha Jeremiah How, 1846, with coloured plates by Harrison Weir; "Early Days of English Princes," with capital illustrations by John Franklin; and a series of Pleasant Books for Young Children, 6d. plain and 1s. coloured, published by Cundall and Addey.
ILLUSTRATION FROM "LITTLE FOLKS" BY KATE GREENAWAY (CASSELL AND CO.)