Shortly after Newbery’s marriage his ambition and enterprise resulted in the establishment of his family in London, where, in seventeen hundred and forty-four, he opened a warehouse at The Bible and Crown, near Devereux Court, without Temple Bar. Meanwhile he had associated himself with Benjamin Collins, a printer in Salisbury. Collins both planned and printed some of Newbery’s toy volumes, and his name likewise was well-known to shop-keepers in the colonies. Newbery soon found that his business warranted another move nearer to the centre of trade. He therefore combined two establishments into one at the now celebrated corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and at the same time decided to confine his attention exclusively to book publishing and medicine vending.
Before his departure from Devereux Court, Newbery had published at least one book for juvenile readers. The title reads: “Little Pretty Pocket-Book, intended for the instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly, with an agreeable Letter to read from Jack the Giant Killer, as also a Ball and Pincushion, the use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good Boy, and Polly a good Girl. To the whole is prefixed a letter on education humbly addressed to all Parents, Guardians, Governesses, &c., wherein rules are laid down for making their children strong, healthy, virtuous, wise and happy.” To this extraordinarily long title were added couplets from Dryden and Pope, probably because extracts from these poets were usually placed upon the title-page of books for grown people; possibly also in order to give a finish to miniature volumes that would be like the larger publications. A wholly simple method of writing title-pages never came into even Newbery’s original mind; he did for the juvenile customer exactly what he was accustomed to do for his father and mother. And yet the habit of spreading out over the page the entire contents of the book was not without value: it gave the purchaser no excuse for not knowing what was to be found within its covers; and in the days when books were a luxury and literary reviews non-existent, the country trade was enabled to make a better choice.
The manner in which the “Little Pretty Pocket-Book” is written is so characteristic of those who were the first to attempt to write for the younger generation in an amusing way, that it is worth while to examine briefly the topics treated. An American reprint of a later date, now in the Lenox Collection, will serve to show the method chosen to combine instruction with amusement. The book itself is miniature in size, about two by four inches, with embossed gilt paper covers—Newbery’s own specialty as a binding. The sixty-five little illustrations at the top of its pages were numerous enough to afford pleasure to any eighteenth century child, although they were crude in execution and especially lacked true perspective. The first chapter after the “Address to Parents” and to the other people mentioned on the title-page gives letters to Master Tommy and Miss Polly. First, Tommy is congratulated upon the good character that his Nurse has given him, and instructed as to the use of the “Pocket-Book,” “which will teach you to play at all those innocent games that good Boys and Girls divert themselves with.” The boy reader is next advised to mark his good and bad actions with pins upon a red and black ball. Little Polly is then given similar congratulations and instructions, except that in her case a pincushion is to be substituted for a ball. Then follow thirty pages devoted to “alphabetically digested” games, from “The great A Play” and “The Little a Play” to “The great and little Rs,” when plays, or the author’s imagination, give out and rhymes begin the alphabet anew. Modern picture alphabets have not improved much upon this jingle:
“Great A, B and C
And tumble down D,
The Cat’s a blind buff,
And she cannot see.”
Next in order are four fables with morals (written in the guise of letters), for in Newbery’s books and in those of a much later period, we feel, as Mr. Welsh writes, a “strong determination on the part of the authors to place the moral plainly in sight and to point steadily to it.” Pictures also take a leading part in this effort to inculcate good behaviour; thus Good Children are portrayed in cuts, which accompany the directions for attaining perfection. Proverbs, having been hitherto introduced into school-books, appear again quite naturally in this source of diversion, which closes—at least in the American edition—with sixty-three “Rules for Behaviour.” These rules include those suitable for various occasions, such as “At the Meeting-House,” “Home,” “The Table,” “In Company,” and “When abroad with other Children.” To-day, when many such rules are as obsolete as the tiny pages themselves, this chapter affords many glimpses of the customs and etiquette of the old-fashioned child’s life. Such a direction as “Be not hasty to run out of Meeting-House when Worship is ended, as if thou weary of being there” (probably an American adaptation of the English original), recalls the well-filled colonial meeting-house, where weary children sat for hours on high seats, with dangling legs, or screwed their small bodies in vain efforts to touch the floor. Again we can see the anxious mothers, when, after the long sermon was brought to a close, they put restraining hands upon the little ones, lest they, in haste to be gone, should forget this admonition. The formalism of the time is suggested in this request, “Make a Bow always when come Home, and be instantly uncovered,” for the ceremony of polite manners in these bustling days has so much relaxed that the modern boy does all that is required if he remembers to be “instantly uncovered when come Home.” Among the numerous other requirements only one more may be cited—a rule which reveals the table manners of polite society in its requisite for genteel conduct: “Throw not anything under the Table. Pick not thy teeth at the Table, unless holding thy Napkin before thy mouth with thine other Hand.” With such an array of intellectual and moral contents, the little “Pocket-Book” may appear to-day to be almost anything except an amusement book. Yet this was the phase that the English play-book first assumed, and it must not be forgotten that English prose fiction was only then coming into existence, except such germs as are found in the character sketches in the “Spectator” and in the cleverly told incidents by Defoe.
In 1744, when Newbery published this duodecimo, Dr. Samuel Johnson was the presiding genius of English letters; four years earlier, fiction had come prominently into the foreground with the publication of “Pamela” by Samuel Richardson; and between seventeen hundred and forty and seventeen hundred and fifty-two, Richardson’s “Clarissa Harlowe,” Smollett’s “Roderick Random” and “Peregrine Pickle,” and Fielding’s “Tom Jones” were published. This fact may seem irrelevant to the present subject; nevertheless, the idea of a veritable story-book, that is a book relating a tale, does not seem to have entered Newbery’s mind until after these novels had met with a deserved and popular success.