Forgotten Books of the American Nursery / A History of the Development of the American Story-Book

by Rosalie Vrylina Halsey

One year later, when the Non-Importation Agreement had passed and was rigorously enforced in the port of Boston, these same little books were advertised again in the “Chronicle” of December 4-7 under the large caption, Printed in America and to be sold by John Mein. Times had so changed within one year’s space that even a child’s six-penny book was unpopular, if known to have been imported.

Mein was among those accused of violating the “Agreement;” he was charged with the importation of materials for book-making. In a November number of the “Chronicle” of seventeen hundred and sixty-nine, Mein published an article entitled “A State of the Importation from Great Britain into the Port of Boston with the advertisement of a set of Men, who assume to themselves The Title of ALL the Well Disposed Merchants.” In this letter the London Book-Store proprietor vigorously defended himself, and protested that the quantity of his work necessitated some importations not procurable in Boston. He also made sarcastic references to other men whom he thought the cap fitted better with less excuse. It was in the following December that he tried to keep this trade in children’s books by his apparently patriotic announcement regarding them. His protests were useless. Already in disfavor with some because he was supposed to print books in America but used a London imprint, his popularity waned; he was marked as a loyalist, and there was little of the spirit of tolerance for such in that hot-bed of patriotism. The air was so full of the growing differences between the colonials and the king’s government, that in seventeen hundred and seventy Mein closed out his stock and returned to England.

On the other hand, the patriotic booksellers did not fail to take note of the crystallization of public opinion. Robert Bell in Philadelphia appended a note to his catalogue of books, stating that “The Lovers and Practisers of Patriotism are requested to note that all the Books in this Catalogue are either of American manufacture, or imported before the Non-Importation Agreement.”

The supply of home-made paper was of course limited. So much was needed to circulate among the colonies pamphlets dealing with the injustice of the king’s government toward his American subjects, that it seems remarkable that any juvenile books should have been printed in those stirring days before the war began. It is rather to be expected that, with the serious turn that events had taken and the consequent questions that had arisen, the publications of the American press should have received the shadow of the forthcoming trouble—a shadow sufficient to discourage any attempt at humor for adult or child. Evidence, however, points to the fact that humor and amusement were not totally lacking in the issues of the press of at least one printer in Boston, John Boyle. The humorous satire produced by his press in seventeen hundred and seventy-five, called “The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times,” purported to set forth the state of political affairs during the troubles “wherein all our calamities are seen to flow from the fact that the king had set up for our worship the god of the heathen—The Tea Chest.” This pamphlet has been one to keep the name of John Boyle among the prominent printers of pre-Revolutionary days. Additional interest accrues for this reason to a play-book printed by Boyle—the only one extant of this decade known to the writer.

This quaint little chap-book, three by four inches in size, was issued in seventeen hundred and seventy-one, soon after Boyle had set up his printing establishment and four years before the publication of the famous pamphlet. It represents fully the standard for children’s literature in the days when Newbery’s tiny classics were making their way to America, and was indeed advertised by Mein in seventeen hundred and sixty-eight among the list of books “Printed in America.” Its title, “The Famous Tommy Thumb’s Little Story-Book: Containing his Life and Adventures,” has rather a familiar sound, but its contents would not now be allowed upon any nursery table. Since the days of the Anglo-Saxons, Tom Thumb’s adventures have been told and retold; each generation has given to the rising generation the version thought proper for the ears of children. In Boyle’s edition this method resulted in realism pushed to the extreme; but it is not to be denied that the yellowed pages contain the wondrous adventures and hairbreadth escapes so dear to the small boy of all time. The thrilling incidents were further enlivened, moreover, by cuts called by the printer “curious” in the sense of very fine: and curious they are to-day because of the crudeness of their execution and the coarseness of their design. Nevertheless, the grotesque character of the illustrations was altogether effective in impressing upon the reader the doughty deeds of his old friend, Tom Thumb. The book itself shows marks of its popularity, and of the hard usage to which it was subjected by its happy owner, who was not critical of the editor’s freedom of speech.

The coarseness permitted in a nursery favorite makes it sufficiently clear that the standard for the ideal toy-book of the eighteenth century is no gauge for that of the twentieth. Child-life differed in many particulars, as Mr. Julian Hawthorne pointed out some years ago, when he wrote that the children of the eighteenth century “were urged to grow up almost before they were short-coated.” We must bear this in mind in turning to another class of books popular with adult and child alike in both England and America before and for some years after the Revolution.

This was the period when the novel in the hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett was assuming hitherto unsuspected possibilities. Allusion must be made to some of the characteristics of their work, since their style undoubtedly affected juvenile reading and the tales written for children.

Taking for the sake of convenience the novels of the earliest of this group of men, Samuel Richardson, as a starting-point, we find in Pamela and Mr. Lovelace types of character that merge from the Puritanical concrete examples of virtue and vice into a psychological attempt to depict the emotion and feeling preceding every act of heroine and villain. Through every stage of the story the author still clings to the long-established precedent of giving moral and religious instruction. Afterwards, when Fielding attempted to parody “Pamela,” he developed the novel of adventure in high and low life, and produced “Joseph Andrews.” He then followed this with the character-study represented by “Tom Jones, Foundling.” Richardson in “Pamela” had aimed to emphasize virtue as in the end prospering; Fielding’s characters rather embody the principle of virtue being its own reward and of vice bringing its own punishment. Smollett in “Humphrey Clinker’s Adventures” brought forth fun from English surroundings instead of seeking for the hero thrilling and daring deeds in foreign countries. He also added to the list of character-studies “Roderick Random,” a tale of the sea, the mystery of which has never palled since “Robinson Crusoe” saw light.

There was also the novel of letters. In the age of the first great novelists letter-writing was among the polite arts. It was therefore counted a great but natural achievement when the epistolary method of revealing the plot was introduced. “Clarissa Harlowe” and “Sir Charles Grandison” were the results of this style of writing; they comprehended the “most Important Concerns of private life”—“concerns” which moved with lingering and emotional persistency towards the inevitable catastrophe in “Clarissa,” and the happy issue out of the misunderstandings and misadventures which resulted in Miss Byron’s alliance with Sir Charles.