Osborne Collection of Early English Children’s Books

One of the smaller and lesser known collections in Dunedin Public Libraries’ Reed and Special Collections is the Osborne Collection. This comprises a limited series of 35 facsimile editions of early English children's books issued by The Bodley Head, London in 1981, the originals of which are housed at the Toronto Public Library. This vivid and impressive series includes books, broadsheets, and graphic material in publisher’s slipcases.

The works selected for publication as facsimiles in 1981 were chosen to broadly reflect the development of English illustrated books for children over more than two centuries. The series ranges from crude early street literature or ‘chapbooks’ to vividly colourful folio editions from the Victorian era.

The facsimile editions include eighteenth century books of instruction, such as the 1766 edition of Goody Two-Shoes, the story of an orphan girl who grows up to become a wise and virtuous schoolmistress. Illustrated with simple woodcuts, this gently didactic work is of uncertain authorship, with Oliver Goldsmith suggested as a possible author.

Other curious works include The Mansion of Bliss (1810), a table game of the moral improvement type, with accompanying rule book. It is a game of chance in the form of a spiral track with numbered pictorial sections, in which punishable offences include robbing orchards, swearing or taking birds’ nests, whilst attendance and diligence at school are rewarded.

The Dog’s Dinner Party (ca. 1870) is an example of the ‘toy books’ which became popular in the early Victorian era. Designed for younger children, these books typically comprised a simple story told with striking colour illustrations. Designed chiefly for amusement, they nevertheless retained the aura of the moral tale.

The Nursery Alice (1889) was rewritten by Lewis Carroll to make the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland more accessible to very young children. The original illustrations by John Tenniel were coloured, enlarged, and altered in some details, but this was never the literary or financial success that Carroll anticipated.

The Osborne Collection also contains a novelty presentation of Cinderella (ca. 1890), designed to imitate a pantomime stage set, with changing pictures simulating a theatrical presentation of the story.

Julian Smith  |  Rare Books Librarian