Valediction 14: Oxford Boxes
Brian Alderson is bidding farewell as he donates his remarkable collection of children’s books to Seven Stories. His latest gift is a set of boxes edited by the one and only Mrs. Herbert Strang.
I bought the first of these boxes from Demetzy’s stand at a bookfair. I was very pleased to see it since, for some time, I had been collecting Oxford children’s books published before the Second World War which must be accounted one of the most extensive and varied range of children’s books ever produced by a single publisher but I had never seen a box the likes of this.[pic 1 dolly]
Children’s books as a new line of business for Oxford had begun in 1906 when the London office at Amen Corner in the City entered into a ‘Joint Venture’ with the neighbouring firm of Hodder & Stoughton in Warwick Lane, both of them beginners in the field who saw advantage in collaboration.
At that time the head of the Oxford office was Henry Frowde but the ideas man was his deputy, Humphrey Milford who was probably responsible for appointing as editors two men experienced in publishing for children although primarily as authors: Herbert Ely and Charles James L’Estrange, happily combining their talents under the single pseudonym of Herbert Strang. They managed the operation for both companies from the Oxford premises, [pic2 Tom Thumb] initially on the top floor of the building where they were known as ‘the heavenly twins’ and proceeded to issue well over a thousand children’s or educational books up to their retirement in 1938. (A valuable account of some aspects of their work – and especially the identity of ‘Mrs Herbert Strang’ – has been given by Hilary Clare in Newsletter 77 of the Children’s Books History Society (November, 2000. pp.13-18) while a fascinating reminiscence of a spell as an assistant editor alongside ‘Herbert Strang’ during the late 1930s is given by Grace Hogarth who had joined the London office after leaving the New York branch in 1936: ‘Children’s Publishing in the1930s’ (Signal 61 January, 1990 pp.51-63).
The first of the boxes may be seen as an experimental production within the immense category of small cheap Frowde/Strang storybooks. In this case eight of the twenty-four ‘Henny Penny series’ were singled out for the box and given plain coloured bindings with a title label unlike the rest of the series with variegated pictorial covers [pics 3 and 4] rarely with a recognisable author or illustrator although ‘Mrs Strang’ was a series of women contributors some of whom also invented hundreds of little stories in other series for young children. (Hilary Clare’s article is rich in both fact and speculation.)
With two further boxes in the same fashion also turning up at bookfairs I could assume that the experiment was a success. In editorial terms it certainly bears a relationship to the many quarto annuals that came from Amen House during the same period. Many were edited by ‘Mrs Strang’ (Hilary Clare speculates on authorships) despite the anonymity of writers, but names might be attached to such illustrators as L.A.Govey, May Smith and Angusine MacGregor[1] who were regulars and may well have done drawings for the book boxes. Nevertheless, for all their distinction of design and (as noted above) for all the presence of otherwise unknown boxes in the copyright libraries no more of these boxes seem to have turned up in the wider world.
Given the care that went in to the design of the box and its contents, the experiment encouraged at least the two further variants that I also picked up at bookfairs. I have never seen any others although the two English legal deposit collections boast one duplicate box but not the other two while also having what seem to be similarly made-up collections but with different box titles. As may be seen from the descriptions, the three named series of storybooks amount to 22 titles but they are taken from a total of at least 96 of the unboxed items all of which are of colourful pictorial designs very different from the redesigned covers of the boxed titles. It is impossible to assign an author for any of them although a comparison with stories and illustrations in the annuals allows some fruitful speculation.
Brian Alderson is a long-time and much-valued contributor to Books for Keeps, founder of the Children’s Books History Society and a former Children’s Books Editor for The Times. His most recent book The 100 Best Children’s Books is published by Galileo Publishing, 978-1903385982, £14.99 hbk.
[1]MacGregor deserves special mention since she was both author and illustrator for the first series of Ladybird Books that appeared in 1941.
Descriptions:
1] [Mrs Herbert Strang ed.] DOLLY’S PRETTY PLAY BOX (Henny-Penny Books for Little Chicks) [1933]
A cardboard box coloured blue and white 85x70x75mm., the flip top and fall-down front flap with white printed title labels, containing eight volumes of the ‘Henny-Penny’ series each uniformly in a single gathering of 48 unnumbered pages 73x60mm. [1] framed title with series title and publisher: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press London [2] list of 24 series titles edited by Mrs Herbert Strang / imprint: Printed 1933 in Great Britain by Mackays Ltd, Chatham [3-48 text, illus. with an unsigned line drawing on every page opening. Thicker paper wrappers the outer in variegated colours with paper title label, as below:
Bunnikin Tales (pale green); Henny-Penny and Bow-wow (mauve); H-P & Cock-a-Doodle (dark blue); H-P & Piggy-Wiggy (light blue); H-P’s Book of Trains (orange); Little Goosey Gander (pale green); Little Mousey (pale yellow);That Naughty Mouseykins (red).
[2] [Mrs. Herbert Strang ed.] MY OWN BOX OF BOOKS (The Teeny-Weeny series) [1934]
A cardboard box 70x120x80 mm. coloured pale green and light orange with a lid with two title labels on each side and a blank fall-down front, containing six volumes in the Teeny-Weeny Books series each of [80]pp. including paste-downs, 90x75mm.signed [A] – E in eights. [2-3] list of 40 Teeny-Weeny Books ed. By Mrs Herbert Strang; [4] frontis,;[5] framed title-page as 1above; [6] vignette and imprint as 1 above; [7-77] text with intermittent framed line drawings throughout [78-79] endpapers. Cloth binding over boards with paper title label to front, three vols coloured orange, three pale green.
Titles: Teenie-weenies at the Circus; T-W’s Dicky-Bird Book; T-W’s Dollies; T-W’s Fairy Stories (Twelve Dancing Princesses; The Nightingale; The Travelling Musicians; The Ugly Duckling); T-W’s Nursery Stories:(The Babes in the Wood; Rum-Pel-Stiltskin; Snow Drop); T-W’s Playtime Book.
[3] [Mrs Herbert Strang] BABY BUNTING’S BOX OF BOOKS (The Tippeny-Tuppeny series)1935
A cardboard box as [1] above but 75x112x80mm.], containing: 8 volumes in the Tippenny-Tuppenny series. [48] pp. including pastedowns, 75x65mm signed [A] –C i n twelves, [3-6 prelims as [2] above; [7-48] text] unsigned line drawing on each page opening. Coloured paper boards with paper title-label; front end papers listing 32 titles of the Tippeny-Tuppenny Books ed. Mrs Herbet Strang, rear figure drawings.
Titles included and board colour: The Tippenny-Tuppenny and Tabitha (pale yellow), The T-T Farm (mauve), T-T’s Animal Stories (red) T-T’s Fairy Stories (cerise) (The Fisherman and his Wife; The Elves and the Shoemaker; The Tom-Tit and the Bear), The T-T’s Bedtime Book (liht blue), The T-T’s Nursery Stories (dark blue) (Little Red Riding Hood; Cinderella; Sleeping Beauty), T-&’s Pets (mauve), T-T’s Picture Book
[Be it known that the following boxes drawing on the same three sets are to be found in the British Library and the Bodleian Library but an analysis of them will take more than tippeny-tuppeny’s worth of labour:]
My Little Holiday Box
Nursery Rhymes Box of Books
Our Darling’s Box of Books
Teeny-Weenie’s Gift Box
Tippeny-Tuppenie’s Gift Box
No other locations are known.
