Valediction 23: Nursery Rhymes
Brian Alderson opens another rare children’s book as he passes on his unique collection.
‘Unprecedented richness and prosperity’, so says Peter Hunt, concluding his chapter on the children’s books of the entre deux guerres and looking forward to the great events that would be ushered in in the 1950s.
Peter’s essay was from the Illustrated History of Children’s Literature which he edited for OUP in 1995 and his documented account of the publishers, writers, illustrators and commentators of the period saw them to some extent as retreatist, even though he could not neglect much of their originality.
The ‘unprecedented richness and prosperity’ to which he looked forward was of course that presided over by the mostly female specialist children’s book editors collaborating with the great school and public librarians before the computer killed them off almost at a stroke. Something of their book-centred importance is now being revived in the pages of Jon Appleton’s the gab for a generation for whom such literary adventures may seem incomprehensible.
However, on reflection, I am inclined to wonder whether Peter Hunt might not have made something of the gabbish nature of those years between the wars. Those were stirring times for both adult and children’s books, dominated by new technologies in letterpress printing and lithography and the foundation of such organisations as the Society of Wood Engravers and the First Editions Club. (Though unwilling to be deemed a chauvinist I should note the dominance on this occasion of mostly male editors of children’s books such as Harrap, Cape, Hodder etc. and designers in the making of children’s books as well as those for adults).
I would offer small evidence for all this in the couple of dozen Valedictions that I have recently submitted to BfK, such as The Country Child’s Alphabet and the Oxford Boxes. Few of these get more than passing attention from Peter but all have a desirable quality for me.
In the present instance we must visit Bristol where was to be found Douglas Cleverdon, the dealer in rare books whose shop advertised itself with a sign designed by his friend Eric Gill with perhaps the first outing for the typeface Gill Sans. (He did not have much to do with children’s books but in 1930 he played host to Bettina, the daughter of a notable German publisher, Gustav Kiepenheuer and after the war she would, as now a Swiss publisher Bettina Hürlimann be one of the founders of the International Board for Books for Youth and wrote the study Three Hundred Years of Children’s Books in Europe, translated by one Brian Alderson).
Two other young Bristolians can also be found making it new in the nineteen-thirties. In this case they were young men with an enthusiasm for printing: Vivian Ridler with a humble Adana press for home printing and David Bland more ambitiously with an Albion. Before long they had established their Perpetua Press as a business venture, doubtless with the collaboration of Douglas Cleverdon.
In 1935 they were to triumph with their Fifteen Old Nursery Rhymes illustrated with new hand-coloured linocuts by Biddy Darlow. On its hand-made paper and limited to 150 copies it is unsurprising that it was selected as ‘one of the fifty best books of the year by the First Editions Club’. Both David Bland and Vivian Ridler would go on to have eminent careers in post war publishing, Bland as the illustrations editor for Faber and Ridler eventually as Printer to the University of Oxford at Oxford University Press (The Perpetua Press had also published poems by Ann Bradby, who would become TS Eliot’s secretary and worked at Faber before marrying Vivian Ridler and moving to Oxford).
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.
This article was written with the help of Eric Foster.
Biblio:
Fifteen Old Nursery Rhymes with New Linocuts by Biddy Darlow. Bristol: The Perpetua Press N.D. [1935]. [Letterpress titling within hand-coloured fronds and two rejoicing children.] 280x220mm. 36pp hand-made paper. [1-2] blank [3] tp as above [4] blank [5] contents list [6-7] Rhyme 1 faced by hand-coloured linocut [8-35] text and cut continued [36] colophon ‘Printed in Great Britain By David Bland and Vivian Ridler at the Perpetua Press Bristol MCMXXXV 150 Copies’.
Red paper over boards with title label to front 60mm x 80mm. White spine blank. Front and rear endpapers blank. Transparent cellophane wrapper. Apparently not in Opie.
