John Newbery is known as the father of children’s literature. He was not the first publisher to issue books for children. He was not even the first to publish books for children to enjoy, but he did it on a much larger scale than anyone before and introduced many innovations.

Before the invention of printing, when hand-copied books cost more than most people could afford to pay, there were no books for children. The concept of children as a special customer base for books and the idea that children ought to enjoy them seems to have originated in the 1690s.

Newbery printed his first children’s book in 1744. The publishing industry has never looked back.

Some of the earliest books for children in English

Early English printer John Caxton issued a book called Table Manners for Children by John Lydgate. It’s based on a 13th-century Latin poem. It was intended for children of noble blood who would serve as pages in a palace or castle. So it’s full of advice for how to behave in the presence of the adults they served. Surely Lydgate did not expect the young readers to find it entertaining or enjoyable.

The following centuries saw plenty of other children’s books with the same didactic intention. Children learned their letters from hornbooks, single sheets of paper or vellum with the alphabet and other instructional material. It was mounted in a frame and protected by a translucent covering made from horn or mica.

Children, of course, have loved stories since the beginning of time. The story teller, either a professional or the kind of housewives who eventually told their stories to collectors such as the Grimm brothers, have been part of every society. But all the stories available to entertain children had originally been intended to entertain adults.

Winter-Evenings Entertainments by Nathanael Crouch (1687), for example, looks like a children’s book. It has riddles, pictures, and a variety of short tales. But the title page proclaims, “excellently accommodated to the fancies of old or young.”

In 1691, John Locke published his Thoughts on Education. He suggested giving children easy books, such as Aesop’s Fables or Reynard the Fox, preferably with pictures.

He did not know of any other suitable titles in English. But he thought making pleasure a part of education would be preferable to the fear of the rod that characterized the schools of the time.

Thomas Boreman and a new era in children’s literature

A number of London printers started to dabble in children’s books starting in the 1720s. Thomas Boreman, for example, issued A Description of Three Hundred Animals in 1730. It was one of a number of natural history books intended to instruct children. It whimsically combined fact and fantasy and remained in print for a hundred years.

Boreman’s most important project, however, was a series of books that started with The Gigantick History of the Two Famous Giants and Other Curiosities in Guildhall (1740). Nine other Gigantic History titles followed, each illustrated descriptions of various London landmarks.

The series title is surely tongue in cheek. The books are only about 2 ½ inches tall. Boreman, following Locke, realized that amusing children rather than talking down to them would help them pay more attention to their lessons. His gentle irony let them identify with a silly sense of humor and a friendlier literary companion than they would likely find in school.

They are not the first miniature books intended for children, but they appear to be the first of that size not intended for religious instruction. Like many adult books, The Gigantick History includes a list of subscribers. But this list includes children’s names.  Boreman may have died around 1743. At least, his printing business ceased then. The few titles he produced for children had a revolutionary impact.

Mary Cooper issued Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book in 1744. It is the first known collection of nursery rhymes in English. Many of them are still familiar.

John Newbery’s life and business ventures

John Newbery had plenty of literary friends but did not attract the attention of biographers. Most of what we know of his early life comes from his son’s autobiography.

He was born to a farmer in the Berkshire village of Waltham and showed no interest in becoming one himself. The education of a farm boy could not have been extensive, but he had a great love for books and became a good student.

At age 16, he became apprentice for a printer and newspaper publisher in Reading. When the publisher died eight years later, Newbery inherited the business. He started printing books, many of which he wrote or edited himself, in 1740 and moved to London in 1744.

In 1743, Newbery and three partners signed a contract with a Reading apothecary to sell his “female pills” for 14 years. He eventually sold dozens of other patent medicines, most famously Dr. James’ Fever Powder.

He also seems to have been something of an inventor. In 1764, he and partners patented a machine for “printing, staining, colouring silk stuffs, linens, cottons, leather, and paper by means of engraved copper cylinders, on which colours are laid by smaller cylinders, the whole work of filling in, cleaning off, and stamping the impressions performed by the joynt assistance of sundry spring, and the intermediums of coggs and rings.”

Newbery kept himself busy with so many businesses that he tended to be absent minded. Samuel Johnson’s essay “The Idler” caricatures Newbery as Jack Whirler, “whose business keeps him in perpetual motion, and whose motion always eludes his business.”

He was shrewd but honest and friendly. His early death at age 54 prompted an outpouring of praise for his accomplishments and character.

John Newbery, book seller

Newbery published many books for adults. So did every other publisher. His adult books cover a wide range of topics, such as fiction, poetry, theology, scientific subjects, and music. His  books for childrenhave equal variety.

Children’s books brought him so much financial success that other publishers soon issued their own books for children. In America, Isaiah Thomas reprinted nearly all of Newbery’s works and became known as the American Newbery.

Newbery spared no effort in the printing and binding of these books. He used the highest quality paper, ink, and bindings he could get his hands on. His advertisements frequently refer to their “flower and gilt” bindings. Most of them are only about four inches tall, a very good size for small hands.

Speaking of advertising, Newbery seems to have invented product placement. Hardly any book fails to mention some other John Newbery publication in its text. For example, when one Tommy Truelove was offered a reward, he pleaded for a book that could be bought at a book shop at Bow Lane (Newbery’s address). Many times, his characters in one book take time to read or buy one of his other titles.

Traditionally, writings for children emphasized instruction and moral development. Newbery did not neglect these features, but he intended his stories first to amuse and then to instruct.

Newbery stories exhibit a very original style. Many subsequent famous authors have tried and failed to achieve something similar.

Some specific John Newbery titles

Newbery’s first published children’s book appeared shortly after his move to London in 1744. It is frequently called the first book written to be read for pleasure by children. As we have seen, that is not true, but it is the first in large body of Newbery’s publications that changed children’s literature forever.

Its full title is A Little Pretty Pocket Book Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly with Two Letters from Jack the Giant-Killer, and also a Ball and a Pincushion the Use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good boy and Polly a good Girl. To which is added, a Little Song-Book, Being a New Attempt to Teach Children the Use of the English Alphabet, by Way of Diversion.

It was small, two inches by four inches, and had 65 illustrations, 30 “alphabetically digested” pages of “innocent games that good Boys and Girls divert themselves with,” and four fables. It congratulates Tommy and Polly on their good character and advises them how to keep track of their good and bad actions with the ball and pincushion.

Newbery published Mother Goose’s Melody or Sonnets for the Cradle in 1760, although no copies of that edition are extant. According to published descriptions, it had a strong binding and pictures at the top of every page. The stories were given in rhyme and had a moral at the bottom of each.

They are based on Contes de ma mere l’oye, a collection of folk tales the French scholar and politician Charles Perrault published for his own children in 1697. Newbery’s collection appears to be the first appearance of these stories in English.

The History of Little Goody Two Shoes (1765) is the first novel written for a juvenile audience. It’s the story of a virtuous and clever orphaned girl. Newbery had many friends among the best authors of his day. Although none of his children’s books identify an author, Newbery himself certainly did not write them all. Some scholars attribute Little Goody Two Shoes to Oliver Goldsmith or Griffith Jones.

Circle of the Sciences appeared in ten volumes in 1745. It presents useful information in the form of questions and answers. These popular little books went through numerous editions and remained in print for the rest of the century.

These are but four of about two hundred titles Newbery published for children. He intended some of them for what we would call preschool children.

No modern child would enjoy any of Newbery’s books, but they greatly appealed to the children of their time. Then, as now, parents bought what their children wanted, and their children wanted what Newbery published.

Since 1922, the American Library Association’s annual prize for children’s literature has been the Newbery Medal, named in honor of his achievement.

Sources:

The history of children’s books / C. M. Hewins, The Atlantic, January 1888
John Newbery–father of children’s literature / Permelia E. Board. M.A. thesis: Florida State University, August 1950
The origins of children’s literature / M.O. Grenby, British Library. May 15, 2014
Thomas Boreman’s tiny, tiny “Gigantick Histories” / Jeff Barton, Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University. April 7, 2019