Digitization of Early Nursery Rhyme Books

Nursery rhymes were very popular as the content of early chapbooks and other small volumes, often published in series. Like many children’s books from previous centuries, these are often very difficult to study today because they were, in many instances, literally “loved to pieces” by young readers. Those that have survived are frequently under the protective custody of special collections of rare books or owned by private collectors and, therefore, not readily available to many interested parties. Thus, digitization is an ideal means to make these books accessible to a wider audience of those interested in the social history of children’s literature or, more specifically, in the history of nursery rhymes.

While single images of rhymes from contemporary books in ECLIPSE were produced by scanning, most of the digitizations of complete books were photographed with a digital camera to avoid damaging fragile and irreplaceable items. The photography was done by Professor Moriyoshi Moriyama who was a Visiting Scholar from Japan working with Professor Kay Vandergrift at Rutgers University on the study children’s literature.

Two books were digitized through scanning rather than photography. The Nursery Picture Book is a large 1867 volume with full page brilliantly colored oil illustrations in Vandergrift's private collection. Unfortunately there is no illustrator named on the title page nor are any of the illustrations signed. Although the binding of the book is in very poor condition, all the pages and both covers are intact; and all but a few blank pages were scanned. The blank pages are thinner, tissue-like, sheets to protect the illustrations and were more deteriorated than other pages. Thus, it seemed unnecessary, in the preservation of the integrity of the original work, to try to scan what might amount to little more than scraps of paper. One of the most interesting parts of this four-part volume is a version The Death and Burial of Cock Robin. This rhyme is most often pictured in a series of tiny vignettes, but here there are large full-color images for each verse. The Nursery Picture Book was scanned at 300 pixels and subsequently changed to a resolution of 72 pixels. Most of the images were 8.45 inches by 10.64 inches; and all were reduced to 484/610 pixels.

The Metropolitan Mother Goose, published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Press (nd) is one example of the many uses of Mother Goose by commercial companies to further their interests or to sell particular products. In this instance, the insurance company is encouraging cleanliness, a healthy diet, exercise, and the development of other habits that lead to good health in children. The intent may be admirable, if also advantageous to the publisher, but the revised versions of the rhymes lack the literary qualities and the enjoyment that has kept Mother Goose alive over the centuries.

There are a number of things you will notice in examining these books. In some instances, the conditions of the books show foxing, crumbled or torn pages, or other evidences of time and use. Some of the inexpensive series books have only rudimentary hand tinting of illustrations, often with what would be called inexact registration if the colors had been produced by a printing press. You may also see the same image used to illustrate very different stories. This was not uncommon in a time when printer/publishers owned stocks of woodcuts or block prints and used them for multiple volumes rather than commission new illustrations for each new book. The shots of blank pages between double-page spreads of text and images are included intentionally to present an accurate rendition of the appearance and pagination of these books.

In some instances, more than one version of a text is presented here; demonstrating that, by the 19th century, different forms of these oral tales had been committed to print. Who Killed Cock Robin?, or The Death and Burial of Cock Robin, was one such tale that very early existed in multiple versions and variants. Hey Diddle Diddle is typical of those books that expand what was a brief rhyme into a more detailed story. Note too that while most modern illustrations of this rhyme are playful and humorous with the cow actually jumping over the moon in the sky, one of these early volumes has a more realistic image of the cow jumping over a reflection of the moon in a puddle of water. Early versions also include twists on some of the well known rhymes, as in the story of Jack Sprat and his pig rather than his wife.

These digitized books not only make scarce materials available to a wider audience, they demonstrate some of the premises upon which Project ECLIPSE was developed. They validate that nursery rhymes have been important in the history of childhood, in the history of children’s literature, and in the history of books and printing from the time of the earliest printed books. They also confirm the existence of multiple versions and variants of nursery rhymes available in print, as well as in the oral tradition, long before the 20th century. Finally, they support the belief that visualizations of a text were critical to children’s books before modern technologies permitted the wild and wonderful range of illustrations available to young people today.

Digitized Books

Hey Diddle Diddle. New York: McLoughlin Bros., [1872?] [Aunt Louisa’s Big Picture Series]

Indestructible Pleasure Books with Colored Pictures: The History of the House That Jack Built. Illustrated with Eleven Pictures by John Absolon and Harrison Weir. New York: Wiley and Halsted, [c.1850-1890?]

Jack Spratt and Other Rhymes. New York: McLoughlin, [18--.] [Aunt Mary’s Little Series]

Little Bo-Peep and Other Tales. New York: McLoughlin Bros., [18--.] [15 p. illus.]

The Babes in the Wood. Providence, RI: Chauncey Shepard, n.d.

The House That Jack Built. New York: McLoughlin Bros., [18--.]

The Life and Death of Cock Robin. Philadelphia and New York: W. H. Leary, [18--] [New Colored Books] [[8] p. col. illus. 18 cm.]

The New London Cries or a Visit to Town. Baltimore, MD: Printed and Published by Wm. Raine, [n.d ] [Embelished with eight coloured engravings]

The Nursery Picture Book: Comprising The History of Tom Thumb; 2. Story of Three Bears; 3. The Death and Burial of Cock Robin; 4. Great A, Little a, Bouncing B. Printed in Oil Colours. London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1867. [Twenty-Four Pages of Illustrations]

Sad Fate of Poor Robin. New York: McLoughlin Brothers, Publishers, 1858-98?. [Susie Sunshine's Series.][Printed in Oil, Covers in Oil Colors.]

Elizabeth Watson. The Metropolitan Mother Goose. Illustrated by Emma Clark.
New York: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, n.d.

Links to Other Digitized Books in ECLIPSE

Randolph Caldecott’s book A Froggie Would A-Wooing Go is digitized and animated with musical accompaniment in the nursery rhyme section of this site.

The Kisses from Rosa portion of ECLIPSE contains a digitized version of that published book along with the original drafts of text and illustrations, a dummy book, and the author/illustrator’s letters to and from her editor.