Catering to Juvenile Readers: Boreman, Cooper, Newbery and Marshall 19

The long eighteenth century was characterised by a rise of consumerism; a considerable body of literature for young people was produced because publishers had realised that children’s literature was a new, large, unexplored and unexploited market: “shrewd printers, booksellers, and hawkers understood that one way of feeding this appetite was to appeal to the fantasies and aspirations, of an emerging consumer society” (Demers, 2004: 94). Alongside publishers, authors and illustrators aimed at designing books as attractive as possible, making use of both literary (e.g.

captivating narratives) and material devices (e.g. eye-catching illustrations, characters and formats). The books were meant to appeal to potential purchasers, to inculcate

19 To distinguish each publisher more effectively, this section uses paragraph separation.

pedagogical competence and assurance in their purchasers and attempted to entice the young mind. In a way, children became “a trade, a field of commercial enterprise for the sharp-eyed entrepreneur”, “luxury objects upon which their mothers and fathers were willing to spend larger and larger sums of money, not only for their education, but also for their entertainment and amusement” (Plumb, 1975: 90). Due to the large body of children’s books that emerged in the 1780s “critics were convinced that a minor literary and educational renaissance was occurring” (Pickering, 1981: 20) as

“the book became an object of desire for children, and a material expression of parental affection and duty” (Grenby, 2007: 302).

Thomas Boreman, Mary Cooper and John Newbery, who were aware of the increasing interest in entertaining the youth, but never excluding to instruct them, are considered to be the pioneers in the publishing business of children’s books in the 1740s (Jackson, 1989: 71-100). They played an important role in the exploitation of children’s literature, taking advantage of the publishing momentum and developing it.

Boreman and Cooper, of whom little is known nowadays, pre-dated Newbery.

Boreman, the first publisher to cater for juvenile readers, published seven books (Jackson, 1989: 72-5): natural histories (A Description of Three Hundred Animals, 1730 and A Description of a Great Variety of Animals and Vegetables, 1736), guided-tour books (The Gigantick History of the Two Famous Giants, and other Curiosities in Guildhall 2 vols. 1740; The History and Description of the Famous Cathedral St Paul’s 2 vols. 1742; Curiosities in the Tower of London 2 vols. 1741, and The History and Description of Westminster Abbey 3 vols. 1742-43), and a book on the subject of giants (The History of Cajanus the Swedish Giant, 1742). He

understood and put into practice Locke’s advice on making children’s books both instructive and amusing and used ‘the tour’ as the main device for his books.

Mary Cooper, Thomas Cooper’s widow, took over her husband’s printing business to provide for her family and ran it successfully until her death in 1761 (Raven, 2007: 172). Furthermore, “during the 1740s and 1750s the Cooper business proved the leading (and in a way, last) trade publisher of London. More than 600 books and pamphlets named Mary Cooper in their imprints between 1743 and 1745 and more than 1,500 between 1746 and 1764 (three years after Mary Cooper’s death).

At one point, even Pope used Mrs Cooper as his publishing agent” (Raven, 2007:

172). In 1743 Cooper published a second edition of her husband’s The Child’s New Play-Thing: Being a Spelling-Book Intended to Make Learning to Read a Diversion instead of a Task. Influenced by Boreman, she strove to create amusing chapbook characters and to lure children to read, collected and disseminated nursery songs, her most famous collection of nursery rhymes being Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book published in 1744, and two tour guides, The Travels of Tom Thumb over England and Wales; Containing Descriptions of Whatever Is Most Remarkable in Several Counties published in 1746, and the History of England in 1749.

Newbery, “the most authentic founder of this traffic in minor literature”

(Darton, 1932: 1), made children’s literature a commercial part of the literary market.

He was “the first successfully to commercialise books for children, and he used a simple but durable formula: the encasement of the instructive material that adults thought their children would need within an entertaining format that children might be supposed to want” (Grenby [4]: 4). Newbery having “great commercial agility”

(Alderson and Oyens, 2006: 51) and “with a businessman’s sense of capitalising on the success of competitors like Boreman and Cooper, he published and marketed dozens of titles, doing more than any other single publisher of his day to encourage the production of books for children” (Demers, 2004: 123). His books filled an obvious need and they were sold “in large numbers and stayed in print for many years: some into the next century” (Townsend, 1997: 87). Above all, Newbery was an educational publisher whose aim, “whether in pursuit of profit or from a wish to spread the benefits of learning – or, most likely, a combination of the two – was to educate the rising middle class, to which he belonged, and its offspring with it”

(Townsend, 1997: 81).

His most famous books were A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, published in 1744 and sold together with a ball for boys and a pincushion for girls, and The History of Goody Two-Shoes, published in 1765. John Newbery’s preface to A Little Pretty Pocket-Book “is almost an epitome of Locke’s pragmatic approach to child rearing”

(Alderson and Oyens, 2006: 7). Newbery not only agreed with Locke’s ideas on education, “but he also realised that A Little Pretty Pocket-Book would stand a better chance of success if it were clearly identified with Locke” (Pickering, 1981: 72). The History of Goody Two-Shoes is “largely remembered as a tale of educational and social advancement, a baby bildungsroman promoting Enlightenment virtues and values- rationality, self-sufficiency, literacy – which are rewarded in the end with the requisite ‘coach & six’” (Crain, 2006: 213).

Newbery’s slogan was “Trade and Plumb-Cake for ever, Huzza!” (Newbery, 1767: 9), which shows the links between commerce and the benefits of education, between sweet treats and profit or between profit and fun pedagogical material. He

“directly courted the growing middle classes, and his books often seemed apologias

for middle-class commercial activity” (Pickering, 1981: 1). This is at best illustrated in the following passage from The Twelfth-Day Gift:

Without the Farmer you would have no Corn, and without the Tradesman, that Corn could not be ground, and made into Bread. Nay, you are indebted to Trade for the very Cloaths you wear, and but for the Tradesman you would not have a Shoe to your Foot. Even this Cake before me, which you so long for, is the Product of Husbandry and Trade. Farmer Wilson sowed the Corn, Giles Jenkins reaped it, Neighbour Jones at the Mill ground it, the Milk came from Farmer Curtis, the Eggs from John Thomas the Higgler; that Plumb came from Turkey, and this from Spain, the Sugar we have from Jamaica, the candied Sweetmeats from Barbadoes, and the Spices from the East-Indies. And will you offer to set a Trade at naught, when you see even a Plumb-cake cannot be made without it? (Newbery, 1767: 8)

Moreover, thanks to Newbery “the presses of John Marshall, John Harris, and Benjamin Tabart – all catering to juvenile readers – came into existence, thereby increasing the production of children’s books a hundredfold” (Demers, 2004: 123).

Even though my thesis is concerned with the Marshall writers, I consider that a brief account of the life and business of the publisher himself is inevitable and necessary in order to understand the collaboration between him and his writers. John Marshall (1756-1824) inherited his father’s printing business in 1779,²⁰ which he continued running and extending it together with his mother, Eleanor, and his cousin, James, at No. 4 Aldermary Churchyard in London under the name of John Marshall and Co.²¹ Marshall’s career underwent three different stages; first, in the 1780s when he shifted from publishing popular literature to more respectable, albeit didactic, texts, recruiting women writers who would promote and engage with the new direction of children’s literature. By 1793 Marshall had become the most prolific and successful publisher of children’s books in England, “he operated three premises, employed more than forty servants and was advertising more than one hundred and ten

20 Richard Marshall died on 24 August 1779 and left half of his business to John with quarter shares to his nephew James and his wife Eleanor (Stoker, forthcoming).

21 For more information on Marshall, his life and printing business see Stoker, David (2013: 81-118) and “The Pitfalls of Seeking Respectability” (forthcoming). Also, Alderson, Brian; Oyens, Felix de Marez (62-6; 135-9) and Demers, Patricia (283-7).

children’s book titles as well as two periodicals²² and a number of teaching schemes”²³ (Stoker, forthcoming). Marshall, “the children’s printer” (Fenn, Fables, 1783: 77), “was an astute promoter of what children wanted to see and what their parents were willing to buy”, “never missing an opportunity to remind his clientele where ‘a great variety of books and schemes for the Instruction and Amusement of young people’²⁴ could be purchased” (Demers, 2004: 283). The second stage of his career was marked by the end of 1799 when he was faced with serious financial difficulties due to disputes with his business associate John Evans, the manager of his shop at 42 Long Lane, with Hannah More over the creation and distribution of Cheap Repository Tracts and owing to Trimmer and Fenn’s decision to cease their collaboration. And the third phase, between 1800 and 1815, when his business started to thrive once again (Stoker, forthcoming) as a result of his revival and return to children’s publishing, which brought about monthly periodicals such as the Children’s Magazine (January 1799-December 1800) and the Picture Magazine (1800-01). He was so confident about his writers and their publications that in 1800 he presented his other new project: miniature libraries for children (The Juvenile; or Child’s Library; The infant’s Library and The Doll’s Library), all published almost at the same time (Alderson, 1983: 4). These were followed by The Infant’s Cabinet Series (1800-1), The Book-Case of Instruction and Delight (1802), The Infant’s Letterbox (1803) and The Doll’s Casket (?1815).²⁵

22 Trimmer’s Family Magazine (1788-9) and Peacock’s Juvenile Magazine (1788).

23 For example, Fenn’s Set of Toys (1785), teaching schemes and educational devices (cards, alphabets, illustrations, wooden cases, booklets etc.).

24 See Shefrin, Jill, The Dartons. Her research focuses on the use of printed pastimes and teaching aids in early modern and nineteenth-century education.

25 See Miniature Libraries from the Children’s Books Collections. Victoria and Albert Museum.

Marshall found writers “who were perhaps influenced by the growing interest in books for children and [encouraged] their activity” (Alderson and Oyens, 2006:

64), eventually making a profit from the publication of these writers’ books. He

got in touch with them by steps not now to be traced, and he kept them and was responsible for nearly all their juvenile work. He started, perhaps, with something of Newbery’s impetuous anonymity and pseudonymity, and those who wrote for him disguised themselves after the fashion of the time. But they kept their identity, and were visible figures in the nursery adventure. The author, as well as the publisher, of children’s books had arrived as a citizen of the republic of literature, with responsibilities, rights, and compatriots of his won tribe (Darton, 1932: 139).

As David Stoker concludes, Marshall’s publishing career

provides an ideal case study to illustrate the fundamental changes that took place in both the content and production methods of children’s books between the 1770s and the 1820s. A combination of Marshall’s resolute commercialism, his adaptability and readiness to embrace new ideas and technology, and his undoubted flair for children’s literature enabled him to prosper during the good times and also to remain in business during times of economic difficulty. He may not have been an easy man to work for, but he has left a huge legacy for future generations in terms of the items he published and the impact they had on other writers and publishers (Stoker, forthcoming).

Undoubtedly, Marshall and his literary associates are very important in the development of children’s literature and its promotion, which will be discussed at length in the following chapters of this thesis.