It is a truism that children's books are a powerful reflection of the culture within which they are published. A largely agrarian society, which values the land and free, spontaneous play publishes very different children's books than a heavily industrialized society in which a child's every waking moment is heavily regimented. One has but to review any catalog of children's books for the past two hundred years to gauge the impact that industrialization, political repression and the like have had on the types of books published for children in various cultures:
In Western Europe, the earliest children's books had a strongly moralistic flavor, understandable given childhood mortality rates in the 18th-19th century. As literacy increased among the general populace, though, these sorts of books gradually gave way to books that children actually could enjoy. By the middle of the 19th century, a hugh cadre of talented writers and illustrators had arisen to create some of Western Europe's most enduring books for children. Combined with significant advances in printing technology, especially color printing, these books often form the foundation of modern private libraries of children's literature:
Walter Crane, Frog Prince, 1874
Two pressures sometimes push the prices of early children's books in Fine condition to astronomical heights:
- the population of such books is small, since many of these books were published in fragile editions that have not survived the rough handling of generations of children
- this population is of interest not only to collectors of children's books generally, but also to collectors of books by specific writers and, especially, specific artists
Tomorrow, we will examine some of the writers whose children's books are avidly pursued by adults....
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