Modern Books and Manuscripts » Children’s Books

Historias para niños mexicanos

houghtonmodern — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:05:52 +0000

At the turn of the twentieth century, Spanish publishers the Maucci brothers commissioned Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913) to illustrate a new series of children’s stories on the history of Mexico, the Biblioteca del niño mexicano. Each story was published with a colorful, and often rather gruesome, wrapper illustration depicting the contents within, and several black-and-white illustrations within the text. One of the first attempts to bring history to Mexican children, the stories were sixteen pages each, and were bound together, at about the same time, in thematic groups of about twelve.

Houghton Library, with funding from Widener Library’s program on Latin America, Spain and Portugal, has recently acquired a set of 85 of these stories, bound in seven volumes. Three of Posada’s covers can be seen here:

More of Posada’s covers for the series can be seen here, from a collection at the University of Hawaii Library.

*2008-2071. Purchased with the Andrew Preston Peabody Fund. Images may not be reproduced without permission. To request an image of this item, or any items displayed on this blog, please contact the Houghton Library Public Services department, houghref at fas.harvard.edu.

East meets West

houghtonmodern — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:54:14 +0000

This is the first of four parts of a juvenile geography, titled Di li shü lin væn-koh kwu-kying z-tì yiu-tin kong-tsing, and published in China in 1852. Its author, William Alexander Parsons Martin (1827-1916), was an American Presbyterian minister who lived and worked in China and Japan for almost forty years.

The book is block-printed in a Chinese colloquial dialect spoken in Ningbo, in the northeastern Zhejiang province. The Chinese has been transliterated into Roman characters, although the titled page is in both Chinese and Roman characters.

This copy is inscribed by Martin to the Rev. E. W. Syle, a pioneer in education for the blind in China and Japan.

The book also contains several folding woodcut maps, including this one (click on the map to see a larger image):

*2007-631. Purchased with the Sydney J. Watts Fund. Images may not be reproduced without permission.

Dainty science

houghtonmodern — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:19:59 +0000

For our inaugural post, may we present:

Published in the mid-1820s, Musée des Dames et des Demoiselles includes six small books covered in lavender paper and packed together in a blue and gilt paper gift box. Each book covers a different area of science appropriate for delicate demoiselles: fruit, flowers, minerals, butterflies, insects, and birds. Along with a hand-colored paper onlay on each cover, each book includes a stipple-engraved hand-colored frontispiece.

Books like these encouraged women to explore the natural world. The three women pictured on the box are in motion, interacting with various items discussed in the books. (Notice, too, that the “natural” items pictured are all confined and domesticated – the birds in cages, the trees in planters, and even the butterfly about to be caught – leaving this realm of nature somewhat less wild for the “gentler” sex.)

Our copies look as if their particular demoiselle was perhaps uninterested in nature – but we were delighted to find how new they looked!

(Click on the images to magnify them.)

*FC8.A100.825m. Purchased with the Andrew Oliver Book Fund and the Melvin R. Seiden Houghton Library Book Fund.

Images may not be reproduced without permission. See our permissions webpage for details.