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//The Coloured Nursery Picture Sunday Book;// //For the Young and Good// (1857) From the Preface “The little book here presented, possesses the qualities premised; -the small pieces thus attractively illustrated being portions selected from the Scriptures, giving an account of lives, peculiar customs, and events interesting to children, and conveyed in familiar and agreeable language, and tending by their general construction, to implant moral good, while they inform and amuse the young reader.”



**Miss (Julia) Corner (1798 – 1875)** was a British children's educational writer who created Miss Corner's Historical Library. She was born in London to an engraver, John Corner. She wrote novels, but become best known for her history books and plays for children. Her name is now associated with nearly 250 books. Corner published with low-cost publishers such as Henry George Bohn and Dean & Son.¹



Thomas Dean founded the publishing house in London sometime before 1800, and his son George became a partner in 1847. Their novelty books took over the market from 1840-1880. Dean & Son was the first publisher to take full advantage of the lithography printing process invented in Germany in 1798, and the first publisher to produce “moveable books” or “toy books" (what we would call pop-up books) on a large scale, Dean actually claiming to be the originator of these kinds of books. In 1856 it released a series of books in the “peep-show” style where images connect with strings and flaps that, when pulled, pop-up a 3D scene. In the 1860s, Dean was credited for inventing books with images moved with tabs. //The Royal Punch and Judy// is one of these books. They also produced books with scenes of the story revealed when the reader turns flaps.²
 * Dean & Son **

Most of Dean & Son’s books where meant simply to delight children, but many of their works “firmly reinforce the moral and social context of the day.³” While this nursery Sunday book (sadly) does not have moveable images, it illustrates this point as a Christian text suitable for the time.

Connections to the History of the Bible Commentary “Most early Christian writing is, to a greater or lesser extent, concerned with quoting and interpreting parts of the Bible."4 The homely or sermon, a device established in the earliest years of Christianity, focuses on a quotation from the Bible and derives a moral teaching from it. Similarly, this book is a paraphrase of parts of the Bible that concludes in moral teachings for children.  Christopher De Hamel identifies one technique of medieval biblical commentary as seeing every word of the Bible as having several layers of meaning. 1. literal/historical 2. allegorical/symbolic 3. moral/tropological (concerned with behavior or moral conduct) 4. mystical/spiritual contemplation (tells of one’s soul and its relationship to God).5 The nursery book is much more interested in the first and third levels, the story with historical context and moral lessons teaching kids to behave well.

The Latin Bibles of the 12 th cent. were enormous and heavy with bold noble spacious script, big sheets of parchment, several full-page illustrations and intricate incipit letters. The Gothic Bibles of the 13 th cent. (Paris Bibles) were smaller (some around the size of palm of a hand) and lighter with minute script, densely blocked writing on each page, white, thin parchment sheets, and tiny illustrated incipit letters.6 The nursery book is small and lightweight like the Paris Bibles but it has large pictures and intricate incipit letters like the Bibles of the 12 th cent., an interesting combination of the two to appeal to children.

Possible areas for further research

-style of medieval incipit letters compared to this book -medieval ‘picture books,’ illustrated Bible stories, like //Biblia Pauperum// (Bible of the Poor Man)

-Gutenberg's moveable type giving access to books to more and common (not clergy or wealthy) people -Language and literacy development, education, primers, owners

Notes 1. "Julia Corner," Wikipedia.org, October 12, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Corner. 2. "Dean and Son," Libraries.UNT.edu, http://www.library.unt.edu/rarebooks/exhibits/popup2/dean.htm. 3. "Dean and Son and Other Early Examples of Moveables," Lib.Virginia.edu, 2000, http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/popup/deans.html. 4. Christopher De Hamel, //The Book: A History of The Bible// (New York: Phaidon, 2001), 94. 5. Ibid., 101-02. 6. Ibid., 114-16.