Banbury Chap Books | Page 2

introduce several of the Quarto early editions to the firm, and have had great pleasure in writing and placing on record numerous facts and data, since utilized in the very interesting "Life of John Newbery, a last century bookseller." The connection of Oliver Goldsmith's name is indissolubly associated with the juvenile classics industriously issued by Newbery. Dr. Johnson himself edited and prefaced several children's books which I have seen in the Jupp and Hugo Collections. The weary hours of adversity, through which "Goldie" passed at Green Arbour Court, top of Break Neck Steps and Turn Again Lane--I remember them all well, and the Fleet prison walls too, when I was a boy--and in refuge at Canonbury Tower, near the village of Islington, these are the places where Goldsmith wrote for children. Sir Joshua Reynolds tells how, when he called on the poet at Green Arbour Court, he found the couplet:--
"By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, The sports of children satisfy the child."
see "The Traveller." He was surrounded by children in this unsavoury neighbourhood, where he had his humble domicile: a woodcut in Lumburd's Mirror depicts it very correctly. Bishop Percy, author of the "Reliques," called on him, and during the interview the oft repeated incident occurred of a little child of an adjacent neighbour, "Would Mr. Goldsmith oblige her mother with a chamber pot full of coals!" Truly these were hours of ill-at-ease. The largest collection of the various relics of woodcuts used in the chap book literature, "printed for the Company of Flying Stationers, also Walking Stationers,"--for such is a portion of the imprint to be found on several of the early Chap Books printed at Banbury--is to be seen in the Library of the British Museum; but the richest collection of these celebrated little rarities of Toy Books is in the venerable Bodleian Library. Among the very interesting block relics of the past are the pretty cuts to Mrs. Trimmer's "Fabulous Histories, or The Robins:" these were designed by Thomas Bewick, and engraved by John Thompson, his pupil, who enriched Whittingham's celebrated Chiswick Press with his fine and tasteful work. A numerous series of little fable cuts by the same artist are to be found in this volume. One of the quaintest sets engraved at an early period by John Bewick (the Hogarth of Newcastle), are to "The Hermit, or Adventures of Edward Dorrington," or "Philip Quarll," as it was most popularly known by that title a century ago. The earliest edition I have seen of Philip Quarll is as follows: "The Hermit, or the unparalleled sufferings and surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman who was lately discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol merchant, upon an uninhabited island in the South Sea, where he lived above fifty years without any human assistance, still continues to reside, and will not come away," etc. Westminster: Printed by J. Cluer and A. Campbell, for T. Warner in Paternoster Row, and B. Creape at The Bible in Jermyn Street, St. James's, 1727. 8vo, xii pp., map and explanation, 2 pp., and 1 to 26 appendix, with full page copper plate engravings. He was born in St. Giles', left his master a locksmith, went to sea, married a famous w----e, listed for a soldier, married three wives, condemned at the Old Bailey, pardoned by King Charles II., turned merchant, and was shipwrecked on a desolate island on the coast of Mexico, etc. Other editions in the British Museum are 1750; 1759 (third); 1780 (twelfth); 1786 (first American edition, from the 6th English edition, Boston, U.S.A.); 1787 (in French); 1795 (seventeenth); 1807; and also in a "Storehouse of Stories," edited by Miss C. M. Yonge, 2 vols, 8vo (Macmillan, 1870-2), Philip Quarll (also Perambulations of a Mouse, Little Jack, Goody Two Shoes, Blossoms of Morality, Puzzle for a curious Girl), and others are given. The text is useful to refer to, as the originals are rare: the woodcuts of several of them are in this volume. "Philip Quarll," Miss Yonge says, "comes to us with the reputation of being by Daniel Defoe; but we have never found anything to warrant the supposition. It must have been written during the period preceding the first French Revolution." There is also in the Museum an edition printed in Dutch in 1805.
In 1869, Mr. Wm. Tegg reprinted the Surprising Adventures of Philip Quarll, entirely re-edited and modernized, with only a frontispiece and vignette on title as illustrations. The quaint old cuts on next page probably illustrated an early Newcastle, then York, and finally Banbury, edition of this oft published work.
The Blocks designed and engraved by John Bewick, for "The Hermit; or Philip Quarll," (circa 1785.)
[Illustrations: iv1 - iv6]
Tegg's edition of 356 pages, 12mo, is to be seen in the Reading Room of the