'

"We are also desired to give notice that there is in the Press, and
speedily will be published either by subscription or otherwise, as the
Public shall please to determine, The History of Little Goody Two
Shoes, otherwise called Margery Two Shoes. Printed and sold at The
Bible and Sun in St Paul's Churchyard, where may be had all Mr
Newbery's little books for the children and youth of these kingdoms
and the colonies. New Editions of those which were out of print are
now republished.

"The publication of the Lilliputian System of Politics is postponed
till the meeting of Parliament. This work, which will be replete with
cuts and characters, is not intended to exalt or depress any
particular country, to support the pride of any particular family, or
to feed the folly of any particular party, but to stimulate the mind
to virtue, to promote universal benevolence, to make mankind happy.
Those who would know more of the matter may enquire of Mr Newbery."

This quaint and curious announcement, with its sly humour and serious
playfulness, is characteristic of the house of John Newbery, in the
latter part of the last century; and there is no need to speak here of
the fame of the books for children which he published; "the
philanthropic publisher of St Paul's Churchyard," as Goldsmith calls
him, conferred inestimable benefits upon thousands of little folk, of
both high and low estate. It is said of Southey when a child that

"The well-known publishers of "Goody Two Shoes," "Giles Gingerbread,"
and other such delectable histories, in sixpenny books for children,
splendidly bound in the flowered and gilt Dutch paper of former days,
sent him twenty such volumes, and laid the foundation of a love of
books which grew with the child's growth, and did not cease even when
the vacant mind and eye could only gaze in piteous, though blissful
imbecility upon the things they loved."[A]

Many of these little books have been doubtless long since forgotten,
though they did not deserve such a fate; but the name of "Goody Two
Shoes" is still familiar to the ears of English children, though the
book itself may be unknown to thousands of little ones of this later
generation.

"Goody Two Shoes" was published in April 1765, and few nursery books
have had a wider circulation, or have retained their position so long.
The number of editions that have been published both in England and
America is legion,