ks
relating to Great Britain and America.

INCLUDING

Jack the Giant Killer, Cock Robin, Tom Thumb,
Whittington, Goody Two Shoes, Philip Quarll,
Tommy Trip, York and Banbury Cries,
Children in the Wood, Dame Trot, Horn Books,
Battledores, Primers, etc.

By EDWIN PEARSON.

LONDON:
Arthur Reader, 1, Orange Street, Bloomsbury, W.C.
1890.

_Only 50 copies Large Paper,_
_500 " Small._

[Decoration]

INTRODUCTION.

"Banbury Cakes," and "Banbury Cross," with its favourite juvenile
associations, with the Lady with bells on her toes, having music
wherever she goes, are indissolubly connected with the early years not
only of ourselves but many prior generations. In fact, the Ancient Cross
has been rebuilt since the days, when in Drunken Barnaby's Journal, we
are made familiar with the puritan "who hanged his cat on a Monday for
killing of a mouse on a Sunday." The quaint old town and its people are
rapidly modernizing; but they cling to the old traditions. Both in
pictorial and legendary lore we have some Banburies of another kind
altogether, viz., Banbury Blocks, or in plain English, Engraved Woodcut
Blocks, associated with the Local Chap Books, Toy Books, and other
Histories, for which this quaint old Oxfordshire town is celebrated. The
faithful description of the Blocks illustrating this volume has led to
numerous descriptive digressions, apparently irrelevant to the subject;
it was found however that in tracing out the former history and use of
some of the "Bewick" and other cuts contained in this volume, that the
Literary, Artistic, Historical, Topographical, Typographical, and
Antiquarian Reminiscences connected with the early Printing and
Engraving of Banbury involved that of many other important towns and
counties of Great Britain, and also America. A provincial publisher
about the beginning of the present century would reflect more or less
the modus operandi of each of his contemporaries in abridging or
reproducing verbatim the immortal little chap books issued from the
press of John Newbury's "Toy Book Manufactory," at the Bible and Sun
(a sign lately restored), 65, Saint Paul's Church Yard, near the Bar.

This again leads to the subject as to who wrote these clever little
tomes. In my "Angler's Garland," printed at the Dryden Press, 1870 and
1871, I fully announced m