You didn’t know this about A Little Pretty Pocket Book

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, intended for the Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly with Two Letters from Jack the Giant Killer is the title of a 1744 children’s book by John Newbery.

John Newbery was a British publisher of books who first made children’s literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market.

John Newbery was the first printer to see a market for children’s books that both instructed and amused children, so he invented the genre.

CREDIT: “A Pretty Little Pocket-Book, intended for the Amusement of Little Master Tommy, and Pretty Miss Polly.

The first book he published there was A Little Pretty Pocket-Book in 1744.

Early Printed Collections, The British Library, Library of Congress exhibition John Bull & Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of British-American Relations.

His first book of this kind, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book: Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly was published in 1744, and is considered a landmark in children’s literature.

The book was very popular, and earned Newbery much fame.

The illustrations and verses in Little Pretty Pocket-Book help historians research games of the past.

In developing his particular brand of children’s literature, Newbery borrowed techniques from other publishers, such as binding his books in Dutch floral paper and advertising his other products and books within the stories he wrote or commissioned.

To market the book to the children of the day, the book came with either a ball or a pincushion, depending on which gender the child is.

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Newbery also published a series of books written by “Tom Telescope” that were wildly popular, going through seven editions between 1761 and 1787 alone.

This article was written by Cathy Hellier, Historian, Department of Historical Research, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Item can not be gift wrapped.

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book was sold with a ball and a pincushion.

His son Francis, his nephew Francis and Francis’ wife Elizabeth and his grandson Francis Power continued the business after his death.

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This book has sometimes been called the “first children’s book;” while other children’s books by Thomas Boreman and Thomas and Mary Cooper had been published previously, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book is the first in Newbery’s successful line of children’s books.

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By 1740 he had started publishing books in Reading, Berkshire; his first two publications were an edition of Richard Allestree’s The Whole Duty of Man and Miscellaneous Works Serious and Humerous In Verse and Prose.

His books appealed to parents who embraced the popular Lockean ideal of education by amusement, and they set a standard for quality of writing and presentation.

In 1743, Newbery left Reading, putting his stepson John Carnan in charge of his business there, and established a shop in London, first at the Bible and Crown near Devereux Court and then at the Bible and Sun at 65 St. Paul’s Churchyard.

Newbery’s The Newtonian System of Philosophy, also known as The Philosophy of Tops and Balls, was an introduction to what we would call science today, presenting astronomy, physics, geography, and natural philosophy in an appealing way.

In 1737 his master, William Carnan, died and left the business to him and Charles Carnan, William’s brother.

In Goody Two-Shoes, the heroine’s father dies because he was “seized with a violent fever in a place where Dr. James Fever Powder was not to be had.”

Scholars have speculated that Oliver Goldsmith or Giles and Griffith Jones wrote one of Newbery’s best-selling stories, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes.

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Newbery was born in 1713 to a Berkshire farmer in Waltham St Lawrence.