JOHN NEWBERY AND HIS SUCCESSORS 1740-1814, A BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wormley: Five Owls Press Ltd, 1973. cloth, dust jacket. Children's Books. thick 8vo. cloth, dust jacket. xxxi, 461 pages. First edition. A fine copy. John Newbery is famous among 18th-century publishers for the manner in which he exploited the new market for children's books. Both in the creation of a "list" of successful titles and in his very individual approach to the designing, publicizing, and selling of his "little books," he shows himself to be an important forerunner of the specialist children's book publisher. In this bibliographical study of the publishing activity of Newbery and his successors, Sydney Roscoe takes pains to supply as complete a record as possible of these children's books in their various editions with notes on the locations of copies known today. He has also provided a detailed introduction, giving the background to the firm's work, together with three important appendices on special problems that have arisen in compiling the bibliography. A title checklist is included of the many books for adults with whose publication the firm is known to have been associated. The appendices contain notes on bindings and printers and booksellers who worked near Pater Noster Row. This volume also contains fifty-three text figures and is illustrated with thirty-two pages of plates. From the private reference library of Dorothy Sloan with a commemorative bookplate loosely inserted.