Chapbooks and ephemera | Cotsen Children’s Library

The connection between football and Thanksgiving seems to go way back…

On November 28,1926, Marcus sent his big sister Eleanor a report on Thanksgiving back home. He thought it was “The best Thanksgiving I ever had” even though “I didn’t get enough turkey.” It wasn’t having the dressing, sides, or pies in the cement house that made the holiday so special that year. The real reason?

“I WENT TO THE MOVIES 2 on THANKSGIVING.”

(The “2” is short for “twice.”)

[Collection of Thirty Picture Letters Written to his Older Sister Eleanor]. [New York, between 1925 and 1927]. (Cotsen)

After the holiday feast the family went to the Strand Theater to see “Rin Tin Tin: The Hero of the Big Snows,” which Marcus said was “dandy.” He’d seen at least one other film starring the German shepherd war hero and star of the silver screen.

After this stirring yarn, in which Rinty saves a child from a vicious black wolf, it was time for something completely different, the “funny picture.” Marcus doesn’t give the title but does mention that it starred Harold Lloyd. According to Marcus, “the goofiest picture I ever saw.” Maybe the “funny picture” Marcus saw was the full-length silent, “For Heaven’s Sake,” the only movie Lloyd released that year. This chase sequence is pretty goofy, by all objective standards. The family went to supper before heading off to the Rialto (the theater’s façade still exists in New Amsterdam) to take in a vaudeville show and another unidentified “goofy picture.” Marcus had more important things to share with Eleanor than details about his third picture show of the day, like his preliminary Christmas list.He promised to send his big sister an updated and expanded list soon instead of asking what SHE might like from Santa. I was able to find pictures of some of the things Marcus coveted. Here’s an advertisement for the major manufacturer of bicycle cyclometers:

The manufacturer’s jingle for this product line was “It’s nice to know how far you go.”

And this might be pretty close to the basketball and the cover on the list:After some perfunctory chat about the weather, Marcus closed with the Pathe News, this time a seasonal story in two frames, written and illustrated by himself: Is this graphic depiction of a turkey’s slaughter and consumption a sign that Marcus was a budding sociopath? Probably not. These contemporary Thanksgiving greeting cards send the message that Americans were a whole lot more matter of fact and a whole lot less squeamish than we are when it comes to meat-eating…

Marcus also wrote about his adventures trick-or-treating and his battles with the algebra teacher. Just as amusing is The Flapper’s Magazette by Miss Vivie Wivie…

So enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend, whether you are finishing off leftovers from the bird or that tasty vegan mushroom gravy…

Holiday greetings from Team Cotsen

Andrea, Dana, Ellen, Ian, Jeff, Marissa, Minjie, Miranda, and Miriam

The disreputable printer Jemmy Pitts was highlighted in the post for Twelfth Night 2013, but he was not the only no-good early nineteenth-century job printer in the seedy Seven Dials district near Covent Garden in London’s West End. Seven Dials marked the convergence of Little and Great White Lyon streets (now Mercer), Little and Great Earl (now Earlham), Little and Great St. Andrews (now Monmouth), and Queen (now Shorts Garden).

Seven Dials was also home to Jemmy Catnach (1791-1841), who was vilified quite correctly for catering to the reading public’s insatiable appetite for rude ballads, accounts of violent crimes, sensational divorce cases, etc. He was the subject of the chapter “Catnachery, Chapbooks & Children’s Books” in Percy Muir’s Victorian Illustrated Books (1971). Muir, who knew how to turn a phrase, damned Catnach for having printed his stuff with “mean and old typefaces” and adorning them with blocks “worn to a degree of indecipherability that hid their almost complete irrelevance to the text they were supposed to illustrate.” Never one to mince words was Muir.

In Cotsen there’s a stout volume consisting of thirty-odd pamphlets, many issued by Catnach, which make a liar out of Muir. Bound in are several titles in the so-called Catnach “series” of Large Books. Here is a typical list, from the rear cover for Little Tom Tucker, [ca. 1835?].

Little Tom Tucker. London: J. Catnach, [between 1813 and 1838]. (Cotsen 5038)

The advertisement gives no clues as to the production values of the pamphlets. If Muir is to be believed, then it should be taken for granted that a job printer like Catnach always produces a shabby product with the tell-tale signs of recycled cast-off type and blocks from other prints.

Given Catnach’s reputation for slipshod design, these delightfully exuberant covers on the nursery favorites in the Large Books come as a quite a surprise, with not a broken font to be found.

Mother Goose and the Golden Egg. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 8793)

The style of the typefaces and wood-engraved blocks suggest the Large Books must have been issued relatively late in Catnach’s long career.

A Visit to the Zoological Gardens. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 5035)

Dame Trot and Her Comical Cat. London: J. Catnach, [ca. 1825]. (Cotsen 5035)

But once a rogue, always a rogue. The rear cover of another Large Book in the Cotsen volume is illustrated with a block John Bewick made for the frontispiece of Richard Johnson’s False Alarms (London: E. Newbery, ca. 1787). And where did old Jemmy come by the block? Was it purchased from John Harris, Elizabeth Newbery’s successor, or his son, John junior?

A fine puzzle for someone interested in learning more about the largely neglected children’s books published early in Victoria’s reign…

Cotsen Children’s Library

Princeton University

Category Archives: Chapbooks and ephemera

“The best Thanksgiving ever:” A 1920s Celebration

James Catnach’s Fancy Chapbooks in the Series of Large Books