Bad Boys: A Very Short History

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Andrea Immel

Boys being boys… Another episode in the ongoing rivalry between Horrid Henry and Peter Perfect

During the Big Move–shifting miles of rare materials into RBSC’s cavernous new vault whose completion was celebrated in the previous post, “Moving Day in Feather Town“–I discovered three really awful nineteenth-century books about bad boys. In contemporary children’s books, characters whose halos have slipped down around their shoulders are not exactly underrepresented… Think of Francesca Simon’s Horrid Henry, whose antics have given rise to a multi-media empire. Bad boys are by no means non-existent in older children’s books, but the way boyish misbehavior was punished has changed dramatically as attitudes towards authority, curiosity, mischief, and mistakes have become more lenient.

Two well-known stories about bad boys display zero tolerance for boys like Horrid Henry who disrespected authority. In Kings 2:22-3 of the Old Testament, the prophet Elisha passes a pack of young louts on the road to Bethel. These ancestors of the Purple Gang yell at Elisha, “Go up, you old baldy” and Elisha retaliates by cursing them. Two female bears come out of the woods and maul forty-two of the no-goods.

Oh dear…

Undoubtedly this gruesome story was the inspiration for many cautionary tales about bad boys. Daniel Fenning’s best-selling school book, The Universal Spelling Book (1756) was the source of this famous one about the brothers Tommy and Harry, which Charles Dickens alluded to in David Copperfield. Harry the elder brother was a rotter and Tommy the younger was a Peter Perfect. Guess which brother was eaten by lions?

Woodcut, page 43, Cotsen 118 (19th edition, 1773)

Woodcut of the lion lunching on Harry on page 43 of the 19th edition of Fenning’s Universal Speller (1773). The Universal Spelling-book. [Providence]: re-printed and sold by John Carter, [1773] (Cotsen 118)

By the nineteenth century bad boys are all over picture books, but they usually make mischief in a series of illustrations rather than starring in a continuous narrative. All three of the books I found during the Big Move–one French, one British, and one German–fall into the second category. In Les Proverbes de Pierre (1890), illustrator Jean Geoffrey dresses up his little devils in Pierrot costumes and sets them loose in the classroom and in the street. Notice that it takes a young peep show operator (the one with what looks like a little tower strapped on his back) and the boy-gendarme to break up the squabble below. The second picture shows what can happen when the teacher steps out of the classroom. Is the boy in the upper left sending up his teacher? Where are the wild beasts?

Page 21, Les Proverbes de Pierrot. Paris: Librairie Ch. Delagrave (Cotsen 10743)

The one boy waves a hat that reads “Ass” while his accomplices dance on a sign saying “Lazy.” (Cotsen 10743), 1

In the British picture book Young Troublesome (ca. 1850), John Leech gleefully shows just how much mischief a public school boy could make at home during the Christmas holidays. In this plate the adults stand by helplessly as the young pickle shows his little brothers and sisters how easy and delightful it is to slide down a bannister.

Plate 2, “Young Troublesome.” London: Bradbury & Evans, [1850] (Cotsen 3141)

There are also illustrations showing boys playing practical jokes that are anything but fun and games. In Ludwig Kies’ Der Kinder Art und Unart (ca. 1855′), the boys in the boat dump an elaborately dressed tailor overboard. The tailor’s terrified expression suggests he thinks that once his heavy clothes become waterlogged, he will drown. The boys, who may be working class, show no remorse for what they have done and it looks as if no one will step forward and punish them. .

Plate [53], Der Kinder Art und Unart. Stuttgart: Schreiber und Schill, [185-?] (Cotsen 24963)

Likewise Leech’s Young Troublesome seems to think nothing of interfering with the servants while they are working, or apologizing when his prank ruins their clothing. The hapless servant may have no other recourse than complaining to his comrades below the stairs.

Plate 10, (Cotsen 3141)

Of all activities forbidden to children, playing with fire may have been one of the most satisfying because it was so risky. From the late eighteenth century onward, it is not especially difficult to find illustrations of children whose clothes have caught fire, a very real possibility in homes where there were multiple fireplaces with open grates. William Darton senior liked such subjects, but no engraving in his firm’s juvenile books can compare with this one from Der Kinder Art und Unart of a boy running out of the hen house, which he accidentally set aflame. Unlike many of the plates in this book, no adult appears to reprimand the little arsonist (or mourn his passing as the kitties did Hoffmann’s Paulinchen).

Plate [30], (Cotsen 24963)

In sharp contrast, Young Troublesome and his assistant look as if they have deployed every bit of firepower behind the scenes to bring the juvenile theater production of The Miller and His Men to a triumphant conclusion. The size of the explosion seems to have given his papa pause. Or perhaps his ears were ringing from all the racket from the special effects.

Plate 7, (Cotsen 3141)

Last but not least, is this illustration of a boy on his way to school pausing to get a light from a street urchin, while a gaping classmate watches them indulging in a forbidden vice. A casual depiction of underage smoking like this one in a picture book would be enough to get Les proverbes de Pierre a PG-13 rating these days and possibly launch a heated discussion on childlit-listserv…

More bad habits… (Cotsen 10743), 33.

A Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book on Ballet: Set the Stage with Letraset

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Andrea Immel

Spoiler alert: this post is not about an obscure form of biblioclasty–or something even more unimaginable.

Cotsen has its fair share of picture book introductions to the ballet, many of them in the Diana R. Tillson collection. Of course there’s a copy of Noel Streatfeild’s The First Book of the Ballet (1956), complete with an inspirational story about a young girl who wants to be a ballerina, a glossary of steps, history of the ballet, and plot synopses of famous ballets (Streatfeild was also the author of the beloved 1936 Ballet Shoes).

Pages 29 and 87, (Cotsen 85248). The image on the right reproduces notations for a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine. The First Book of the Ballet. New York: F. Watts, c1953.

For a quirkier approach by a certifiable balletomane, there’s Edward Gorey’s The Lavender Leotard: or Going a Lot to the New York City Ballet (1973). The page on the right includes a self-portrait of the author-illustrator in raccoon coat and tennis shoes. It was impossible to miss him on the nights he came to City Ballet.

Front board and page [1], The Lavender Leotard. New York: Gotham Book Mart, 1973 (Cotsen 152312)

For those who prefer to see supple animals instead of trained classical dancers demonstrate an arabesque, entrechat or a pas de deux, there’s always author-illustrator Janis Mitchell’s The Hamster Ballet Company (1986) or Donald Elliott’s Frogs and Ballet (1979) illustrated by Clinton Arrowood.

Pages [4] and [12], The Hamster Ballet Company. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986 (Cotsen 86267)

Pages 21 and 29, Frogs and the Ballet. Ipswich, Mass.: Gambit, 1979 (Cotsen 85247)

Then there is Dennis Knight’s Ballet, Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book number 5. It may be the only introduction to the ballet in the collection that is also an activity book. It comes with two leaves of “rub down instant pictures,” or forty-six Letraset transfers. For those of you with enquiring minds hungry for more information about this form of image-transfer technology, check out the webpage for SPLAT, the Society for the Preservation of Letraset Action Transfers.

In the Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book on the ballet, the sheets of Letraset transfers are divided into five sections, A-E, and each has been designed to complete a particular illustration in the text. B and D require about as much skill as filling in an outline drawing in a coloring book, while A, C, and E ask rather more of the reader. Each set of figures has to be arranged on the set of the correct ballet without any synopsis or photographs of an actual production to help visualize the scene. Perhaps this exercise was intended to engage young artists, who might yearn to design costumes or sets, rather than young dancers.

Luckily, Cotsen has two editions of Instant Picture Book number 5 and the 7th impression has all the transfers untouched on the inserted plates.

Unused plates of Letraset transfers, Ballet. London: Patterson Blick, c1968 (Cotsen 87411)

The illustrated directions for transferring the figures are printed on the rear wrapper. The earlier set of directions was illustrated with five pictures, but by the time the 7th impression was printed, the second and fourth illustrations were dropped and a cheery logo featuring a bee added in the upper left hand corner. A second good reason for keeping both copies in the collection!

Rear wrapper with fully illustrated instructions for transferring the designs. Ballet. [Beckenham, Kent, England: Patterson Blick, c1968] (Cotsen 16093)

Rear wrapper of the 7th impression with abbreviated instructions and logo, (Cotsen 87411)

Whoever filled in the scenes from the featured ballets in Cotsen’s “used” copy of Instant Picture Book Number 5 seems to have known something about classical dance. Notice the simpering White Cat (sans Puss in Boots) has been placed near the wings in the background of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. It could be the finale, where all the characters return for one last turn on the stage.

Page 10, (Cotsen 16093)

In the scene from Adolphe Adam’s Giselle, the reclining figure of Albrecht has been rotated so that he is balancing en pointe. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but I’m not so sure. It does make the romantic hero look a bit like Gene Kelly executing a jazzy move, so maybe it was done on purpose to juice things up.

Page 8, (Cotsen 16093)

And for the third ballet? I was expecting Stravinsky’s Petroushka. Instead it is Arthur Bliss’s Checkmate (1937), which was choreographed by Ninon de Valois, founder of the Birmingham and Royal Ballet, a work now considered a cornerstone of the modern British ballet repertory.

The ballet’s premise is that chess pieces come to life and act out human emotions (chiefly lust and blood lust) on stage. Whoever completed the scene arranged the figures so that one of the Red Knights is poised to stab a black pawn, while the Black Knight menaces his twin. The Black Queen, the femme fatale of the piece, looms ominously in the rear.

Page 13, (Cotsen 16093)

I wonder if Checkmate was chosen at the suggestion of the publication’s technical advisor, the great English danseur noble Michael Somes, who created the role of the Black Knight in the original production.

Publicity shot of the great British dancer, Michael Somes, the technical advisor for Instant Picture Book number 5.

Who transferred all the Letraset figures in Cotsen 16093? An older child studying ballet or an adult who was familiar with the repertory? Whoever it was, he or she seems to have taken the task fairly seriously, whether or not the scenes were composed from memories of choreography from actual productions. It’s evidence of a different kind of engagement with the book…

Olivia Bell as the Black Queen in the Australian Ballet’s production of Checkmate.

Cotsen Children’s Library

Princeton University

Category Archives: Performing arts

Bad Boys: A Very Short History

A Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book on Ballet: Set the Stage with Letraset