I Spent Christmas at my daughters in North Somerset
with her husband and growing family and their latest
new arrival my new granddaughter called Charlotte who
is now eight weeks old. It was an enjoyable time with
the children excited with their present that Santa had
left them. After the big Christmas dinner we all went
for a walk plus dog's to the park it was very cold but seeing all the red berries
on the bushes it looked very Christmassy and bright then we all went back home
for a nice hot drink.
Settling down with my grandchildren to read a story to them, Georgina my 5 year
old granddaughter brought me one of her nursery rhyme books with no pictures in
it and as I started to read the nursery rhymes to her I could see that Georgina
had lost interest in the book and when I asked her she said nanny Jan, there is
no pictures in the book, so she went to the bookcase and found another nursery
rhyme book this time with pictures. Then it came to me that when picture postcards
publishers started to think seriously about themes to capture a Childs imagination,
it is no surprise that they should have chosen the nursery rhyme - the traditional
language of childhood. They could be sure adults would buy them to send to their
nieces and nephews or grandchildren remembering the same rhymes they enjoyed
during their childhood. Of course children would want them too, for sending
messages to their friends. Ever since nursery rhymes have been printed it has been
quite customary to illustrate them. Until the middle of the nineteenth century
they were illustrated with simple wood or steel engravings, but the introduction
of colour printing on a commercial scale gave illustrators scope and freedom to
develop more varied styles and techniques of illustration. Pictures are, after
all, of paramount importance in books for the very young.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the King's Horses and all the King's men
couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner
eating his Christmas pie
He put in his thumb
and pulled out a plum
and said "What a good boy am I?
Original and worthy themes for children are always emerging, but none has eclipsed
the traditional nursery rhyme for popularity, the theme that has been implanted in
the minds of us all at an early and impressionable age.
Like fairy tales, nursery rhymes have been passed down by word of mouth through
generations their origins stretching back to mediaeval times - which is why we
find today many variants of the same rhyme. Although books of infants rhymes had
been published during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the first comprehensive
collection of nursery rhymes was the nursery rhymes of England by James Halliwell
in 1842 followed by his Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales in 1849.
By the 1870s and 80s so great was the demand for books of nursery rhymes that many
of the famous Victorian children's artists including Kate Greenaway and Randolph
Caldicott had illustrated them. By the end of the century the popularity of nursery
rhymes was such that they were printed on to all types of nursery items imaginable,
including paper ephemera, greetings cards, building bricks, china, fabrics and
furnishings.
The year 1900 brought with it the relaxing of postal regulations and the dawn of
mass travel. These factors helped to create the craze for picture postcards. People
were sending and collecting cards of all kinds of subjects- animals and flower,
studies, stage celebrities' heraldry, disasters, novelties with glitter and beauties
with large pearly teeth. Children were of course well catered for. Publishers brought
out all the favourite children's themes: games and pastimes, scenes from fairyland
fairy tales and many more. The first year that nursery rhymes were published on
postcards was probably 1902 and during that year nearly all the prominent publishers
of illustrated cards produced a series of their own.
Looking at the beautiful illustrates in this nursery rhyme book I can honestly see
how little Georgina and all the other little children's minds must work.
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