Precocious Piggy, etc.

There are some delightful images scanned from old children’s books belonging to the University of Wales in Aberyswyth’s Horton Collection on display here. I snipped out a few which caught my eye: these follow below.

From The Headlong Career and Woful Ending of Precocious Piggy by the late Thomas Hood, illustrated by his son; London: Griffith and Farran, 1859. Here we see that Piggy’s ‘wo’ is, at least in part, due to his intemperate drinking.

From The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast by ‘Comus’ [Robert Michael Ballantyne]; London, Thomas Nelson and sons, 1857.

From Dame Wiggins of Lee and her Seven Wonderful Cats : a Humorous Tale, written principally by ‘a lady of ninety’, edited with additional verses by John Ruskin, illustrated by Kate Greenaway; London, George Allen, 1902.

And, lastly, we move from the charming to the rather alarming, as we contemplate the Death and Burial of the Three Little Kittens, London: Dean & son, [n.d.] Seeing as how the death part is dealt with so brusquely, one can only assume that the burial is described in greater detail.

Posted by misteraitch at December 9, 2003 12:52 PM | TrackBack