HARLEQUINADE - Mother Shipton or Harlequin in Despair..Book 7. London: Robert Sayer, 2nd March 1771. Single engraved sheet (182 x 330mm.). Hand-coloured wood-engraved 'toy-book', the single sheet folded perpendicularly into four, each of the four sections with hinged pictorial overlay flaps at head and foot. Stitched, in later brown wrappers. Provenance: Edward Arnold (armorial bookplate).

细节

HARLEQUINADE - Mother Shipton or Harlequin in Despair..Book 7. London: Robert Sayer, 2nd March 1771. Single engraved sheet (182 x 330mm.). Hand-coloured wood-engraved 'toy-book', the single sheet folded perpendicularly into four, each of the four sections with hinged pictorial overlay flaps at head and foot. Stitched, in later brown wrappers. Provenance: Edward Arnold (armorial bookplate).

A most attractive example of the earliest 'toy-books'. Between 1767 and 1772 Robert Sayer published 15 such booklets at 6d plain and 1s coloured, now all extremely rare. Cf. Percy Muir English Children's Books, 1954, p.204.