Judging a book by its cover - and by its contents

 

Edwardian publishers certainly knew how to produce exquisite book covers. I found this charming, gilded, art nouveau example in a second-hand bookshop a few years ago. I was beguiled by the cover, but even more enchanted by the contents.

The cover illustration, and others inside, was painted by artist/illustrator William Bennett Robinson (1870-1915).

The text is by Thomas W. Hoare, Teacher of Nature Study, about whom there seems to be very little information, although I did find one reference that suggests he might have died in 1939.

The book is an omnibus edition of seven books of practical nature study, in the Look About You series published from 1904 onwards. I’m guessing that this de lux edition, which must have been quite expensive, might have been published around 1914. The publisher, T.C. & E.C. Jack, was taken over by another Scottish publisher, Nelson, in 1915.

Here’s Hoare’s preface, setting out his intentions, using the study of nature close to home as a gateway to a broader education based on a child’s natural curiosity. It seems to have been intended as a structured guide to educating children at home.

Each of the seven books is composed of lessons in the form of a conversation between a family member and the children, sometimes with experiments they performed together, and at the end of every lesson there are four questions or tasks for the children to address. At the end of every book there are teachers’ notes, which strongly emphasise the need for kindness and compassion for animals and the need to exercise care and restraint in collecting and keeping living organisms.

Harvest time. The period illustrations capture a lost rural world, of farming with heavy horses and hard manual labour.

Aeronautics, before powered flight became commonplace. The book teaches scientific concepts like cloud formation, rising air currents and air density, by referencing familiar everyday phenomena, from condensed steam from boiling kettles to intrepid balloonists.

Colour plates for insect identification

Wild flowers, butterflies and moths

And when lessons are over, letting off steam by chucking snowballs at a snowman effigy of teacher.

And finally, something else about the Look-About-You series that distinguished them from contemporary early 20th.century outdoors natural history manuals that were mostly written for boys; this series was for the edification of sons and daughters.

You can download free digitised copies of some of the series from the Project Gutenberg website

 

A Victorian Natural History Book for Children

Ever wondered what a child's experience of learning about natural history might have been like in the days before television? Old natural history books can give some interesting insights.

I picked up this delightful children's natural history book in a second-hand book shop a few years ago. Country Walks of a Naturalist with his Children was written by the Reverend William Houghton and published by Groombridge and Son of Paternoster Row, London in 1870. He was rector of Preston-on-the-Weald in Shropshire and his real passion was for studying fish, becoming a Fellow of the Linnaean Society as a result of his expertise, but I suspect that this was by far his most popular and most satisfying work. My edition, with this attractive embossed cover, was the 5th., published in 1880.

You can read the book online at www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23941

This is the frontispiece, showing Houghton and his children on a nature ramble. Part of the charm of the book is the unusual way in which it is written, in the first person, as conversation between parent and child on a nature walk. The language seems contrived to a modern reader, but would not have seemed so at the time. 

Each chapter is a separate walk, the first in April and the last in October.

In the first sentence of his preface Houghton declares 'In this little book my desire has been, not so much to impart knowledge to young people, as to induce them to acquire it for themselves' and that is exactly what transpires in the following chapters; the children find things, ask him questions about them and he answers their questions, telling them about the lives of the things they have seen. 

This process of real-life discovery, followed by questions and discussion between parent and child, must surely be the best way for children to learn about nature; solitary, didactic television or computer-based technologies simply can't compete, however stunning the imagery and graphics might be. Kids love to talk, discuss and ask questions about the things that they find.  

When it comes to illustrations,then of course these old Victorian natural history books leave a great deal to be desired, with their monochrome wood engravings, but when it comes to the textual content the book is on a different plane to modern natural history books for children.

Firstly, it includes organisms that many modern natural history books for children ignore, like this tiny hydra clinging to duckweed roots. It discusses wonderful animals that most of today's children would never be aware of, like rotifers, because the modern natural history media are besotted with cuddly mammals and birds. 

Secondly, it doesn't patronise children by talking down to them. It's aimed at 9-10 year old kids but contains scientific words that would cause the literacy pedagogues, employed by today's publishers to level text down to modern reading guidelines, to have  seizure. The author scatters Latin scientific names and scientific terminology throughout, explaining their meaning as he goes along. You cannot help but conclude that a great deal of modern natural history publishing for children is severely dumbed-down.

'I am aware', says Houghton in his preface, ' that I have occasionally used words and phrases which may puzzle young brains, but I hope that nearly all will be intelligible to boys and girls of nine or ten years old, with a little explanation from parents or teachers'.

I suppose that some might say that this book, written by a clergyman in a privileged position in society, was aimed at children of middle-class educated parents - but you could say the same about today's comparable book-buying public. 

Interestingly, my copy has a presentation plate glued inside the cover, revealing that it was given by Leeds School Board to John Wilks Taylor in 1886 for regular attendance at school. He evidently treasured the book because on the opposite fly-leaf, in elegant script, he has written:

This book belongs to John Wilks Taylor and if it is borrowed by a friend right welcome shall he be to read, to study, not to lend but to return to me. Read slowly, pause frequently, think seriously, keep cleanly, return duly, with the corners of the leaves not turned down.

Here's another interesting aspect of the book. I suspect that today's publishers would blanch at the thought of publishing a picture like this, with a 'butcher bird' impaling voles and a blue tit on thorns. They would be afraid of offending middle class sensibilities and losing sales.

It didn't seem to do this book's sales any harm, though - this was the fifth edition in ten years.

One of the other delights of the book is that the father, conversing with his children, takes pains to explain the whole life cycle of these animals that they find - from Hydra polyps to small tortoiseshell butterflies - in detail. This book isn't about identification, it's about understanding. 

It's written with gentle good humour - as exemplified with these little tail-piece engravings from the ends of chapters.