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Lot 125•
NURSERY RHYMES Unrecorded anthology of English eighteenth century nursery rhymes, NEWLY DISCOVERED [no publisher, between 1744 and 1767]
Ending from 19 November 2025, 12:00 GMT
Online, London, Knightsbridge£20,000 - £30,000
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NURSERY RHYMES
Unrecorded anthology of English eighteenth century nursery rhymes, 44 leaves only (of 64?, comprising pages 23-28, 33-66 and 69-116), engraved throughout, printed alternately in black and bistre, lacking title-page, some old ink and crayon stains and marks, with occasional crossings out and/or annotations, first few leaves damp-stained, some leaves with chips and tears (mainly at edges and in first and last sections, with slight loss of text in some cases), untrimmed in contemporary boards barely held together by 2 chords, without (or lacking) backstrip, worn with loss to corners and covers, 32mo (96 x 59mm.), [no publisher, between 1744 and 1767]
Footnotes
A NEWLY DISCOVERED NURSERY RHYME BOOK: ONE OF THE EARLIEST KNOWN ANTHOLOGIES.
We have been unable to trace any reference at all to this incomplete anthology, which is printed in alternating black and bistre very much in the style of Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-book (volume 2), the second known copy of which was sold in these rooms on 11 December 2001 (lot 1091), and now resides in the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University.
On the evidence of the dated inscription by Ricketts, the anthology cannot have been printed after 1767, which means that it precedes Mother Goose's Melody (T. Carnan, 1781), and possibly The Famous Tommy Thumb's Story Book and The Top Book of All, both dated tentatively to the 1760s.
In the absence of a title-page, establishing the earliest possible date of publication is more challenging. Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-book volume 2 (M. Cooper, [1744]) set off the trend of publishing so-called "little books" engraved throughout in red and black in alternate openings. The style of the illustrations of the song books of Tommy Thumb and T. Read's Nancy Cock very strongly suggests that they were the work of engraver George Bickham Jr. Of relevance to the Rickett's fragment is the setting of the text in those two other "little books": the rhymes in Tommy Thumb were set using metal punches, while those in Nancy Cock were set with metal type. The text in the our volume is engraved, but the lines are perfectly straight and the letterforms almost as uniform as type. It is unlikely to have been printed before 1744, and it could be nearer to the date of the inscription.
At a presumed 128 pages, the Ricketts fragment is the most substantial nursery rhyme anthology published prior to Mother Goose's Melody. It could conceivably be a later edition of Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-book, but the evidence from newspaper advertisements suggest otherwise, documenting that it was never available in one volume.
Provenance: William Henry Ricketts, 1766; Edward Jerrold Ricketts, ownership signatures on paste-downs.