Today we are diving deep into one of the most transformative
periods in London's literary history, an extraordinary
flowering of the printing industry in the 1740s, and the
remarkable little book that helped revolutionize childhood
reading forever. Picture this London in 1744, a
bustling metropolis of approximately 675,000 people.
In the narrow streets around Saint Paul's Cathedral, the air
carries the clatter of presses, the shouts of apprentices
running proofs across courtyards, and the smell of ink
and damp paper. At the heart of it all lies
Paternoster Row, the densest cluster of booksellers, printers
and publishers in Europe. From one of its shop fronts
emerged a book so small it could sit in the palm of your hand,
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song book. Yet its influence would carry
across centuries of childhood. Let me set the broader scene.
The 1740s were an energetic decade in British letters.
Alexander Pope was still a dominant voice.
Samuel Johnson was beginning to shape London literary life,
though his great dictionary was yet to come.
The novel was evolving rapidly. Public debate, satire and
pamphleteering flourished in coffee houses, print shops and
private clubs. London itself was still living
in the long afterlife of the Great Fire of London.
As 1666. The rebuilt city bore the
architectural marks of Christopher Wren Noma more
dramatically than in the great Dome of Saint Paul's Cathedral,
completed in 1710. New building codes meant brick
and stone were replacing timber framed medieval structures.
Streets were slowly widening and fire breaks, insurance schemes
and parish watch systems reflected a capital learning to
live with risk. Politics also pressed in.
The Jacobite rising of 1745, only a year after Tommy Thumb
appeared, sent waves of panic through the capital when the
Stuart army advanced as far South as Derby.
Contemporary accounts describe Londoners hiding valuables,
closing shops and worrying about bank collapses.
As rumours flew, troops mustered on the northern approach roads
just 113 miles from London. Even when the immediate threat
passed, the mood of uncertainty lingered.
Now to the street that concerns us most, Pata Nosta Row.
It ran in the shadow of Saint Paul's.
It was never grand more Service Lane than Blvd. but by the mid
18th century it had become the nerve centre of the English book
trade. Premises were identified by
hanging signs rather than numbered addresses, The ship,
the Black Swan, the globe and so on.
Behind those signs were counting houses stacked with queries of
paper, compositor rooms thick with type, and networks of
partnership agreements that stretched nationwide.
The growth was dramatic. Across the long 18th century,
the number of printers and booksellers active in London
expanded several fold. Rising literacy, expanding
middle class purchasing power, and a widening reading public
drove demand for everything from sermons to satire, travel
writing to children's checkbooks, and Paternoster Rowe
acting as in a clearing house wholesaler and innovation lab
all at once. A key shift that opened the
field was the early 18th century rethinking of copyright,
formalised in legislation, often referred to as the Statute of
Anne. As companies.
National monopoly powers effectively lapsed in 1695 when
parliament refused to renew the Licensing Act.
The Statute of Anne, passed in 1710, then established for the
first time publishing rights that could be defined in law,
timed, transferred and defended in the courts.
Under the new regime, authors and their publishers could hold
exclusive rights for 14 years, with the possibility of renewal
for another 14 years if the author was still alive.
That time limit mattered. It created incentives to produce
new material and repackage older text before the right expired.
It also encouraged investment in niches that the old monopoly
system had neglected, including literature for the young. 2
figures help bring this world to life.
First off, Mary Cooper, Widowed in the early 1740s, she carried
on and expanded her late husband Thomas Cooper's business at the
Globe. 8 Paternoster Row Active through 1760, she became one of
the first London publishers to target children explicitly.
Long before John Newbury became the poster child for early
children's publishing, Mary Cooper was issuing small,
affordable books for Little Masters and Misses, and Tommy
Thumb's Pretty Songbook was among them.
Cooper was what contemporaries called a trade publisher.
She would take in a copy from authors or other booksellers,
arrange printing, and send sheets back out through
wholesale channels. This model made it possible to
publish controversial or experimental material without
tying up too much capital. Her list was famously diverse.
Children's items, religious pamphlets, satirical pieces,
even the occasional risque title.
She also held copyright to a meaningful number of works in
her own name, no small achievement for a woman in mid
18th century London. The second name is Thomas
Longman. In his 20s he invested heavily
to acquire an established Paternoster Rd. business,
identified by the sign of the ship and associated neighboring
premises. From that published grew the
Longman Publishing House, which would go on to shape English
literary culture for generations.
Long term partnerships, share purchases in promising
manuscripts, and careful cultivation of authors became
the hallmarks of the firm. Although hand presses still
dominated everyday printing, specialist techniques were
advancing that included copper plate engraving process more
associated with maps. Music, fine illustration and
calligraphic copy books offered levels of line quality and
decorative flourish that ordinary letter presses could
not. It is this technique that gives
Tommy Thumbs Pretty Songbook its distinct look.
Instead of setting tiny movable type, the printer engraver
worked text and images into copper plates.
Letters could be punched, engraved or etched, images cut,
with berrins and ornamental borders added.
Paper was dampened, laid over the inked plate and driven
through a rolling press under high pressure so the fibres
picked ink out of the recessed lines.
The result? Crisp impressions, a tactile
plate mark and the capacity for fine detail at miniature scale.
A playful design touch in Tommy Thumb alternated openings in red
and black ink. Producing this effect required
separate inking passes or separate plates, increasing
labour and cost. But the visual playoff of such
small pages was considerable. Imagine a child turning a book
where colours changed from spread to spread.
It invites attention and repeats engagement.
Now how small was this book? Well, about 3 inches by three
and three quarter inches. Genuinely pocket size for a
child. Miniature formats were not
unheard of, but pairing that size with engraved illustrations
and alternating colour gave Tommy Thumb novelty appeal.
Small books were cheaper to post, easy to tuck into parcels
and tempting an impulse purchase out on the shop counter.
The copper work for Tommy Thumb is attributed to George Bickham
the Younger, part of a family of celebrated engravers.
His father, George Bickham the Elder, produced the Universal
Penman, an influential engraved masterwork of calligraphic
examplers. The younger Bickman moved across
genres, music, satire, trade cards, decorative prints and, in
this case, a children's rhyme collection.
Contemporary and later commenters note that his output
ranged from respectable commissions to more provocative
material. The 18th century print market
had porous boundaries between polite and bawdy.
Now what was inside this book? Well, the surviving volume,
Volume 2 gathers 39 short pieces.
Many are still sung today. You may recognise Baa Baa, Black
Sheep, London Bridge is Falling Down, Hickory, Dickory Dock,
Oranges and Lemons, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary and little Tommy
Tucker. There are also verses that have
since fallen out of nursery rotation, including one
memorably titled Pisser Bed, a reminder that 18th century
humour could be earthy even when aimed at the young.
The rhymes are brief, rhythmic and often paired with small
illustrative motifs that invite pointing, chanting and
repetition. This was literature to be
performed with children, rather than simply read to them.
And yes, there is The Lost Volume 1.
We know that Tommy Thumb's songbook, effectively volume one
in the series, was advertised slightly earlier than The Pretty
songbook. Yep, no confirmed copy has
survived notices of the time billed.
It is suitable to be sung to them by their nurses till they
can sing themselves. That line captures the oral
culture surrounding early childhood caregivers voicing the
text, gestures and tunes added on the fly, literacy developing
through sound and play. Scholars have attempted to
reconstruct the contents of the lost first volume by comparing
later prints, trade catalogues, and references in other
children's titles. While we cannot be certain of
every item, the work of reconstruction helps.
Map how popular rhyme migrated through cheap print formats.
The mid 1740s saw a burst of interest in little books pitched
to young readers. Tommy Thumbs Pretty Songbook
showed that plateful, entertaining material could
sell. Its success sits alongside other
early children's ventures, including those of John Newbury,
that blended instruction with amusement.
What had once been a narrowly moral religious genre began to
broaden. Publishers experimented with
size, illustration, pricing, and tone.
From these beginnings grew the commercial children's book trade
chat books, spelling aids with pictures, moral tales softened
by narrative, and eventually the richly illustrated Victorian
gift book. Tommy Thumb helped open that
path. Most nursery rhymes had long,
tangled lives before they reached the press.
Many originated in adult songs, St. cries, political satire or
folk verse. When printers gathered them for
children, versions were shortened, rearranged, all
stripped of topical references. Print stabilized certain
wordings, while oral performance kept them fluid.
The subtitle about nurses singing until children could
sing themselves says it all. This was a bridge medium between
memory and print. Why did small format books
travel so widely? Well, because 18th century
Britain was developing the infrastructure to move print
quickly. Commercial circulating
libraries, shops where you paid a subscription to borrow books
were spreading. New Sprint consumption exploded
as daily and triweekly papers reached coffee houses, Taverns
and private homes. Parcels of books were shipped
out to provincial towns and overseas colonial markets.
In that environment, a low cost children's chat book could ride
along with larger wholesale bundles.
Mary Cooper was not alone in the trade.
A surprising number of widows, daughters or wives took the
reins of print businesses when male relatives died, and many
proved highly capable. Mary Lewis, for example, managed
substantial printing and bookselling operations across
several decades. Women negotiated rights,
extended credit, trained apprentices and decided what
would go to press. Their contribution to the
vitality of London's print culture is only now being fully
appreciated. And London's publishing
innovations did not stay local. Sheets, stereotypes and reprint
rights travelled to Dublin, Edinburgh, the American colonies
and beyond. Children's items were reissued
abroad, translated, pirated or adapted.
A mid 18th century nursery chat book printed off Paternoster Row
could turn up years later in a Massachusetts shop or be packed
in a crate to the Caribbean. The mechanisms of imperial trade
extended the cultural footprint of London's printers.
Let us return to Tommy Thumb itself.
Only two copies of Volume 2 are known, one held in the British
Library in London, the other in the COTS and Children's Library
in Princeton University in the USA.
Volume 1, as far as current knowledge goes, is lost.
To put that in perspective, dozens of Gutenberg Bible
survive. Tommy Thumb exists in just two
fragments of evidence for its second volume.
When a copy surfaced at auction in 2001, it realised £45,000, a
reflection of both rarity and research value. 18th century
children's books almost never survive in good condition.
They were handled, dropped, scribbled on and eventually
discarded. That any copy of Tommy Thumb
endured is remarkable. Conservation efforts at major
research libraries now stabilise fragile paper house items in
climate controlled stores and make high quality facsimilies
available so that scholars and curious listeners like you can
explore them without damaging the originals.
And if you grew up in the English speaking world, chances
are you learned at least one rhyme.
First printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song book, the book
helped shift expectations. Children's reading could be
lively, musical, and pleasurable.
Publishers took note and educators followed.
From these tiny engraved pages flowed an entire tradition of
literature that balances learning with absolute delight.
So next time you're near Saint Paul's Cathedral, take a little
wander down Paternoster Row and take a moment to reflect on its
global reach of the 18th century parade, the women who drove it,
and the enduring sounds of the nursery.
Thank you for joining me on this exploration of London's printing
revolution and the birth of modern children's literature.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who
loves books, history, or a good story about how small things can
have enormous consequences. Subscribe wherever you listen.
And if you have a favorite London nursery rhyme, please do
let me know by contacting me through the website
oflondonguidedwalks.co.uk and I'll see what I can do.