A number of years ago, I first experienced the thrill of gaining access to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and being granted permission to see some of the books that compose the famous Opie Collection. This joy as I sat in the New Bodleian Reading room was compounded when the (now former) Head of the special collections, Clive Hurst, upon being told my interest in early children’s literature and culture, brought by an exquisite, little, thin, mid-18th century volume. It had two sets of flaps per panel, and four panels arranged in accordion folds. When he opened it up, it revealed a story of words and etched pictures about a set of characters called Harlequin, Columbine, Clown and so on. The bi-medial story literally unfolded as the reader-viewer lifted the flaps up or down according to directions either written as part of the verse or printed on top of a picture. Clive looked at me and said, ‘Are these books or toys?’
I was dumbfounded. I realized that not only did I not recognize the characters and plot but also that I did not even know how to examine it—was I to read the words and then turn the images up and down? Or was it the opposite? What was the order of looking and reading — Did I look at the top half first or the bottom? What was the order horizontally—since it consisted of several accordion folds, was it read like a strip or like a book? What were these artifacts anyway? How would they be classified? They were more than a story and a picture combined (like a picture book) for they required active engagement by the reader-viewer, like a puzzle or game with more than one solution. On top of this was the question of whether these were even intended for children!
This moment and the attempt to answer Clive Hurst’s provocative question about these little known texts has engrossed me and serves as my controlling question for a research project I am engaged in on 17th to 19th century movable books for children. It is in my mind as I have set out on physical and virtual travels amongst rare books collections in England, the United States and Canada. In so doing, I have also seen and become fascinated by other early movable books created for children in the 18th and early 19th centuries before the invention of the “stand-up” or pop-up book in the Victorian period, such as the paper doll book and the toy theatre. I have become equally engrossed with how these forms were not only produced by commercial printers in these periods but also modified and made by children as early instances of Do-it-yourself or DIY culture. My travels are not over by any means. I have not been able to visit physically all the repositories, and the ones I have visited acquire new books, so I return to them. Each visit creates more questions.
