By Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

In this post, I discuss another use of string in movable books, here a book called Seaside Fun (1892) published by Dean and Son as part of the “model” book series. These books are a combination of conventional picture book with experiments with mobile three-dimensional effects through using string to slightly raise an illustration or part of an illustration on a page or double page spreads. I have read about this series in rare book catalogues, rare book dealer descriptions, and in some academic research (see note 1 below). Experiencing the book firsthand and the impressive effects is completely different. I had the pleasure of engaging with the book in February at Cambridge University Library in the rare books collection.

The instructions for the interactor are precise and need to be followed in order. Placed above the preamble, they are in small red caps with bolded parts: “Before Opening Each Page Place Thumb Where Marked / Hold Firmly and Open Wide.”

When an interactor carefully engages with the book, you enable the sequence of motions that include both three-dimensional movement of the entire illustration and movement within part of the raised illustration. I have included a set of photographs that show both the top of the pages and the supports underneath. The choice of the sailing boat where sailors activate the sails is most effective, since in a way an interactor is doing the same on the miniature boat.

Looking closely at the images we can see how the pale string appears across the gutter in the middle of the book. As Blair Whitton notes, the flat parts are “activated by horizontal strings from page to page that stretch and lift the sails up when each page is fully opened” (p. 56, illus. 9). The entry on “Dean and Son and Other Early Examples of Movables” on the University of Virginia rare books website states that the movement relies “on the use of strings that link the parts, creating a tension that pulls the images into place” (see note 2 below).

If we imagine the set of photos as a short film clip, we can appreciate the sophisticated design and how an implied child interactor has the power to set the sequence in motion. It strikes me as a kind of stop motion pre cinema animation. At the same time, the fragility of the materials and the construction of the movable plates are apparent and we are reminded off the advice in the introductory instructions. Significantly, the active role of the interactor is depicted in the paratext by the large image of a thumb in the outer margins of the pages showing where to place the thumbs to set the page(s) in action. This is perhaps a parody of previous educational material for children that employed the early modern technique of what Elizabeth Hoiem called the “interlocutor gesture” (p. 39). Here, in terms of scale this presents the child as a giant among the miniature images reinforcing a sense of omnipotence when interacting with the moveable book.

Note 1:

For further information, please consult the Vintage Pop-Up Books catalog description; these are pertinent extracts:

A Visit to the Country: with surprise model pictures – also containing movables for Seaside Fun
(No. 4, in Dean’s Surprise Model Books)
Published London: Dean & Son, 160A, Fleet Street, [ca. 1892]
By Arthur Penuel and E. Gourley.

Quarter blue cloth and illustrated paper over boards – [10] p. : col. ill. ; 31 cm. – 11 13/16 x 8 7/16 (30 x 21.5 x 0.5 cm)

The copy described has Seaside Fun bound with A Visit to the Country, with both books “complete with the delicate strings intact.”

Pop-ups are operated with strings that lift objects to create a sense of depth and roundness as well as movement. Thin barely visible stings pull the images into place. There are two single page pop-ups and one double spread pop-up in the center. Followed by Seaside Fun also containing two single page pop-ups and one double spread pop-up in the center

The description cites the Opies:

According to Iona and Peter Opie: “The Surprise Model books are the “’most ambitious and fragile of nineteenth century pop-up books”…“The effect of solidity was attempted by the use of laterally attached cotton threads which pulled in the sides of the chief feature to make it rounded”

Indeed, with the thin thread and unique mechanism of action, Dean knew how fragile their surprise picture books were. At the top of the page we are instructed: ‘BEFORE OPENING EACH PAGE PLACE THUMBS WHERE MARKED, HOLD FIRMLY AND OPEN WIDE’. Small drawings of thumbs are on each side of each movable.

We found old publishers ads saying “Upon opening any page in these, books, the pictures, by an ingenious arrangement, open, as if by magic, into model relief; and upon the book being closed, or the page turned, become perfectly flat again.”

Note 2:

In Hannah Field in Playing with the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader discusses Dean and Son’s model books she states: “The convex pop-up technique in Dean’s Surprise Model series may be used to produce dramatic effects, such as a train curving across the page opening (see Figure 1.6). Equally, though, it might present the gentler curve of a dovecote seen on a family trip to the country. Sometimes, glamour and the mundane combine” (p. 119-20).

Works Cited

Field, Hannah. Playing with the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader. University of Minnesota Press. 2019

Hoiem, Elizabeth Massa. The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children’s Literature, 1762-1860. University of Massachusetts Press, 2024.

Whitton, Blair. Paper Toys of the World. Hobby House Press, 1986.