Rare Children’s Books at the Library of Congress

I love that the Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Materials website has an “other” collection. I ran across it yesterday while looking for something else, stumbling first on the Children’s Literature. I’ve posted a few of my favorites here, and clicking on an image will take you directly to the book at the LOC website, each digitized in full. Later this weekend I’ll post more images from other parts of the rare books collection.

The Rocket Book / By Peter Newell. New York: Harper & Brothers, c1912.

— What a great book! I’d never heard of it before, but it has whimsical illustrations and a modern, slightly subversive sensibility. The author and illustrator, Peter Newell, wrote a number of children’s books and also published a wonderfully bizarre comic strip called The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead in 1906 and 1907 (which you can view in large size via the preceding link to Barnacle Press.) Newell’s The Slant Book is also available at the LOC website

A Child’s Garden of Verses / By Robert Louis Stevenson; Illustrated by Charles Robinson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895.

— A favorite of mine from childhood.

The Grasshopper Stories / by Elizabeth Davis Leavitt; With Illustrations By Maude Dewey Doan. [S.l. : s.n.], c1912 (Jacksonville, Ill.: Henderson & DePew, printers).

— The inside of this one isn’t as interesting as the cover.

The Square Book of Animals / By William Nicholson; Rhymes By Arthur Waugh. New York: R. H. Russell, 1900, c1899.

— What could I possibly add to this? I’m not even going to say anything. Except that it should be submitted to Cute Overload.

London Town / Designed and Illustrated By Thos. Crane & Ellen Houghton. London; New York: Marcus Ward & Co., [1883]

Stories From Hans Andersen / With Illustrations By Edmund Dulac. London: Hodder & Stoughton, [c1911].

The Raven / By Edgar Allan Poe; Illustrated By Gustave Doré; With comment By Edmund C. Stedman. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1884.

— I’m a huge fan of the Dore Raven. Seeing this took me back to all the hours I spent copying the engravings into my sketchbook as a kid.

A Wonder Book For Girls & Boys/ By Nathaniel Hawthorne; with 60 designs By Walter Crane. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1893, c1892.

— Just gorgeous.

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