#BlogTour ~ Once Upon a Murder by Samantha Larsen @HastingSamantha @dollycas

It has come to my attention as the librarian of Astwell Palace, that our great collection is sadly lacking in children’s literature. And since the current duke is only six years old, it must be remedied immediately. Luckily, our library does possess Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. With floating islands and pirates, it sure to capture a child’s imagination. My young charge also enjoys books by Thomas Boreman, such as Curiosities in the Tower of London about his Majesties Animals in the Tower and Three Hundred Animals.

Unfortunately, most children’s literature in the 1780s is of a strict, moral nature. Such as the extremely popular, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes; otherwise called, Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes. With the means by which she acquired her learning, etc. published in 1765 by Mr. John Newbery. His pious heroine not only acquires learning, but a position as a teacher, a pair of two shoes, and marries a widower. The story coined the phrase, “a goody two-shoes.” 

I have also ordered several books of fairy tales from the local bookseller Mr. Samir Lathrop. The original term “fairy tale” was coined by Comtesse d’Aulnoy. She published in French many fairy tales fairytales including “Finette Cindron,” or “Cunning Cinders” (1697). Charles Perrault’s famous, Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals: Tales of My Mother Goose was published that same year in French. It included the stories: “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper,” “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” “Little Thumb,” “The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots,” “Riquet of the Tuft,” “Blue Beard,” “The Fairy,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Song books and rhyming pages are always popular with children. I would highly recommend Mary Cooper’s Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book and John Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. The latter is “intended for the Amusement” instead of teaching children a moral. A novel thought indeed!