In this post, Lyn Wall and Susan Gardner, curators at the Museum of Childhood, share this poignant and touching story which they pieced together from the discovery of a little book in the archive… One of the great benefits and pleasures of working with the Museum of Childhood book collection is sometimes …
A new exhibition has opened at Orkney Museum in Kirkwall which makes for a rich new addition to the history of Scottish children’s literature – and to the role of children themselves as writers and readers. In the 1860s, three young Orcadian girls – Maria and Clara, and their cousin, Isabella – created …
One recent box-unpacking afternoon led Niamh to discover the Museum’s extensive collection of nineteenth-century naturalist writing for children. Here, she reflects on the beauty and vibrancy of these books which encouraged their child readers to be keenly alert to, and understanding of, nature’s wonder and diversity. Something more than ever worth being reminded of, …
One of the authors whose well-thumbed books we frequently discover in the Museum’s long-untouched boxes is Juliana Horatia Ewing. Once a popular and celebrated writer of late Victorian children’s fiction, her achievements – as so often the case with women writers of – have been overlooked. Here, Lois marks Ewing’s importance in the …
Children’s literature has a long history of being ‘entertaining and instructing’. I’ve taken this week’s blog title from a specific chapbook: The Entertaining and Instructing History of Little Jack. This copy belongs to Glasgow University Library’s Special Collections, and I am very grateful for their permission to include some …
Every Thursday afternoon the SELCIE team descend the long winding stairs which lead down into the Museum of Childhood’s book vault, as if entering a series of secret chambers! Every box of unpacked books holds secrets – you never know what lies inside. So too does every book. Except sometimes when opening …
The treasure that emerged from today’s investigations of the Museum of Childhood book collection was a small red book with gold writing tooled on its binding announcing that it contained Tales from Catland. While kittens and cats are currently the most popular posts on the internet and social media, this popularity …
Happy New Year! We thought we would start off 2017 with a closer look at this 1759 edition of A Description of Three Hundred Animals. We were very excited to find this lovely book on a trip to the Museum of Childhood’s stores late last year. Alongside the descriptions it features some …
Welcome to the blog of the Scotland’s Early Literature for Children Initiative! SELCIE is a project that aims to explore the forgotten history of Scotland’s literature for children. Our current work is in conjunction with Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood, which has the UK’s largest collection of childhood associated objects. Within …
