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 visit to the Museum of Childhood’s archive one afternoon uncovered a forgotten Scottish Victorian children’s writer. Here, Sarah introduces the fairytale, folkloric worlds of Mona Paton… * In 1871, Charles Dodgson, or Lewis Carroll, paid a visit to the island of Arran to see the Edinburgh painter, Joseph Noel Paton, …
Eighteen months on from our first descent into the Museum of Childhood’s basement vault and every box still tells a story. In one we opened lay two beautifully illustrated volumes from the early twentieth century. Several threads bound them together — pooled from the same body of legends and stories …
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 …
Sometimes amazing wonders can be found in the most unexpected places. A few weeks ago the Museum of Childhood book collection revealed to us a treasure hidden within a tiny book in a box filled with other tiny books, within an even larger box initially thought to contain only magazines. …
Meet Helen Douglas Adam – the ‘infant poetess’ from Glasgow whose uncanny ballad poetry would find a home in the radical San Francisco artistic scene… ♦ ‘A little wee elf in coat of green / Dwelt in a tree so gray, / In the tiniest house that ever …
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 …
