Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR
Many of us have vivid memories of the stories we encountered in childhood. Mostly, we remember the picture books and illustrated tales which fired our young imaginations and transported us to worlds of magic and adventure. Judging by the popularity of picture books today, images continue to play an important role in storytelling for children, even if the medium is changing all the time.
In fact, the tradition of picture books for children goes back a very long way indeed. Nowhere can we find better evidence of this than in remarkable Opie Collection of children’s books housed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Librarianship Clive Hurst showed me some of the hidden treasures in this exceptional collection of rare illustrated books for children.
CLIVE HURST
But they could find the stories.
NARRATOR
The collection ranges widely.
CLIVE HURST
--Published for adults.
NARRATOR
Some of the earliest are the cheaply produced chapbooks of the eighteenth century, mostly moral tales illustrated with simple black and white woodcuts. By the nineteenth century, the customer could buy the coloured version for an extra fee.
CLIVE HURST
But this one--
NARRATOR
These books were often designed to appeal to children’s sense of fun, rather than teaching them moral lessons. And the more expensive technique of engraving was also being used, printed using rolling presses, especially for the frontispieces of books displayed in shop windows to attract passersby. By the mid nineteenth century, illustrations of children’s books are often numerous and richly coloured. Production techniques developed further, and the market grew. Adventure stories aimed at boys and school stories for girls sported attractive covers.
While much has changed over the centuries, much has remained the same. A range of child-friendly features remarkably similar to books for young children today have been used since the eighteenth century. The late nineteenth century has been called a golden age of children’s literature, featuring authors and illustrators, such as Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Beatrix Potter.
The Bodleian’s Opie Collection contains many of these beautiful classics and provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of words and pictures in children’s books. If you take this free online course, you’ll have the chance to delve deeper into this colourful world and find out more about how words and images combine to create the particular allure that is the children’s picture book.