The works of the Irish writer Maria Edgeworth are one of the strengths of the Pollard Collection of children’s books. Mary Pollard was particularly interested in Edgeworth, both as an Irish writer and as a woman, whose ideas on education were ahead of their time. The collection includes early London and Dublin editions of her volumes of stories for children – The parent’s assistant, Early lessons, Moral tales and Popular tales – as well as many later 19th-century editions, both of these titles and of individual stories, reflecting the immense popularity of Edgeworth’s tales throughout the century. The four books shown here belong to a series of “Miss Edgeworth’s stories” published by George Routledge and Sons in the late 1880s and 1890s. They are noteworthy for their attractive pictorial bindings, each volume having the same design blocked on a background of different coloured cloth. Two of these were on display recently in the Department of Early Printed Books as part of a presentation on the Pollard Collection to the students of the M. Phil. in Children’s Literature.
