Children at Play

Wee Elsie’s Picture-Book.  New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., ca. 1877. 

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This magnificent publisher’s cloth cover is accented with stamped gilt and chromolithographed labels depicting children at play.  It is a far cry from the sober primers published scarcely a century before.  The interior text includes highly illustrated short stories and poems, and has the look of the illustrated periodicals that flourished after the Civil War--thus blurring the lines between children’s book and magazine.  

Adopted by Cheryl McRell in honor of Carter, Daisy, Cora, Peyton, and Hunter