ILLUSTRATED CLASSICS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Andreea Marin
Hoeniger Book Collection Prize 2015 Winner

» List of Titles in the Exhibition

Collection Statement

Children’s literature is itself a social cohesive drawing all adults to a common childhood connection. Instinctively, I was drawn to fables, hagiographies, fairy tales, stories, and novels particularly directed towards children. It didn’t take long to reach C.S. Lewis’s conclusion in that “a children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” In 2010, I came across Maria Tatar’s Enchanted Hunters— covering the history of childre’s literature—and her annotated book of all fairy tales gathered by Hans Christian Andersen. It was then I realized that beyond the magic of the stories themselves lies another kind of magic: their creators who were crafted storytellers, their historical context, and most importantly, the social and physical history of each individual text. Understanding Carroll’s passion for photography and numbers brought Alice to life, while reading the numerous stage editions and the drafts of Peter Pan led me to appreciate the protagonist as a much more complex character than I had originally imagined.

October 12, 2012 marked the two-hundred year anniversary of the publication of Children’s and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm. Canadian Dean Burry’s opera on the Brothers Grimm spread widely, and the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books (housed at Lillian H. Smith branch, Toronto Public Library) hosted a lecture by Maria Tatar, “Magical and Mythical: 200 Years of the Brothers Grimm.”

The accumulation of those experiences have led me to an appreciation for the bibliographic history of children’s literature, in particular the Osborne Collection. Since then, I have become an “enchanted book hunter” of rare copies of children’s books.

A second layer of interest in this collection centres around my understanding and appreciation of visual art. Studying the “golden age” of illustrations for children’s books has only deepened my desire to collect rare books containing coloured illuminations, illustrations, wood-cut prints or maps encompassed within the children’s literature canon (such as Middle Earth, Narnia, Neverland and other mythical places). I believe that illustrators such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and Kay Nielsen should have their artwork seen as often as the Grimm stories are heard.

My collection includes books for children, mainly published in the twentieth century, ranging from 1891 to 2014. Some are first editions, some are signed by the author, and most of them (in my own “special collection”) are hardcover or boxed. The majority of the rare children’s books I possess are illustrated. Some of the illustrations are in colour, others are woodcut prints, (specifically the Penny Histories, and J.A. Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus—recognized as the first illustrated children’s book and published in 1659). In my collection, I not only have children’s books, but also the biographies of the authors and pop-up reconstructions of their work. In addition, I have scholarly works exploring the theories on children’s literature: David Beagley, Jack Zipes, and Maria Tatar, in addition to various anthologies and annotated works.

In the final year of my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, I worked closely with the leading Canadian expert on children’s literature, Professor Deirdre Baker, on an independent year-long study, “Educating the Wizard in Children’s Literature since 1950” and “The Composition of Literary Magic.”

My most prized possession is Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, published in 1910. The story itself is my absolute favourite, and the books are a difficult find. I would love to come across the first edition from 1906 and the first edition of Peter and Wendy from 1911. I do owe various first editions of several texts, published in the United States and Great Britain. I have at least twelve different copies of Peter Pan, ranging from 1910 to 2014.

I would like to expand and fill the gap in my collection which is the lack of graphic novels and comic books. Although I keep up with contemporary children’s literature, I find myself behind on artwork produced for such creations, or contemporary representations of older children’s literature works. The Graphic Canon of Children’s Literature is the first and only graphic novel in my possession containing contemporary artwork by artists throughout the world. I would like to develop a broader understanding of illustrated children’s books and to become an avid collector.

My interest in Book and Media Studies has sparked a bibliographic and readership oriented focus when collecting such books, and has reflected in the essays I have written for my classes and the focus on the book-history component and context to each book in my special collection. An exhibit of children’s literature will create a connecting, communal spirit on campus. It will also remind patrons of the love they once had for books as children which is a very humbling experience.