(Goodrich, Samuel Griswold) | The rarest and most important early American children's book

(Goodrich, Samuel Griswold)

The Tales of Peter Parley About America [with] The Tales of Peter Parley About Europe. Boston: S. G. Goodrich, 1827, 1828

AMericam 12mo (133 x 104 mm). 36 wood-engraved illustrations on 32 plates by Alonso Hartwell, J. W. Barber, and others; some foxing, soiling, and staining, signature clipped from upper margin of title and preface leaf. Contemporary sheep-backed green boards, spine gilt-ruled and -lettered, plain endpapers and edges; rubbed. Europe: 12mo (138 x 108 mm). Half-title, wood-engraved illustrations; occasional spotting. Contemporary sheep-backed blue boards, spine gilt-ruled and -lettered, plain endpapers and edges; rubbed, front board almost detached. Both housed in a green morocco clamshell. 

The first editions of each title, the first being the rarest and most important early American children's book in the first edition, the second being almost equally rare. 

Griswold was an active publisher and prolific writer of prose and verse, but his greatest success was achieved with his children's books, foremost among them the Peter Parley series. Over 100 titles in the series were published, and among the authors later engaged to contribute was Nathaniel Hawtho

rne, who compiled the 1837 Universal History on the Basis of Geography.

Griswold wrote in 1856 that over seven million copies of titles in the series had been sold, with annual sales at that point in the range of 300,000 copies. "For more than three decades, these were the intellectual food of Young America after advancing beyond the reader and speller stage" (Grolier). "At the time of the Grolier exhibition, Jacob Blanck had located a single copy of the first edition of The Tales of Peter Parley about America, rebound, at Harvard. In intervening years a few other copies have found institutional homes, including the University of Virginia (the Barrett copy), the Library of Congress, Yale, Amherst, Princeton, and the Free Library" (Celebration). 

REFERENCE

Celebration of My Country 170; Grolier/American 35; American Imprints 29051, 33391