The British Battledore or First Lessons

The British Battledore or First Lessons
The British Battledore or First Lessons
The British Battledore or First Lessons
iBase ID
236500
Reference identifier
ZRO20121008004
Title
The British Battledore or First Lessons
Place
Preston
General notes
The item this image comes from was used in a display of material from the Spencer Collection at the Harris Library, Museum and Art Gallery in Preston from October-November 2012. This collection of children's books is of national significance. It was collected by John Henry Spencer (1875-1952), a distinguished local historian and book collector, and was donated to the Harris Library in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It comprises children's books published during the late eighteenth century up to the present day. The collection also contains approximately four hundred chap books.

The British Battledore, or First Lessons was published by W. Davidson in Alnwick around 1820. A battledore or battledore-book was a simpler, later version of a horn book. The Oxford English Dictionary explains that a horn-book was a "..leaf of paper containing the alphabet (often with the addition of the ten digits, some elements of spelling, and the Lord's Prayer) protected by a thin plate of translucent horn, and mounted on a tablet of wood with a projecting piece for a handle. A simpler and later form of this, consisting of the tablet without the horn covering, or a piece of stiff cardboard varnished, was also called a battledore."
Medium
Illustration
Colour
Colour
Year of image
c.1820
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