Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book is the earliest extant anthology of English nursery rhymes, published in London in 1744. It contains the earliest printed texts of many well-known and popular rhymes, as well as several that eventually dropped out of the canon of rhymes for children.
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👉 Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book in the context of Mary Cooper (publisher)
Mary Cooper (died 5 August 1761) was an English publisher and bookseller based in London who flourished between 1743 and 1761. With Thomas Boreman (fl. 1730–1743), she is the earliest publisher of children's books in English, predating John Newbery.
Cooper's business was on Paternoster Row. She was the widow of printer and publisher Thomas Cooper, whose business she continued. Thomas Cooper had published a reading guide in 1742, The Child's New Play-thing, and his wife published an edition of it after his death. Active from 1743 to 1761, she is notable especially for publishing Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (1744), "the first known collection of English nursery rhymes in print". Cooper collected the rhymes, each of which had a companion woodcut, and later critics have remarked that "Cooper's ear for a good jingle was unerring".
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- ⭐ Core Definition: Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book
- 👉 Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book in the context of Mary Cooper (publisher)
- Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book in the context of Nursery rhyme
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book in the context of Nursery rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From the mid-16th century nursery rhymes began to be recorded in English plays, and most popular rhymes date from the 17th and 18th centuries. The first English collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, were published by Mary Cooper in 1744. Publisher John Newbery's stepson, Thomas Carnan, was the first to use the term Mother Goose for nursery rhymes when he published a compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or Sonnets for the Cradle (London, 1780).
View the full Wikipedia page for Nursery rhyme