Ruth B. Bottigheimer has posted a 300+ page (in its print-out form) bibliography of British Books for Children and Adolescents 1470-1770 for the use of fellow scholars of children’s literature. The bibliography includes instructional manuals and school textbooks along with customarily cited books of manners, religious instruction, and chapbooks. In some cases the fingerprints of the books are included, so that a book’s print run can be identified separately from its title-page information.
A brief essay on the parameters of the bibliography touches on the types of material in the bibliography, the meaning of “children” and “adolescents” in the context of the bibliography, the question of successive editions, a book’s fingerprint, edition number, print runs, dating, titles, authors, printers, publishers, place of publication for early British children’s books, genre, illustrations, measurements, readership, format, location, and observations about individual books. A bibliography like this can never be complete, and additional information from users will be incorporated on an annual basis.
The bibliography can be accessed at this address: http://hdl.handle.net/1951/43009.