[CHILDREN’S MOVABLE.] Dean’s Moveable Books: The History of How Ned Nimble Built His Cottage. Showing the Trades of Bricklayer, Sawyer, Carpenter, Plasterer, Painter & Paperhanger &c.

Building a Cottage with Pull-Tabs and Rivets

[CHILDREN’S MOVABLE.] Dean’s Moveable Books: The History of How Ned Nimble Built His Cottage. Showing the Trades of Bricklayer, Sawyer, Carpenter, Plasterer, Painter & Paperhanger &c. London: Dean & Son. [1859.]

8vo. Publisher’s illustrated boards depicting the building of a cottage to upper and publisher’s advertisements to lower for ‘One Shilling Juvenile Coloured Picture Toy Books’ and ‘Children’s Moveable Coloured Picture Books’, rose endpapers with publisher’s printed advertisements; ff. [16], handcoloured moveable illustrations and text to 8 ff. with interleaved blanks pasted to conceal rivets, most now loose); rebacked at a later date with black cloth, boards slightly rubbed corners and extremities lightly worn; a few light marks to interleaved blanks, a few small losses to interleaved blanks when detached from illustration leaves, a few short closed tears surrounding rivets only one of two movable elements are working in the first, seventh and eighth images, the fourth illustration no longer moving, the third illustration sometime repaired to verso with paper; illustrations remain bright and clean, overall a very good copy.

An early example of a children’s moveable book, with hand-coloured illustrations actuated by rivets operated from a single pull-tab, recounting the tale of how Ned Nimble built a cottage along with his brothers, Patrick and Stephen.

The book begins with Ned Nimble digging the foundations for his cottage, watched over by his loyal dog, Snap. Ned is soon aided by his little brother, ‘pumping out water for mixing the mortar’ which makes light work of the brickwork. Then the woodwork begins in the fourth illustration, a strikingly precarious scene, where Patrick (or at least his head) protrudes from the dark saw-pit while Ned stands on the log above, the saw moving between them as the tab is pulled. Eventually, the building work is complete, ‘and the next day with glee, all the folks came to see / Ned Nimble’s Cottage completed.’

Dean and Son, founded in London before 1800, and turned their attention in the mid-nineteenth century to the production of movable books, issuing around fifty titles between 1860 and 1900. As the production of these books was costly and labour-intensive, Dean & Son issued the work under several variant titles to increase novelty, amongst them The Story of Ned Nimble and How He Built His Pretty New House, The History of How Ned Nimble Built His Cottage (c. 1857–1865), and Dean’s New Moveable Book of ye Historie of How Ned Nimble Did Build Hys Cottage (c. 1864). Our variant appears to be the earliest of these, with the publisher’s code including the date of [May] ‘59 below the advertisements to the rear board.

OCLC and Library Hub locate six copies, five of which in North America (BYU, McGill, and Princeton, Texas A&M, and Texas Woman’s), and only one in the UK (Bodleian).

Brown, p. 55; Montanaro pp. 97-98.

SKU: 2120138