{"product_id":"sackville-west-vita-nursery-rhymes","title":"SACKVILLE-WEST, Vita. Nursery Rhymes.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘Let Us Not Forget the Inherent Music of the Nursery Jingle’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSACKVILLE-WEST, Vita.\u003c\/strong\u003e Nursery Rhymes. \u003ci\u003eLondon: The Dropmore Press.\u003c\/i\u003e 1947.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Publisher’s blue cloth by Evans of Croydon, gilt griffin to upper board, spine lettered in gilt, uncut, in the publisher’s printed jacket, griffin printed in dark blue to upper cover, turn-ins richly gilt; pp. [vi], 66, [2 (blank)], [2 (colophon, blank)]; title printed in pink and black; few small chips to head of jacket, spine lightly toned; else a very good, clean copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, no. 242 of 550 numbered copies, of Vita Sackville-West’s humorous essay on English nursery rhymes.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe begins with a bibliographical overview and a brief history of nineteenth-century rag books (including the children’s books published by Dean and Son in London) before assessing, \u003ci\u003einter alia\u003c\/i\u003e, Old King Cole, Mother Hubbard, and Hey Diddle Diddle. ‘What’, she writes on ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’, has the modern child-psychologist to say to this sort of thing? How has the entire British race escaped growing up into millions of nervous wrecks, from the reign of say Richard II downwards? We have all been brought up on it, and it does not appear to have done us any harm. Or has it?’ Are our minds secretly haunted by such excruciating visions as blinded mice with raw pink stumps for tails [...]? One bright-eyed, entirely caudate mouse is apt to be more than enough for many people’ (p. 10).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the fourth in the ‘Dropmore Essays’ series, after Harold Nicolson’s \u003ci\u003eThe English Sense of Humour\u003c\/i\u003e (1946), Edward Shanks’s \u003ci\u003eThe Universal War and the Universal State\u003c\/i\u003e (1946), and Arthur Bryant’s \u003ci\u003eHistorian’s Holiday\u003c\/i\u003e (1946). The Dropmore Press had been established in 1945 by Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley, who had acquired the type, paper-stock, and printing equipment of the Corvinus Press.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCross \u0026amp; Ravenscroft-Hulme A.45.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124847\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57400454709625,"sku":"2124847","price":125.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124847b.jpg?v=1780915279","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/sackville-west-vita-nursery-rhymes","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}