The Butterfly's
Ball and Other Poems
William Roscoe's The Butterfly's Ball (1807) was written as an amusement
for his children. John Harris, Newbery's successor in the children's book
trade, published it. Harris issued the rhyme, along with commissioned
illustrations by William Mulready, in chapbook form. John Harris was the
first English children's publisher to make a regular practice of issuing books
for young children in which pictures predominated over text. Although it was a
only a short-lived trend, Darton notes that the period 1807-1823 was "the
first time in the history of English children's books that the illustrations
were coequal with, if not more important than, the text."
These copperplate hand-colored illustrations clearly share an equal amount of importance with the text in telling the story. The various creatures are either depicted in human form or with humans riding on their backs.
Thomas Love Peacock's Sir Hornbook (1814) is designed as an adventurous grammar lesson in which Childe Lancelot enlists Sir Hornbook, his 26 merrymen A-Z, and other grammatical officers, in order to help him reach the goal of the Muses's bower. It was popular enough as a "grammar without tears" book to go through several editions in the next five years.