The British Toy Business

The British Toy Business
Author: Kenneth D. Brown
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 318
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781852851361

At its height British toymaking was a significant industry, with famous names such as Britains and Meccano known throughout the world. While in essence a specialised form of small-scale engineering, its products and market have always been unique, reflecting the current priorities of both parents and children. Yet, while individual toys and marques have been catalogued extensively, no previous history of toymaking as a whole exists. The British Toy Business provides a fascinating example of the development of a specific industry. Many early early toys were home-made. From the eighteenth century, with its growing recognition of children as something other than small adults, date the beginnings of specialised toys, usually produced by small workshops and sold by street-sellers. The nineteenth century, with its industrial growth and middle-class prosperity, saw an expansion of toymaking. The 1960s and 1970s were the most successful years of British toymaking, with companies like Lesney making record profits. Yet British toy makers failed to solve a number of fundamental problems. Following an unexpected sudden downturn in sales at a time of high interest rates, the major names in British toy making, Lesney, Airfix, Mettoy and Dunbee Combex Marx, all collapsed between 1979 and 1985, leaving the business to be dominated largely by importers.

The New Girl

The New Girl
Author: Sally Mitchell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780231102476

In 1880 the concept of girlhood as a separate stage of existence was barely present. But in the decades that followed, due in part to changes in the legal definition of childhood, a new cultural category was inscribed in a flood of popular books and magazines. Indeed, by the turn of the century working-class and middle-class girls were beginning to control enough of their own time and pocket money that publishing for them was a lucrative business.

British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900

British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900
Author: Dr Alisa Clapp-Itnyre
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2016-01-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1472407016

Examining nineteenth-century British hymns for children, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre argues that the unique qualities of children's hymnody created a space for children's empowerment. Unlike other literature of the era, hymn books were often compilations of many writers' hymns, presenting the discerning child with a multitude of perspectives on religion and childhood. In addition, the agency afforded children as singers meant that they were actively engaged with the text, music, and pictures of their hymnals. Clapp-Itnyre charts the history of children’s hymn-book publications from early to late nineteenth century, considering major denominational movements, the importance of musical tonality as it affected the popularity of hymns to both adults and children, and children’s reformation of adult society provided by such genres as missionary and temperance hymns. While hymn books appear to distinguish 'the child' from 'the adult', intricate issues of theology and poetry - typically kept within the domain of adulthood - were purposely conveyed to those of younger years and comprehension. Ultimately, Clapp-Itnyre shows how children's hymns complicate our understanding of the child-adult binary traditionally seen to be a hallmark of Victorian society. Intersecting with major aesthetic movements of the period, from the peaking of Victorian hymnody to the Golden Age of Illustration, children’s hymn books require scholarly attention to deepen our understanding of the complex aesthetic network for children and adults. Informed by extensive archival research, British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900 brings this understudied genre of Victorian culture to critical light.

It Takes a Certain Type to be a Writer

It Takes a Certain Type to be a Writer
Author: Erin Barrett
Publisher: Conari Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2003-08-01
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9781573247221

Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo surely haven't stumbled on a writer's block, at least not their own. It Takes a Certain Type to Be a Writer gushes with amusing footnotes of literary history with hundreds of underscored facts and boldfaced quotes -- illuminating the amusing, ironic, and unbelievable in the world of publishing. Did you know that... Prior to achieving literary fame, Amy Tan wrote horoscopes. Anais Nin wrote erotica for hire. An anonymous rich patron paid her $1 a page. Anais was told to "take out all the poetry; it has to be nothing but descriptions of sex." John Irving played a wrestling referee in The World According to Garp. Alice B. Toklas was unjustly credited with being the inventor of those famous hashish brownies. In fact, she may have been the victim of a hoax... Read on to find out the details! Book jacket.

Illustoria: Issue #9: Food

Illustoria: Issue #9: Food
Author: Elizabeth Haidle
Publisher: Illustoria Magazine
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781944211783

This food-themed issue features recipes for grapefruit, appreciations of potato chips, guides to the diets of literary giants, contributions by Tunde Olaniran, Mar Hernandez, Chef Tamearra Dyson, Brian McMullen, Hein Koh, and more. "Illustoria" is the beloved print magazine for creative kids and their grownups. We celebrate visual storytelling, makers and DIY culture through stories, art, comics, interviews, crafts and activities.

Portrait of a Marriage

Portrait of a Marriage
Author: Nigel Nicolson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1998-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780226583570

Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveler in Orlando. The story of her love affair with Violet Keppel Trefusis in 1920 is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson combines his mother's vivid memoir of escapade with what he learned from copious family letters and explains the context of this romantic crisis. He also describes how Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson went on to live the rest of their lives in harmonious marriage.

A Widening Sphere (Routledge Revivals)

A Widening Sphere (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Martha Vicinus
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135043884

First published in 1977, this book is a companion volume to Suffer and Be Still. It looks at the widening sphere of women’s activities in the Victorian age and testifies to the dual nature of the legal and social constraints of the period: on the one hand, the ideal of the perfect lady and the restrictive laws governing marriage and property posed limits to women’s independence; on the other hand, some Victorian women chose to live lives of great variety and complexity. By uncovering new data and reinterpreting old, the contributors in this volume debunk some of the myths surrounding the Victorian woman and alter stereotypes on which many of today’s social customs are based.

To Paradise

To Paradise
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 720
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385547943

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the award-winning, best-selling author of the classic A Little Life—a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • NPR • GOODREADS To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot. In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances. These three sections comprise an ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.