Generally you catch a scent and may’t drop it. My bloodhound mode was activated by a latest e-mail from Carl Mehling of the American Museum of Pure Historical past, asking if we knew what the earliest kids’s e-book on dinosaurs.
If I’m not mistaken, the earliest e-book we’ve written about which was purely meant for youngsters is Hilary Stebbing’s Extinct Animals (learn Niels’ 2020 put up and take heed to the podcast episode). Its 1946 publication date beats Roy Chapman Andrews’ juvenile-aimed dinosaur books by a few decade. In our LITC group chat, Natee mentioned that they might additionally rely Henry Knipe’s 1912 Evolution within the Previous (featured on the latest podcast episode). The event of youngsters’s literature is fascinating and you may’t count on early titles to substantiate to fashionable norms, for positive.
I started discover the catalogs of varied kids’s literature collections. I got here throughout prehistoric-themed titles from the flip of the twentieth century, however they didn’t cope with dinosaurs in any respect; it appears there was a severe Cave Man fad 100 and twenty years in the past. However one search led me to The Purple Ebook of Animal Tales, revealed in 1899 and fortunately digitized by the College of Florida’s George A. Smathers Libraries. It’s a part of Andrew and Leonora Blanche Lang’s Fairy Books, a sequence of 25 tomes accumulating fictional and true tales to thrill and delight the younger reader. One of many major illustrators of the sequence was Henry Justice Ford, and he has a number of paleoartistic treats for us.
The duvet of The Purple Ebook of Animal tales. I like that the little woman is gleefully studying because the little boy cowers in abject worry. Progressive! Picture obtained from College of Florida Digital Collections.
These items seem within the chapter “The World in its Youth.” It’s a fast distillation of 1899’s paleontological established order, predictably marred right here and there with informal racism. Nevertheless it’s not with out advantage, particularly in Lang’s description of evolution as a pure course of. He clearly goals to widen the reader’s point-of-view and instill the humility that comes together with actually, actually pondering the lengthy historical past of life on Earth.
We’ll begin in our dwelling turf of the Mesozoic, with a sprawling hulk of a Stegosaurus. The anachronistic individuals, wanting like Edenic outcasts, appear to be Ford’s personal flight of fancy. Lang’s textual content makes it clear that the dinosaurs predated the noble genus Homo by fairly a very long time. Lang names Hutchinson’s 1897 Extinct Monsters as a supply for his writing, and it’s refreshing that Ford didn’t merely copy Josef Smit’s illustration from that e-book.
Henry Justice Ford’s Stegosaurus with anachronistic companions. Picture obtained from College of Florida Digital Collections.
Subsequent is a much less elaborate illustration of a pterosaur, although what it lacks in scenic element it nearly makes up for in pure mischievous character.
Henry Justice Ford’s Pterodactyl. Picture obtained from College of Florida Digital Collections.
And that’s it for the Mesozoic. It’s unlucky, as Lang’s prose teases us with descriptions of Brontosaurus, Archaeopteryx, and post-Bernissart Iguanodon. I’d like to see what Ford would have achieved with them.
Ford does provide us a peek into the Pleistocene with a pair of shaggy megafauna. First, we have now one other hapless group of people contending with their titanic neighbors: a pair of trunked Megatherium searching for dinner have intruded upon their home bliss. That cozy little dwelling will not be lengthy for this world. However simply have a look at the fur on that sloth’s arm! Once more, I lengthy for a whole portfolio of Henry Justice Ford paleoart. These things is simply magical.
Henry Justice Ford’s amusing illustration of big floor sloths making life tough for a trio of Homo sapiens. Picture obtained from College of Florida Digital Collections.
Ultimately, people kind out the crafting of clothes. Extra importantly, they kind out learn how to fell the nice beasts who share their world. This situation, just like the Megatherium illustration, will not be referenced within the textual content, suggesting that Ford was given beneficiant inventive leeway. Right here once more, the fur is rendered so nicely you’ll be able to nearly really feel it. You definitely really feel for the poor proboscidean.
Henry Justice Ford’s illustration of a mammoth hunt. Picture obtained from College of Florida Digital Collections.
Ford clearly cherished drawing dramatic and humorous conditions. Perhaps we are able to chalk up these Jurassic people to inventive enthusiasm overriding the pursuit of scientific veracity. Or possibly the editorial hand was so mild, he wasn’t instructed in any other case.
One final picture deserves a glance, the legendary beast Odenthos. You’ll be able to’t assist however marvel if Ford was impressed by Hawkins’ Crystal Palace sculptures when conjuring this one. What’s an Odenthos? I don’t know, apart from a big three-horned animal. Appears to be an Previous French time period.
Henry Justice Ford’s illustration of the legendary saurian beast Odenthos. Picture obtained from College of Florida Digital Collections.
Of this mysterious French monster, Lang writes:
There isn’t a time to inform of all of the unusual monsters that males used to invent simply to frighten themselves! There was a creature referred to as the Odenthos, which had three horns as an alternative of 1, and felt a particular hatred of elephants.
So possibly the mammoth above received off simple.
I intend to remain on the path and have already got a handful of books to jot down about in 2023 (this website has some intriguing leads, although it’s strictly centered on American literature). Within the meantime, when you’ve got any data of nineteenth or early twentieth century kids’s dinosaur books, kids’s literature collections price exploring, or what the heck an Odenthos is, please depart a remark beneath.