The Baby's Opera

London, New York, Edmund Evans, Frederick Warne & Co., (1877). Sm.4to. Orig. half cloth, with beautifully designed and decorated boards, printed in black and white on reddish brown boards, red painted edges. With finely designed and illustrated title-page printed in light blue and yellow, color-printed wood-engraved frontispiece, 10 full-page color-printed wood-engraved plates, beautifully illustrated color-printed borders and book decoration throughout, and with musical scores to all the old rhymes, all designed by Walter Crane and wood-engraved and printed in colors by Edmund Evans. 56 pp.

First edition of the first of the two beautiful children's picture books with nursery rhymes by Walter Crane and with music by his sister Lucy Crane. The book is the counterpart - or "companion" as the artist himself put it - to The Baby's Opera. According to Scheinitz The Baby's Opera was at first rejected by the booksellers, but was so well received by the general public that the first issue of 10,000 copies was sold within four weeks. The Baby's Bouquet followed after two years, and was, if possible, still more beautifully designed and executed. In these books Crane realized his views about children's picture books to the full, almost turning them into medieval illuminated manuscripts.


Girls and Boys music

1. Girls and boys come out to play,

The moon doth shine as bright as day;

Leave your supper, and leave your sleep;

Come to your playfellows in the street;

2. Come with a whoop, and come with a call.

Come with a good will or not at all.

Up the ladder and down the wall,

A penny loaf will serve you all.