First Night Design | The Children’s Book of London

The Children’s Book of London Postcard

I have shelves and shelves of books, as you might expect, many of which are of vintage ilk. These include not just the ones I’ve bought over the years but delicious editions of books for children that I’ve inherited and that were published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of them belonged to my mother and to her mother before that. I have early 20th century editions of E. Nesbit’s fabulous tales from The Railway Children to The House of Arden and Harding’s Luck; I have late 19th century copies of Alice in Wonderland as well as Lewis Carroll’s lesser known work, Sylvie and Bruno. I have much else besides!

The Children’s Book of London by G E Mitton (Geraldine Edith) was published in 1903 by A & C Black, now part of Bloomsbury Publishing. There are three books in all: London As it Is, for which the above image is the cover and is the only one in the series that I own, Historical Stories and The Sights of London.

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Chapter VIII
Streets and Shops

“When I asked a little girl who was visiting London for the first time if it was like what she had expected, she said, ‘No,’ and when I asked how it differed from the idea she had had, she said: ‘I expected to see long rows and rows of houses, going on for miles and miles, but I never thought there would be so many things in the streets—cabs and omnibuses and people; it’s all so much fuller and gayer than I thought.'”

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G. E. Mitton and J. G. Scott in the early 1930s [Wikipedia]

Geraldine Mitton was an English novelist, biographer, editor, and guide-book writer who was married to the Scottish journalist and colonial administrator, Sir George Scott, who helped establish British colonial rule in Burma. They collaborated on several works of fiction set in Burma. She was, in fact, his third wife. I note, however, that mention of the two previous wives – did they die? – is nowhere made on Scott’s entry in Wikipedia.

You learn something every day!

Take care and keep laughing!