CBCP Seminar: Jill Shefrin, Copperplate Prints for Children’s Writing Exercises in the Very Long Eighteenth Century

“Above One Hundred Different Sorts of Pieces”: Copperplate Prints for Children’s Writing Exercises in the Very Long Eighteenth Century

Thursday 19 November, 5-6pm UK time.

This hybrid research seminar is free & open to all. It will be held in Room 230, Global Study Lounge, Edith Morley Building, University of Reading (Whiteknights campus), RG6 6EL. Register here for the MS Teams link. 

Abstract:

“School pieces” or “writing sheets” were folio sheets, printed from copperplates and consisting of a pictorial border surrounded a blank centre onto which a child would transcribe some text in their best handwriting. Published in England from the Restoration to the third quarter of the nineteenth century, they were designed by writing masters, engravers, and artists, and published by a wide range of printsellers and other publishers, including Peter Stent, Robert Sayer, the Bowles family, the Fairburns and Catnach. Beyond what they can tell us about the teaching of writing, they offer fascinating insights into the trade in functional, mid-priced prints, which by their very nature have survived in limited numbers. This paper examines the evolution of the trade in school pieces, including their export to the colonies and connections to other aspects of the trade, as well as to other forms of publishing for the young.

About our speaker:

Jill Shefrin is a Senior Research Associate in Arts at Trinity College at the University of Toronto and an advisory board member for the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing, University of Reading (UK). She began her career at the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books in the Toronto Public Library. Since her departure from the collection in 1996, she has worked as an independent historian of education and a bibliographer of juvenile printed ephemera. She has lectured internationally and taught at the London Rare Books School and the Rare Books School at the University of Virginia. Among other awards, she was the recipient of both the Justin G. Schiller Prize and the F. J. Harvey Darton Award for The Dartons: Publishers of Educational Aids, Pastimes and Juvenile Ephemera (2009).