The Big Book of Nursery Rhymes

This republication of “The Big Book of Nursery Rhymes,” newly arranged to best display the rhymes and their original illustrations, while maintaining the original pagination, is intended to reintroduce the nursery rhymes of a century past to the children of today. Nursery rhymes carry fragments of the history, culture, religion, and ideas of the 15th or 16th through the 19th Centuries, which should be preserved and passed on to new generations. Parents and children will love reading these rhymes, and will delight in the wonderful illustrations. Originally Edited by Walter Jerrold. Illustrated by Charles Robinson. Published by Blackie and Son, Ltd., London, 1920. From the Introduction: “The very title, Nursery Rhymes, which has come to be associated with a great body of familiar verse, is in itself sufficient indication of the manner in which that verse has been passed down from generation to generation. Who composed the little pieces it is, save in a few cases, impossible to say: some are certainly very old and were doubtless repeated thousands of times before their first appearance in print. References to certain favourites may be found in the pages of the dramatists of Elizabeth's time. “Attempts are sometimes made to read into these Rhymes a deeper significance than the obvious and simple one which has accounted for their enduring popularity in the Nursery, but this volume has no concern with such profound interpretations, any more than have the little people who love the old jingles best. “Students divide our rhymes into narrative pieces, historical, folk-lore, game rhymes, counting-out rhymes, jingles, fragments, and so forth, but for the children for whom and by whom they are remembered, and for whose sake they are here collected and pictured anew, they are just—Nursery Nursery Rhymes.” Caution to Parents: Nursery rhymes that were acceptable for children of the 19th Century might prove confusing or unsettling for children of the 21st Century, so far removed in tiome from the manners and issues of that time; parents are encouraged to read these rhymes with their children.