Bancroftiana, Number 122 Spring 2003: California Children's Books at the Bancroft Library

California Children's Books at the Bancroft Library

The children’s books published in 19th-century California open a window onto the cultural history of California youth. And The Bancroft Library, with between 100 and 200 such titles, is an ideal place from which to view this generally unfamiliar aspect of our state cultural heritage.

The New Japan Pictorial Primer. Introductory to the New Japan Readers. William Elliot Griffis. San Francisco, A.L. Bancroft, 1872.

Tablas Para los Niños que Empiezan a Contar, (Agustin Zamorano: Monterey, 1836) was the first children’s book published in Alta California. It presented the math curriculum for the earliest secular schools in the colony and taught multiplication tables, monetary conversions in bases 8, 12 and 34, and time concepts among other lessons. This small, one signature book signaled the beginning of culturally distinct books for California youth. Zamorano and Romero, the schoolmaster, could have reprinted a Mexican or Spanish text. Instead, they produced an original math book designed for particular needs of young, male gentes de razon.

The international flood of immigrants to the Gold Rush left a multicultural impression on the local children’s literature.

Uncle John’s Stories for Good California Children, (Hutchins and Rosenfeld: San Francisco, circa 1860) spun original tales set in Europe, New England, California, Java, China, and on the Pacific Ocean. By the 1860s, publishers here began issuing literature that addressed the experiences of local youth.

Fairy Tales from Gold Lands. 2nd Series. May Wentworth. New Edition. New York, San Francisco, A. Roman & Co., 1870. The Golden Gate Series.

Anton Roman was the most prolific mid-century publisher for young Californians. From his main office in San Francisco and outpost in New York, he issued the Inglenook Series and Golden Gate Series, the latter with an engraved frontispiece based on a Carlton Watkins photograph looking toward the Golden Gate. Roman employed outstanding artists and engravers. F.O.C. Darley signed the illustration for the fanciful biography of Emperor Norton in Fairy Tales From the Gold Lands, that appeared in the first of two volumes dated 1868 and 1872. Roman introduced young readers to literature that reflected the land, personalities, and experiences of California.

William Elliot Griffis’s primers, spellers, and readers were the first Western schoolbooks in post-shogun Japan. They introduced Japanese students to American language and culture. The Bancroft Library copies, published in 1872 and 1873 by A.L. Bancroft in San Francisco, and others with Stone & Chipman in Yokahama, Japan, belonged to Griffis, and bear his notes for revisions. Comparing Lesson XXIX in two editions of The New Japan Pictorial Primer reveals some of the many changes. The first edition portrays a man sitting at a dining table, a waiter standing beside him. The reading lesson states, “This man keeps his hat on his head while he eats.” In the second edition, there is no hat in sight and the waiter becomes African American.

The First Reader of the New Japan Series. William Elliot Griffis. San Francisco, A.L. Bancroft, 1873.

Ho! For Elf-Land!, written and illustrated by the popular actress Alice Kingsbury (A.L. Bancroft: San Francisco, 1877), is fanciful, sensual, and feminist. One story describes a girl riding a swing that goes so high, it catches on the horn of the moon. She meets the little man who lives there. He gives her a drink of “fermented moonbeam” and then they dance. Following the stories for children, Kingsbury addressed several essays to the presumably adult, female reader. The final one titled “Woman, Past, Present and Future” begins “I stand up in defense of my sex ...” and rails against injustices to women. One might imagine A.L. Bancroft’s reaction based on the fact that the essay is expunged from the second edition (1878.) In its place, Cooley penned a fantasy of an obnoxious boy who is changed into a mule, a sloth then a hedgehog before reforming his ways.

There exists no comprehensive bibliography of juvenile literature published in California.

California in Juvenile Fiction, edited by Joseph Gaer as part of the California Literary Research Project, monograph #12 (1935), which identifies California imprints as well as juvenile literature set in California, remains the best place for historians to begin their search.

—Jim Silverman