(BATTLEDORE). ~ The New Royal Battledore. Kettering: Joseph Toller, [c. 1840].
Single 8vo sheet (135 × 215 mm) with letterpress and three wood engraved illustrations. Pasted to original stiff grey paper wrapper with further letterpress and another illustration. Two folds, wallet-style with one panel forming a flap. An excellent survival.
A Battledore was made to be given to children as a primer in the alphabet and basic words and pronunciation — a cheaper and more ephemeral version of the hornbook. They rarely survive in god condition, as here. Several versions of Toller’s Kettering ‘New Royal Battledore’ are known, with different illustrations. These are of a young girl spinning beside a cottage, a marine guardian angel with cupid on a raft, Old Mother Hubbard and her cat and a zebra. The wallet style sheet is stiffened with a sandwiched sheet of printer’s waste, in this case partially visible and advertising books published by Tilt in various bindings, and works including Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. Tuer 409.