ABSTRACT
Included in a publication on children’s literature (Children’s Literature Briefly, Jacobs & Tunnell, 1996) is a table headed ‘History and Trends Chronology’. Most of what is there is to be expected: the Orbis Pictus, Perrault’s Mother Goose, Household Tales, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. What is missing, however, is any mention of the oldest existing collection of what we now know as nursery rhymes, Mary Cooper’s publication of Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Songbook Volume 11. Is this omission indicative of the value people place today on nursery rhymes?
