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Tommy Thumb's Song Book is the earliest known collection of British nursery rhymes, printed in 1744. No original copy has survived, but its content has been recovered from later reprints. No original copy has survived, but its content has been recovered from later reprints.
Although Tommy Thumb's Song Book is an older collection, no copies of its first printing have survived. The only other printed copies of nursery rhymes that predate the Pretty Song-Book are in the form of quotations and allusions, such as the half-dozen or so that appear in Henry Carey's 1725 satire on Ambrose Philips, Namby Pamby. [5]
The terms "nursery rhyme" and "children's song" emerged in the 1820s, although this type of children's literature previously existed with different names such as Tommy Thumb Songs and Mother Goose Songs. [1] The first known book containing a collection of these texts was Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, which was published by Mary Cooper in 1744 ...
Active from 1743 to 1761, [2] she is notable especially for publishing Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (1744), "the first known collection of English nursery rhymes in print". [4] Cooper collected the rhymes, each of which had a companion woodcut, and later critics have remarked that "Cooper's ear for a good jingle was unerring". [5]
The modern rhyme is the best known of a number of verses beginning with the line "Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross", some of which are recorded earlier. These include a verse printed in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (c. 1744), with the lyrics:
The oldest known version was first published in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (1744) with the lyrics that are shown here: Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,
The first English collections, Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, were published by Mary Cooper in 1744. Publisher John Newbery 's stepson, Thomas Carnan, was the first to use the term Mother Goose for nursery rhymes when he published a compilation of English rhymes, Mother Goose's Melody, or Sonnets for the ...
The first two lines at least appeared in dance books (1708, 1719, 1728), satires (1709, 1725), and a political broadside (1711). It appeared in the earliest extant collection of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, published in London around 1744. The 1744 version included the first six lines. [3]