By Emma Laws, Cathedral Librarian
We all know the benefit of early reading, but it seems that coaxing children to read has always been a battle. The English philosopher John Locke described the ideal children’s book in his treatise, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693): books for children should be ‘easy’, ‘pleasant’ and entertaining to reward children’s ‘pains in reading’. Most importantly, books should have pictures.
Locke described the human mind at birth as a tabula rasa – a blank slate – which is filled gradually with knowledge acquired through sensory experience. Books with pictures offer children an opportunity to learn through sensory experience – through sight. Locke’s bestselling treatise galvanised a specialist children’s book market in the mid-18th century. Children fortunate enough to be able to spend a few pennies on a book could enjoy entertaining stories with a picture on every page, sewn into colourful paper wrappers. By the end of the 18th century, business was booming.
Hieroglyphic bibles are puzzles. They use pictures in place of text to introduce young children to bible stories in an engaging and intriguing way. In 1784, Thomas Hodgson published The Curious Hieroglyphick Bible for the ‘amusement’ of young children. He hoped it would ‘be an easy way of leading [children] on in reading’ and would ‘engage them… more earnestly and seriously in the study of the sacred books of the Old and New Testaments’.
The Curious Hieroglyphick Bible includes numerous woodcuts featuring ‘lively and striking images’ to give children knowledge of ‘the most remarkable things that exist in the world’. The page depicted above has just three images and is relatively easy to decipher. Other pictures, however, are a little more ambiguous, but if you’re stuck the answers appear at the bottom of each page.
Later in the book, there are descriptions of the four evangelists and, finally, a brief catechism to test children’s knowledge. Sadly, the catechism is missing in Exeter Cathedral Library’s copy (a later printing of 1796 and a recent donation), but it left children in no doubt of the true purpose of their efforts:
‘Who are the best children? – They that fear God and his commandments, and obey their parents.’
‘Who are the worst children? – They that lie, swear, steal, break the Sabbath, despise God, and keep not his holy commandments.’
And finally:
‘What becomes of the wicked when they die? – They are cast into hell, there to be tormented with the devil and his angels.’