Object details
Accession number
4.b.3.2
Primary Creator
English
Full title
Horn Book
Creation Date
1727-1760
Object Case
Horn Book Case
Language
English
Publication Place
England
Binding Description
Leather back, stamped with an eagle carrying off an infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes
Provenance
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from booksellers J.Pearson & Co., London for £22 10s on 12 September 1901.
Dimensions
8.89 x 6.03 cm (3 1/2 x 2 3/8 in.)
Display Media
Printed ink on paper with embossed leather binding
Web Commentary
A horn book was a reading primer. An alphabet was the main feature but might also include a syllabary, the Lord's Prayer, and numbers. In order to protect the lettering, a thin sheet of translucent horn was fixed over the paper.
Permanent Gallery Location
Long Gallery
Bibliography
Isabella Stewart Gardner. A Choice of Manuscripts and Bookbindings from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Fenway Court. (Boston, 1922), p.76.
Susan Sinclair and Philip B. Eppard. Catalogue of Children’s Books from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Collection and the Personal Libraries of John Lowell and Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston, 1988), p. 13, no. 6, ill.
Rights and reproductions
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