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Part of
Transnational Books for Children 1750-1900: Producers, consumers, encounters
Edited by Charlotte Appel, Nina Christensen and M.O. Grenby
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 15] 2023
► pp. 356–376

Chapter 16
A World of books

The transnational imagination of child bookmakers in late nineteenth-century America

Three late-nineteenth-century American farm boys wrote and illustrated a homemade library. The Nelson family lived in rural New Hampshire, USA in what seem narrowly local circumstances – far from transnational. Yet the books they create depict an imaginary “World”. Their library reflects competition and conflict between imaginary nations, but also collaboration, with some books claiming transnational authorship and publication sites. International communication provides impetus for the Nelson brothers’ bookmaking in ways that illuminate the transnational dimensions of children’s book production in the real world. The case study offered in this chapter both explores the significance of global thinking for the Nelson’s bookmaking and asks what their homemade publications reveal about the transnational circulation and function of all children’s books.

Article outline
  • An American family and their books
  • Books that make a world
  • The violence of world-making
  • A world that makes books
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.15.16san
References

Texts by the Nelsons

The “Nelson Family Juvenilia Collection of Pamela Russell and Murray McClellan, ca. 1892–1895” is held in the Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College’s Frost Library (MA.00249)
Bibliographical details and digitized images of this material, including all the texts referred to in this chapter (listed separately below), are available at [URL].

Writings about daily life

Nelson, Arthur, Elmer, Hial, Ida, and Walter
The Worlds and Works of the Nelson Brothers. Writings about daily life [URL]
1897 Sketches of Our Home Life. Volume 1.Google Scholar
Nelson, Elmer
1899 My Library.Google Scholar
Nelson, Ida Farr
1940 Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Ida Farr Nelson: written at the request of her granddaughter Mrs. Doris Nelson Newman.Google Scholar

Library of homemade books and periodicals

Nelson, Arthur, Elmer, Hial, Ida, and Walter
The Worlds and Works of the Nelson Brothers. Nelson Homemade Books. [URL]
American Family Robinson
2 vols.
Chit Chat.
Complete Geography of the World
Complete History of Big Continent
Flags
Fragment 15 – Horse Rase Anthology
Gazetter of the World
History of Long Continent
History of the Wourld.
Intellectual Farmer
Military Uniforms
Mountain News
Nelson Bros. Novelties (seed catalogue)
Nelson Bros Seedsmen
Pioneersman
Seven Days in the Country
Thirty Days War
Weekly Telegram
Western World

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1890 A Child’s History of England. 2 vols. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. (earlier printings 1868, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1885, 1886, and 1888).Google Scholar
Hall, G. Stanley
1897 The Story of a Sand-Pile. New York: E. L. Kellogg & Co.Google Scholar

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