iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

3/3 It was copied word for word when #SamuelGriswoldGoodrich appropriated the book for American children in 1839. (It's complicated.) How many kids DID beg to visit Anning's shop, I wonder.

A tropical scene with palm trees and a pool. Two plesiosaurs with beaks swim in the pool. An ichthyosaur crawls on the ground. A tiny plump pterosaur with a short wingspan dives nearby. Caption: "Fossil Animals restored, p. 7"

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

2/3 "We are indebted for a great deal of what I have told you about the animals that once lived where Dorsetshire is now, to a lady, Miss Anning, who spends nearly her whole time in collecting fossils out of the cliffs. No one ought to go near Lyme Regis without visiting her collection."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

1/3 #fossilFriday Mary Anning gets a shoutout in 1837, in Peter Parley’s Wonders of the Earth, Sea, and Sky, an early British children's book about prehistoric beasts:

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Before we leave September ... Happy 200th, Juvenile Miscellany! Founded September 1826. #bookhistory #childrensmagazines

Cover for May 1827: a white girl wearing a long dress sits in a chair and reads a book to a white boy sitting in a chair across from her. He wears a dark suit cut close to his body; the suit has a broad white collar.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

There was a little girl who had a little curl— Oops, this one has two. #daguerreotype of a very somber 19thcentury person. #vintagephotography #PhotographyHistory #clothinghistory #toddlerTuesday

black and white image of a very young white girl with dark hair. She leans on one arm and looks at you, her lower lip sucked in; she looks very serious. Two pieces of hair curl on either side of her forehead; the rest of her hair is pulled back. She is dressed in a dark dress with short puffed sleeves and a plain neck which has slid down her shoulder on one side. The image is framed in a gold-colored metal mat.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Happy birthday to #SamuelGriswoldGoodrich, born #otd in 1793 & looking Byronic in a portrait sent to readers of Merry's Museum. (One little girl thought his hanky was a kitten.) #bookhistory #fashionhistory

a steel engraving of a white man with disordered hair, sitting casually with his elbow on the edge of a table. He wears a dark suit with a handkerchief in the jacket pocket. His shirt is white; his cravat is black. His signature has been engraved below the portrait: "Yours truly S. G. Goodrich."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

And I remember when someone removed every card on the subject of witches at the University of Minnesota, just before I needed to research the history of witchcraft in England ...

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

This guy ain't taking none of your guff! The skirt made it easier to change a diaper; the side part indicates that this child is probably a boy. #carte-de-visite #children #19thcentury #fashionhistory #historicalfashion #clothinghistory

19th-century black and white photo of a young white child scowling at the camera. Because the child's hair is parted on the side, it's probably a boy. However, the child is wearing what appears to be a dress that hangs at mid-calf; the print of the fabric is a diagonal check. He wears white socks and dark boots and is holding onto the back of an ornately-carved wooden chair.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Monarch in the making, with milkweed, 1972 #MonarchMonday Taken on slide film with Dad's Miranda SLR

A fat caterpillar banded in white, yellow, and black crawls among the pink and green buds of a milkwee plant; the background is black

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Late for #fossilfriday: Heracles battles a unique monster (in an image I made to show students):

an image from an ancient Greek jug shows Heracles shooting arrows and a prince throwing rocks at a skull peering from a cave. Included is an image of the fossil skull of a Miocene giraffe found in Greece. The giraffe skull matches the skull of the monster peering from the cave; the monster was apparently the remains of a fossil from at least 5 million years ago.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I wish somebody would do a book on Fern; the one I tried to read 10-15 years ago was pretty dreadful. Primary sources are the best, tho I have to say that Samuel Goodrich’s handwriting makes his letters hard to read.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Apparently not! My research goes only to 1873. That's an interesting write-up on him at findagrave. (My transcription of my 1st ed. of Ruth Hall is at my website, currently offline; Fanny Fern could wriiiiiite!)

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Hey, vexillologists! Is this a flag I should recognize? Context: engraved title page of an American book published in 1820. #vexillology

on a ship's mast, a white flag with a Greek cross against a darkish canton

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Over 500,000 nonsense requests in less than 24 hours before hosting service took it offline. I'll fix, but it'll be a while.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Was it something I said? merrycoz. org temporarily down due to denial of service attack. On a 26-year-old web site that focuses on early-American texts for children. Wow, the #internetisMEAN right now

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Like the Society's other publications, copies of the Friend were often left in public places. This cover has "Read & Circulate" written on it.

cropped image of the handwritten "Read & Circulate"

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

for #magazineMonday, happy birthday to The Slave's Friend, first published this week in 1835 by the American Anti-Slavery Society. #childrensmagazine #bookhistory

printed on light brown paper. A white man holding an open book stands, surrounded by five young boys with dark skin, who are reading. Behind them are two windows. Above the image: "The Slave's Friend. No. VIII." Below the image: "The lips of the wise disperse knowledge.--Prov. SV. 7. For sale at the Anti-Slavery Office, 144 Nassau-street, New-York. Price--One cent single; 10 cts. a dozen; 80 cts. per hundred; $6 50 per thousand. Postage--This contains one-half sheet. Postage under 100 miles 3-4 cent; over 100 miles 1 1-2 cts." Along the left edge, someone has written "Read & Circulate."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

The first issue was entirely illustrated by Thomas Nast, who also gave us a rotund #SantaClaus.

a pig in a suit sits in a wooden chair and reads papers at a desk; a pair of scissors is tucked behind one of the pig's ears. On the wall behind the pig are a sign & a picture, both in frames. The sign reads "The Little Pig Monthly is Out" (meaning that it's available to readers). The picture is of a well-dressed pig standing on two legs; words on the picture read "The Little Artist." On the floor beside the desk are an over-flowing waste basket, a roll of paper, and two books.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Happy birthday on #magazineMonday to Elijah Sparhawk Brigham, born #otd in 1813, editor of Little Pig Monthly (2 issues, 1859) The colored cover is unusual. #bookhistory #19thcentury #childrensmagazines

printed in yellow, red, green, blue & black on beige paper. A large pig dressed in red eats with utensils at a table. Around the pig are small figures from folktales: among the figures, a bearded giant with a club talks to a boy; two frogs play leapfrog; a red dragon roars at a knight on a horse; a cat wears a red robe; a witch flies on a broom; figures from different lands hold hands and dance in a ring; a winged fairy holds a wand. A bird perches on the name "The Little-Pig Monthly."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Birthday wishes for Anne Wales Abbott, born #otd in 1808, editor of The Child's Friend (1843-1858)! #bookhistory #19thcentury #childrensmagazines #WomenInHistory #WomensHistory

printed on cream-colored paper. In the center: "The Child's Friend and Youth's Magazine. Terms--$1.50 per annum, in advance. Postage--half a cent each No." The words are framed by an elaborate border. Background of the wide border: vines, flowers, and the faces of children. Against the border are 8 vignettes. Top: a white woman sits in a chair with a baby on her lap, listening as a boy standing in front of her reads from a book; behind him two girls are seated. Left, top to bottom: two boys fly a kite; a girl jumps rope; three boys sail a toy boat in a pool of water. Right, top to bottom: a girl watches two girls play with a small hoop; two boys fish; two girls play badminton. Bottom: a boy and girl plant seeds. On either side of the bottom vignette are a globe, books, a kite, a top, a model sailboat, and a cricket bat. Below the bottom border: "Published by Leonard C. Bowles, 111, Washington-street, Boston."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Arthur definitely named his magazine after the poem, but I like this interpretation better…

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

for #magazineMonday, The Children's Hour (1867-1874), edited by temperance favorite T. S. Arthur (author, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There) #bookhistory #19thcentury #childrensmagazines

printed on beige paper. The cover of the magazine for October 1870. A white woman sits in an armchair, with two young boys and a little girl looking at something on her lap. At her feet, a girl and a boy read a book together. They are in a room with a window seat beneath a window through which a tree is visible. On the floor is a toy drum with two drumsticks. The scene is framed by fines and flowers, with the words "The Children's Hour" above the figures. Below the figures are the words "A Magazine for the Little Ones. Edited by T. S. Arthur." It is printed by T. S. Arthur & Sons, 809 & 811 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. The illustration is signed by the engraver: Lauderbach. At the top of the page, the original owner's name is handwritten: Miss Clara Kiliam.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Happy International Children's Book Day! The first book I ever bought. (25 cents was a fortune to me in 1965.) And I still have it. (Image isn't of my copy, but mine is just as nice.) #paleoart #childrensbooks #dinosaurs #InternationalChildrensBookDay

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

For spring, the closest Parley's Magazine came to baseball. Unusually, in 1835, each issue apparently had a different image on the cover; here a #cricket player batters up. #19thcentury #childrensmagazines #bookhistory #MagazineMonday

alt: printed on yellow paper. A white man on a cricket pitch prepares to bat the ball. In the background two other men stand; behind them is a house. Printed above the illustration: Vol. III, 8 & 9. Parley's Magazine. Published every fortnight, at one dollar a year. Printed below the illustration: Postage, three quarters of a cent; but if over 100 miles, one cent and a quarter. Publishers in Maine, New York City, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, Buffalo, and New Orleans are listed; this copy was printed in Boston, by Samuel Colman.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Honoring Hannah Bunce (b. 28 Dec 1749), widowed at 28, with 4 children & a stepdaughter, who as Hannah Watson co-edited the Connecticut Courant [Hartford, Connecticut] 6 Jan 1778-23 Feb 1779. #WomenInHistory #WomensHistory #WHM #WomensHistoryMonth #womenswork

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

2/2: The cover of the last issue of Robert Merry's Museum contrasts with the one for Parley's Magazine: Parley's corrals the subjects, packaging them neatly for the reader. By 1872, images on children's magazines more often corral the readers, sealing them away from the outside world.

printed on orange paper; the cover of Robert Merry's Museum for November 1872 (the last issue). In the center are the words "Merry's Museum, an Illustrated Magazine for Boys & Girls" above a small reproduction of the painting "Youth," by Thomas Cole. On the left Columbia stands on a pedestal with a cross on it; she carries a spear, holds a small shield painted with stars and stripes and wears a helmet with an eagle as a crest. On the right Athena stands on a pedestal with a dove on it. Below are three vignettes: in the center, a sailboat sails toward the sun; on either side, each vignette shows a white boy and girl. Below the vignettes are the words "Horace B. Fuller, Boston."

printed on tan paper. In the center, the words "Parley's Magazine No. 7 Boston Lilly, Wait, and Company. Portland: Colman, Holden, and Co. 1833." Around the words is a border of 14 vignettes, each set in a circular frame. Upper left to upper right: a globe; a man looking at the sky through a telescope; a church; two people pointing at a distant ruin. Right-hand side, below the people pointing at a ruin: travelers entering a stagecoach; a farmer steering a plow drawn by oxen, with a large building behind him; an owl, an eagle, a crow, and an ostrich. Left-hand side, below the globe: a sailing ship; a statue near some ancient ruins; an elephant, a tiger, and a lion. Bottom left to bottom right: a whale spouting; a truly enormous butterfly near a tree; a running horse with a man strapped to its back; several flowers growing in a landscape.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

1/2: Happy birthday to Susanna Wilson Newbould, born #otd in 1821. As "Aunt Sue," she delighted in puzzles and the readers of Woodworth's Youth's Cabinet and Robert Merry's Museum. #19thcentury #childrensmagazines #bookhistory #WomensHistory #WHM #WomensHistoryMonth

alt: a portrait of Susanna Newbould, a white woman wrapped in a printed shawl and looking at you. Below her portrait is her autograph; above her is written "Woodworth's" in capital letters; below her signature are the words "Youth's Cabinet" in capital letters.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Birthday cheers to Parley’s Magazine, launched #otd in 1833! The first cover promised pieces on a variety of subjects; for 11 years, the magazine fulfilled that promise. #19thcentury #childrensmagazines #bookhistory #MagazineMonday

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Very cool! Makes sense, I think, given that so many illustrations were reused in books and periodicals for decades. I know that engravers would find a painting they liked and engraved it, then sold it to a publisher; happened with giftbooks.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Happy birthday Lucy Larcom, born #otd in 1824, one of the editors of Our Young Folks (1865-1873), which in early years had a different cover for each season; this one would have been for March #WomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #19thcentury #childrensmagazines #bookhistory

printed on orange paper. Athena, a female figure wearing a helmet and carrying a sword and a shield with stars and stripes, stands in the center, beneath an arch with "Our Young Folks" written on it; an eagle spreads its wings at the top of the arch, with three flags showing stars hung on either side. On each side of Athena are two vignettes in round frames. Left, the vignettes show a white boy and girl ride a sled down a snowy slope and another white girl and boy holding hands while skating. Right, the vignettes show five white boys throwing snowballs around a large ball of snow and a white boy skating and pulling two white girls on a small sled.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Birthday wishes for John B. Alden, born #otd in 1847, editor of The Bright Side (1869-abt 1873) #19thcentury #childrensmagazine

The words "The Bright Side" over a 3-part image. Middle, the bust of a young white girl looking at you from a round frame. Left, ivy wreathes around the words "For Wisdom is Better than Rubies." Right, ivy wreathes around the words "A Merry Heart doth Good like a Medicine." Below are the words "For all eyes, and all kinds of weather."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

4/4 Was it Lyon? Unknown. But certainly this person managed to live life as she understood herself, clear to the end.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

3/4 Who was she? Death records I’ve been able to consult include a tailor dying in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on 4 March 1853: James Lyon, age 72, born in Falmouth; I haven’t found him listed in any state in the 1850 census.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

2/4 "We understand that this person recently died in one of the upper counties, when the discovery was made that the cutter of ladies’ garments was a man in disguise—one who had donned the petticoats for some unexplained reason, and passed for a female until after death."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

1/4 Honoring a transwoman who died in 1853; from the Alexandria Gazette [Alexandria, Virginia] 24 May 1853: "Last summer a (reputed) female was going the rounds, instructing ladies in the art of cutting dresses, &c., hailing from the North, we believe." #LGBTQ+

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Happy birthday #PeterParley, early brand name making his debut #otd in 1827, in Tales of Peter Parley About America, by #SamuelGriswoldGoodrich; it was the first of almost a dozen books with Parley's name in the title. #bookhistory

alt: An elderly white man stands in front of a distant row of houses. He wears a hat, a long coat over a waistcoat, and knee-length breeches over long stockings. He has one hand in a pocket of his coat and leans on a cane held in the other. He is smiling.

alt: Chapter 1 of Tales of Peter Parley About America; paragraphs are numbered: "Parley tells about Himself, about Boston, and about the Indians. 1. Here I am! My name is Peter Parley! I am an old man. I am very gray and lame. But I have seen a great many things, and had a great many adventures, and love to talk about them. 2. I love to tell stories to children, and very often they come to my house, and they get around me, and I tell them stories of what I have seen, and of what I have heard."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Birthday wishes to Selah Burr Treat, born #OTD in 1804; editor of The Youth's Dayspring (1842-1855) #bookhistory #19thcentury #childrensmagazines

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

a president worth honoring; a mezzotint of an 1864 photo by Matthew Brady; for subscribers to The Little Corporal, 1865 #bookhistory #AbrahamLincoln #lincoln #presidentsday #childrensmagazines #littlecorporal #19thcentury

Wearing his reading glasses, Abraham Lincoln sits leafing through a book; his young son stands beside him, also looking at the book. Caption: "The Children's Portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Published as a Supplement to The Little Corporal."

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Reposted by ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺

ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

for a valentine: found in a 19th-century book (probably a bound volume of a children's magazine), a nice little heart in a hand

front: beige paper cut in the shape of a glove with a scalloped wrist. Blue paper cut in the shape of a heart with scalloped edges has been cut so it can be woven into the beige paper. At the wrist of the glove two thin red strips of paper are woven through the beige; between them a thin blue strip of paper has been woven.

back: the blue paper from the heart shows through. At the wrist is a thin blue strip woven through the beige glove; thin beige strips of paper are woven through the wrist on either side of the blue strip.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

&, looking at your website, you list a couple children's papers I didn't know about. (I specialize in American periodicals & books for children before 1873.) Though since they weren't mentioned in newspapers & libraries don't appear to have them, no wonder I didn't find them!

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

The American Baptist Publication Society may have provided a stereotype plate to the Welsh publishers. Here's a scan of the banner from 1866.

A boy holding a sickle & a sheaf of wheat looks at the reader in the center of a banner for The Young Reaper. On the left, a woman sits with a book in front of a classroom of children. On the right, a minister & a young female convert stand waist-deep in a body of water, with a crowd of people on the shore; she's evidently being baptizes.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

The Reaper was a Baptist periodical, which is what I assume the Welsh paper was. That image of the boy in the banner was used in the American paper from 1865 to 1868; a different image was used 1869 to 1871.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

#OTD 1813, Benson John Lossing was born, engraver turned editor of The Young People’s Mirror and American Family Visitor (Jan 1848-Dec 1848) #bookhistory #19thcentury #childrensmagazines

The image for the cover has three sections. Left: a teenaged boy strikes a dramagic pose; below him, a caption reads, "The world is all before me." Right: a teenaged girl presses a book to her heart; below her, a caption reads, "My jewels are faith & virtue." Center: a family listens as an elderly man reads aloud; below them, a caption reads, "How grand in age, how fair in youth, is holy friendship, love & truth."

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

The magazine used the same cover image for each issue in the year; the images were standard woodcuts which appear in a number of publications. This one from 1828 is a favorite. #dog

A boy shows a book to a dog which is sitting on its hind legs, front paws close to its chest. The image is on the cover of The Juvenile Miscellany, a children's magazine from January 1828.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Birthday wishes to Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist and editor of The Juvenile Miscellany, 1826-1836 #bookhistory #lydiamariachild #juvenilemiscellany #19thcentury #childrensmagazines

A boy sits on a chair, listening as a girl reads from a book. They appear on the cover of The Juvenile Miscellany, a children's magazine from 1827.

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ppflieger 🇺🇦🇬🇱🇪🇺 @ppflieger.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Given what's going on in the lagoon, no wonder this #turtle looks a little alarmed ... #paleoart #fossilfriday #bookhistory

Large version of the big turtle, which looks even more alarmed than it did in the complete picture.

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