George M. Fox Collection of Early Children's Books

The George M.Fox Collection is an exhibit at the San Francisco Public Library that was really cool. The Fox Collection is children's books from the 19th century. It highlights the color printing from the era-color wood engraving, chromolithographs and early hand-colored images:

Toy Book-Tower of London 1881

Six Mysterious Pictures from Chaos-1878

George Fox started working at Milton Bradley in 1923 and started collecting children's books in 1926. He acquired a portion of the Mcloughlin Bros. archives, who were a pioneer in color printing technologies and children's books, as Milton Bradley ( who brought the Mcloughlin Bros. in 1920 and the company ceased publishing) started disposing and dividing the materials that no longer interested them:

Large Birds by Josephine Pollard, 1886 printed by the Mcloughlin Bros.

Fox donated his collection to the San Francisco Public Library in 1978 and passed away in 1985.

Also, there are many books done by great wood engraver and color printer Edmund Evans:

The Butterfly's Ball-1880, color printing by Edmund Evans

The Diverting of History of John Gilpin-1878?. Drawings by Randolph Caldcott and color  printing by Edmund Evans

Here are couple other selections from the Fox Collection:

The front of Routledge's Nursery Picture Book-1880

Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes-1886

Comic Insects by F.A.S. Reif-1872

Animals: Their Pictures, Habits and Uses-written between 1857-1865. Illustrations by Harrison Weir,  Verses by James Bishop.


This was one of the best exhibits I have seen. I loved looking at the old books and I learned a lot of things about the history of children's books.