Books for children in which pictures are emphasized. Often these have been put together with miscellaneous cuts the printer has accumulated over the course of years or decades, making the books bafflingly eclectic.

This category overlaps with Children’s Literature.


The Boy's Picture Book. Concord, N. H.: R. Merrill, 1843. —Miscellaneous cuts found lying about the print shop. Some are a bit surreal taken out of context.

Child's Picture Book. Concord, N. H.: Rufus Merrill, 1849. —Miscellaneous woodcuts with just enough words to fill the leftover space. Mr. Merrill apparently made a profitable sideline of selling these little books, which must have cost him very little effort.


Routledge's Nursery Picture Book, containing upwards of six hundred and thirty illustrations. London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1862. —A treasury of hundreds of small cuts left over from an extraordinary variety of publications.

My Pet's Album. With 130 illustrations by first-class artists. London: S. W. Partridge & Co., [1872]. —Skillful, if not always first-class, engravings, each illustrating a little moral lesson for children.

My Pet's Picture Book. New York: American Tract Society, 1873. —Each picture illustrates a page of text with a valuable moral lesson.

My Hodge-Podge Picture Book, by Philip Findlay. With one hundred and fifty illustrations. Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1880.

Old Father Christmas Picture-Book. By Lizzie Mack and Robert Ellice Mack. London: Ernest Nister, [1888]. —Some very fine color illustrations.