Английская Википедия:Gammer Gurton's Garland

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A page from the first edition

Gammer Gurton's Garland: or, The Nursery Parnassus, edited by the literary antiquary Joseph Ritson, is one of the earliest collections of English nursery rhymes. It was first published as a chapbook in 1784, but was three times reprinted in expanded editions during the following century, as were several unrelated children's books with similar titles. Gammer Gurton's Garland put into print for the first time some of our best-known nursery rhymes.

Publication history

Joseph Ritson was a young London antiquary, originally from Stockton-on-Tees, whose interests were in the early 1780s turning towards nursery rhymes. In 1781 he bought a copy of the pioneering collection Mother Goose's Melody,Шаблон:Sfn and the following year encouraged his nephew to note down any such rhymes he came across.Шаблон:Sfn In 1784Шаблон:Efn his Gammer Gurton's Garland: or, The Nursery Parnassus, containing 79 nursery rhymes, was published by the Stockton bookseller R. Christopher as a 32mo chapbook priced at twopence.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Only one copy is known to survive, now held in the British Library.[1]Шаблон:Sfn An undated second edition was later published, in which three of the original rhymes were left out, and replaced by four others.Шаблон:Sfn A third edition, published in 1810, seven years after Ritson's death, reprinted the 79 rhymes from the first edition and added a further 55.[2] A major contributor to this volume, and very likely its editor, was the literary scholar Francis Douce.Шаблон:Sfn A fourth edition, limited to 112 copies, was published in Glasgow in 1866.Шаблон:Sfn There are several modern reprints.

Significance

Gammer Gurton's Garland has been called one of the four foundational collections of English nursery rhymes, the others being Nancy Cock's Song-Book (1744), Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book (1744), and Mother Goose's Melody (1780).Шаблон:Sfn Ritson knew the last of these and incorporated about two-thirds of its rhymes into his own collection, sometimes in variant versions, along with many that had never been printed before.Шаблон:Sfn Among the well-known nursery rhymes published for the first time in Ritson's original edition of Gammer Gurton's Garland areШаблон:Sfn

Other rhymes of which it gives early texts includeШаблон:Sfn

Gammer Gurton

The name Gammer Gurton was not originated by Ritson. It first appears in the 16th-century comedy Gammer Gurton's Needle, and from there it came to be used as the name of the typical grandmother.[3]

In the early 19th century appeared a number of children's books naming Gammer Gurton in their titles, some of which have been mistakenly attributed to Joseph Ritson. These include Gammer Gurton's Garland of Nursery Songs, and Toby Tickle's Collection of Riddles (undated, but perhaps 1810); Gammer Gurton's Pleasant Stories (1846); Gammer Gurton's Famous Histories (undated, but perhaps 1846), a work later reissued as Gammer Gurton's Story Books; and Gammer Gurton's Garland (undated), a collection of 12 nursery rhymes beginning with "Jenny Wren fell sick" and ending with "London Bridge is broken down". All of these apart from the first can be securely attributed to William John Thoms.Шаблон:Sfn

Notes

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Footnotes

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References

External links