Category:Peter Parley's Annual

Title: Peter Parley’s Annual

Editor: William Martin

Publisher: Darton & Company Holborn Hill; Cassel, Petter, Gaplin & Company

Peter Parley’s Annual was a children’s periodical published annually at Christmastime in London from 1840-1892. The author, under the pen name of Peter Parley, was William Martin. Martin was one of several "Peter Parley’s" to take up the pseudonym of the famous American author Samuel Goodrich in an effort to imitate the idea of short, educational, and entertaining narratives for the school and home tutoring environment. Martin, as revealed in Goodrich’s memoirs, was regarded as the most successful^[1].

The journal itself was a collection of various articles with a wide range of topics including history, moral tales about schoolboys and wicked uncles, science, poems, ghost stories, and Christmas musings. The beginning of each issue included a letter from Parley himself, a character who Martin’s faithful young audience loved and believed actually existed. While the majority of the articles were primarily concerned with conveying factual information, the editor was clear nonetheless about his hopes that children would read it “with pleasure and profit,” as evidenced not only by the upbeat and entertaining anecdotes, but also by the many colorful illustrations throughout each issue^[2].

Notes

1. ↑ DNB.
2. ↑ Dennis Butts and Peter Hunt, Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History, Oxford UP, 1995, 82-83, Google Book Search, Web, 16 Oct. 2008.

Submitted by: Anderson, Ashley: section 1, Fall 2008