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    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766
    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766
    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766
    Ebook147 pages1 hour

    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766

    By Charles Welsh

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1970
    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766

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      When Margery and Tommy Meanwell are orphaned, after their father is driven off his farm by the greedy landlord, Sir Timothy Gripe, the two young people find themselves in a terrible situation. Their wealthy relatives won't take them in, and although a well-meaning clergyman attempts to help Margery, after her brother goes to sea, Sir Timothy and Farmer Graspall (what an aptronym that is!) force him to abandon her. Despite her poverty, Margery has the two shoes given to her by the kind Mr. Smith - something for which she rejoices, leading to her nickname "Margery Two Shoes" - and she sets out to improve herself, teaching herself to read. When she warns Sir William Dove and Sir Timothy about a plot against them, the former establishes her as a teacher in a little country school. Here she adopts many teaching methods that were new and progressive for that time (the 18th century), incorporating movement into her lessons, and emphasizing the importance of kindness to our animal friends. Becoming something of a moral authority in the locale, Margery is accused of witchcraft because of her many animal companions, but she is championed by Sir William. Eventually she marries Sir Charles Jones, is reunited with her brother Tommy, and becomes a benevolent force in her area...First published by John Newbery in 1765, The History of Little Goody Two Shoes; Otherwise Called Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes was a ground-breaking work, in the history of Anglophone children's literature, and although many contemporary readers might find it overly didactic, it actually had considerably more levity and entertainment value than the children's books - many of them produced by the Puritans, and other religious figures - that preceded it. It is not the source of the term "little goody two shoes," which we today understand to be a person who is nauseatingly rule-driven and "good," but it certainly popularized it. What's fascinating about this, is that the word "goody" is actually an abbreviated form of the English honorific "Goodwife," which was used to address women of a social status lower than "mistress" (i.e.: the mistress of a house), and didn't have the same connotation of overwhelming and obnoxious virtue that it currently does. Perhaps when the original meaning of "Goody" was lost, people assumed it meant "good," and came to think that "little goody two shoes" had a mocking ring to it. However that may be, the story here was engaging, and had many fascinating elements. The author begins with a discussion of land leasing and its injustice, which opens a window into the social issues of the day. The educational methods used by Margery were also interesting, and the focus on humane treatment of animals eye-opening. This latter is a theme one sees often in 18th-century children's literature. Sir William's comments on the stupidity of witchcraft accusations - "a Woman must be very poor, very old, and live in a Neighborhood, where the People are very stupid, before she can possibly pass for a Witch" - were both apt and entertaining. Finally, the social rise of Margery is of note - she starts out as the orphaned daughter of a poor farmer, and winds up a wealthy, titled lady - as the 18th century sees the very beginning of the breakdown of the nobility as the primary authority in England. The authorship of this book is contested - like all of Newbery's books, it was published anonymously, although some attribute it to Oliver Goldsmith - but whoever created it certainly did something different! Recommended to all readers with an interest in 18th-century English children's books, or in the titles published by John Newbery.

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    Goody Two-Shoes A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766 - Charles Welsh

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Goody Two-Shoes, by Anonymous

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Goody Two-Shoes

    A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766

    Author: Anonymous

    Release Date: October 8, 2004 [EBook #13675]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOODY TWO-SHOES ***

    Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Tom Roch, Leah Moser and the Online

    Distributed Proofreading Team.

    GOODY TWO-SHOES

    A FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION

    OF THE

    EDITION OF 1766

    WITH AN INTRODUCTION

    BY

    CHARLES WELSH

    GRIFFITH & FARRAN

    Successors to Newbery & Harris

    WEST CORNER OF ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON

    1 8 8 1

    INTRODUCTION.

    In The London Chronicle for December 19--January 1, 1765--the following advertisement appeared:--

    "The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the Learned in every Faculty are desired to observe that on the 1st of January, being New Year's Day (Oh, that we may all lead new Lives!), Mr Newbery intends to publish the following important volumes, bound and gilt, and hereby invites all his little friends who are good to call for them at the Bible and Sun, in St Paul's Churchyard: but those who are naughty are to have none.

    "We are also desired to give notice that there is in the Press, and speedily will be published either by subscription or otherwise, as the Public shall please to determine, The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, otherwise called Margery Two Shoes. Printed and sold at The Bible and Sun in St Paul's Churchyard, where may be had all Mr Newbery's little books for the children and youth of these kingdoms and the colonies. New Editions of those which were out of print are now republished.

    The publication of the Lilliputian System of Politics is postponed till the meeting of Parliament. This work, which will be replete with cuts and characters, is not intended to exalt or depress any particular country, to support the pride of any particular family, or to feed the folly of any particular party, but to stimulate the mind to virtue, to promote universal benevolence, to make mankind happy. Those who would know more of the matter may enquire of Mr Newbery.

    This quaint and curious announcement, with its sly humour and serious playfulness, is characteristic of the house of John Newbery, in the latter part of the last century; and there is no need to speak here of the fame of the books for children which he published; the philanthropic publisher of St Paul's Churchyard, as Goldsmith calls him, conferred inestimable benefits upon thousands of little folk, of both high and low estate. It is said of Southey when a child that

    The well-known publishers of Goody Two Shoes, Giles Gingerbread, and other such delectable histories, in sixpenny books for children, splendidly bound in the flowered and gilt Dutch paper of former days, sent him twenty such volumes, and laid the foundation of a love of books which grew with the child's growth, and did not cease even when the vacant mind and eye could only gaze in piteous, though blissful imbecility upon the things they loved.[A]

    Many of these little books have been doubtless long since forgotten, though they did not deserve such a fate; but the name of Goody Two Shoes is still familiar to the ears of English children, though the book itself may be unknown to thousands of little ones of this later generation.

    Goody Two Shoes was published in April 1765, and few nursery books have had a wider circulation, or have retained their position so long. The number of editions that have been published both in England and America is legion, and it has appeared in mutilated versions under the auspices of numerous publishing houses in London and the provinces, although of late years there have been no new issues. Even in 1802, Charles Lamb in writing to Coleridge, said--

     Goody Two Shoes" is almost out of print. Mrs Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery, and the shopman at Newbery's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs Barbauld's and Mrs Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge, insignificant and vapid as Mrs Barbauld's books convey, it seems must come to a child in the shape of knowledge; and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like, instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

    Hang them!--I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in man and child.[B]

    There must, however, be many parents still living who remember the delight that the little story gave them in their younger days, and they will, no doubt, be pleased to see it once more in the form which was then so familiar to them. The children of to-day, too, will look on it with some curiosity, on account of the fact that it is one of the oldest of our nursery tales, and amused and edified their grand-parents and great grand-parents when they were children, while they cannot fail to be attracted by its simple, pretty, and interesting story.

    The question of the authorship of the book is still an unsettled one. It was at one time commonly attributed to Oliver Goldsmith, and no one who reads the book will consider it to be unworthy of the poet's pen. We find, however, in Nichol's Literary Anecdotes, that

    It is not perhaps generally known that to Mr Griffith Jones, and a brother of his, Mr Giles Jones, in conjunction with Mr John Newbery, the public are indebted for the origin of those numerous and popular little books for the amusement and instruction of children which have been ever since received with universal approbation. The Lilliputian histories of Goody Two Shoes, Giles Gingerbread, Tommy Trip, &c., &c., are remarkable proofs of the benevolent minds of the projectors of this plan of instruction, and respectable instances of the accommodation of superior talents to the feeble intellects of infantine felicity.

    Mr Giles Jones

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