Animals Are Us: Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature; Celebrating the Peter J. Solomon Collection

focusing on children’s literature and associated illustrations
may seem idiosyncratic.
Our collection began in 1981. The catalyst was a reading
list at the Collegiate School, which my brother and I had
attended, in New York. My goal was quite simple: to replicate
the list and add other first editions of books that an American
elementary school student would have read at the time of their
original publication.
Upon reflection, my decision to collect American
children’s literature evolved naturally. American history always
interested me; my grandparents lived in Salem and Boston, so
visits often involved excursions to colonial sites. My favorite
poem in elementary school was Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s
Ride.”
After graduating from Harvard in 1960 and Harvard
Business School in 1963, I joined Lehman Brothers and
bought a 1780 colonial house in Connecticut featuring wide
floorboards, beamed ceilings, a beehive chimney, and, in the
parlor, a “coffin” door. American folk art seemed the appropriate
complement for the home. I began to frequent Saturday
flea markets and met wonderful dealers like Avis and Rock
Gardner, who scoured the countryside for furniture, books,
maps, etchings—any historic item. As the years passed, I often
mused that it would have been wise to have bought every item
they suggested.
Fortunately, Jacob Blanck had produced the bibliography
Peter Parley to Penrod, a compendium of “those outstanding
books which have withstood the years of change in reading
tastes and are favorites still.” The bibliography, which runs from
1830 to 1938, includes familiar novels such as the Uncle Remus
books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Varmint,
as well as other classics like Call of the Wild, The Man without
a Country, and Green Mountain Boys. The bibliography also
included a number of titles I wasn’t familiar with: Robert and
Harold or The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast, The Flight
of Pony Baker: A Boy’s Town Story, and Barnaby Lee.
Through Julian Edison, whose miniature book collection
is now at Houghton and who contributed financially to the
room housing this exhibit, I had the good fortune to meet the
expert in children’s literature Justin Schiller. Justin’s thoughtful
guidance over the past forty years has made the depth and
breadth of our collection possible. He has found treasures
that were thought lost, such as Lewis Carroll’s letter to his
publisher explaining why the cover of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland had to be red; he has advised me against pursuing
items that might not be authentic; and, most importantly, he
has encouraged me to purchase books and illustrations that
seemed, at the time, too esoteric and costly, such as a Hans
Christian Andersen papercut from the mid-1860s that added
immeasurably to our holdings. Justin’s good judgement proved
to me time and again the adage that a collector rarely regrets
his excesses but almost always regrets his economies. Finally,
Justin insisted that items be in the best possible condition, and
therefore we rejected those that did not meet this standard. Our
collection is a tribute to Justin, his friendship, and his knowledge.
After acquiring the books included in Peter Parley,
thereby satisfying my first goal, I began to search more
extensively. Just as with imagination, there are no boundaries
to children’s literature. Every country has its own body of
children’s literature, and one book alone, Alice, has been
translated into 174 languages. Neither my pocketbook nor my
residences could accommodate all aspects of the field, so
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