The History of Little Fanny.

The History of Little Fanny, Exemplified in a Series of Figures. London: Printed by D. N. Shury, Berwick Street, Soho, for S. and J. Fuller, 1810. Small square 8vo (128 x 105mm). Booklet of 16-pages in the original grey-green printed wrappers, stitched (lacking printed slipcase, small piece of corner torn away, light stain on upper wrapper, lacks silk tie). With 7 cut-out hand-coloured aquatint costumed figures, with a transferable head fitting into a tab in each figure, and 3 hats ([?]only). Provenance: old illegible signature on upper wrapper. FIRST EDITION of the earliest published paper doll set. Each figure and costume corresponds to a section of the story in the accompanying booklet whose tale charts Little Fanny’s progress, in a familiar didactic trajectory, from youthful innocence, through haughtiness, to destitution as ‘a dirty beggar girl’, to a return to propriety and a happy absolution in her mother’s arms once again. The text is sometimes attributed to Amelia Troward Girdlestone (1791-1854). Osborne II, p. 1052 (their copy lacking 2 hats); not in Percy Muir's English Children's Books 1600-1900 (New York, 1954).