Harry Heedless, The Parrot Girl
and the McLoughlin Brothers

RUDOLPH ELLENBOGEN
 

'' If If AD we the revenues of a multimillionaire we should
I        I    send each Christmas Day our personal cheque for ten

JI J i thousand dollars to the Messrs. .McLoughlin of this
city, who still put forth those good old classics whose pages show
the very subtlest literary gifts and \\hich ha\'e long ago secured
a glorious immortality." The classics that Harry Thurston Peck,
critic and Professor of Latin at Columbia, was referring to in his
article in the December 1896 issue of The Bookman were Jack the
Giant Killer, Little Red Riding Hood, and Blue Beard. He goes on
to deplore the "educationists," their modern theories and their
picture books, which he says are not picture books "of the old
kind in which animals are the protagonists of tragedies and come¬
dies. There is no story in the new picture-book, but just animals
— principally cows." The "educarionists," Peck charges, have
thrown out the nursery rhyme, the fairy talc, and the magic; but he
praises highly the one publishing company, .McLoughlin Brothers,
which has kept "the sacred fire alight."

The .McLoughlin Brothers, one of the largest firms of its type
at that time, were publishers of popular children's books designed
to sell in a mass market. Yet, in the histories of children's litera¬
ture of the period, there is \'irtually no mention of them. Be¬
cause their publishing records do not seem to have survived, it may
no longer be possible to write a detailed history of the firm. How¬
ever, their output may be studied thanks to the generous gift of
Professor Frances Henne of her collection of over eight hundred
McLoughlin imprints, games, wood blocks and electrotypes.

The history of the firm may be traced back to John McLough-