1835?-1837.]. Offered together eleven letterpress broadsides, all approximately 475 x 380mm; each containing a series of small hand-coloured wood-cut vignettes with accompanying text; some general light soiling and marginal browning, with a few marginal nicks and tears in places as would be expected, though most pronounced along the right hand margin of ‘Period 14’ with slight loss of printed border; faint signatures visible at head of periods 5, 6 and 7, possibly ‘Miss Deacon’, ‘Miss Jackson’; though only a partial set, a most attractive and vibrant example of early Victorian school teaching aids. An extremely scarce, and wonderfully vibrant partial set of this illustrated introduction to world history for children, published as a series of picture sheets priced at 1s by J. Wacey of London. Picture sheets, by their very ephemeral nature, are scarce and to find such an extensive run is rare and we have found virtually no other examples, either individually or in a run. A contemporary advertisement in Bent’s Monthly Literary Advertiser, of October 10 1837 notes: ‘Dedicated, by permission, to the Most Noble the Marchioness of Hastings and her Children. Now publishing monthly, and to be finished in 20 Nos., price 1s each... designed to impress on the minds of children the principal contemporary events in the Empires and States of the known World, during twenty-one distinct periods... on the 1st October, the 14th Periods was published, containing Eleven coloured woodcuts, etc.’ (p. 111). A later advertisement suggests the series had been completed by 1838. ‘This is a highly instructive series of historical tables, with appropriate pictorial illustrations for young people. The design is excellent, the outline of facts selected very judicious, and the moral and religious impressions conveyed, greatly calculated to improve and elevate the youthful aspirant after sound knowledge’ (The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle p. 332).