Nearly every publisher in France, and many of those in England and the United States, have issued editions of Mother Goose stories. Most of those from France have been reprints, with variation, of the originals by Perrault: Boussod; B. Bernardin; Biblioth. Nat.; MM. Chavery; Dentu; Flammarion; Boulanger; Lemerre; Bornemann; Cattier; Duployé; Fayard; E. Guérin; Hachette; G. Delarue; Garnier Frères; Magnin.
The editions of Mother Goose fairy tales and nursery rhymes in England and the United States are given in the publishers’ catalogues with essays on the same subject as follows:
MOTHER GOOSE:
The Original Mother Goose’s Melodies as First Issued about 1760. W. H. Whitmore. 1890. Munsell.
—— Fairy Tales of Mother Goose, first collected by Perrault, 1696. 1892. Damrell.
Favourite Rhymes from Mother Goose. Maud Humphrey. 1891–1893. Stokes.
Nursery Rhymes, Tales, and Jingles. 1890. Routledge.
Contes des fées, with notes and vocabulary. 1884. Macmillan.
Fairy Tales. 1877–1882. Routledge.
Tales from Perrault, translated by J. R. Planche, 1860. 1891. Routledge.
Mother Goose, or the Old Nursery Rhymes. Illustrated by K. Greenaway, 1881. Routledge.
Mother Goose Goslings. E. W. Talbot. Cassell, P., G. & Co.
Mother Goose Rhymes, with silhouette illustrations by J. F. Goodrich, 1877. 1879. Lee & Shepard.
Mother Goose Masquerades. Mrs. E. D. Kendall. Lee & Shepard.
Mother Goose Melodies. Illustrated. 1879. Lippincott.
Mother Goose Melodies, with Chimes, Rhymes, and Jingles, with pictures designed by Billings and engraved by Hartwell. 1878.
Mother Goose Set to Music. New edition. Illustrated. 8°. 1877. McLoughlin.
Mother Goose Fairy Tales, illustrated by eminent artists. 1877. New edition, 1882. Routledge.
Mother Goose Melodies, or Songs for the Nursery. Illustrated in color by A. Kappes. 1879. Houghton, Osgood & Co.
Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes. Collection of alphabets, rhymes, tales, and jingles. Illustrated. 1876. New edition, 1882. Routledge.
Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes. Illustrated. 1877. McLoughlin.
Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales. Illustrated. 1877. Routledge.
Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales. 1891. Routledge.
Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales. 1892–1896. Nister.
“Mother Goose’s Melodies.” Joel Benton. New York Times, Saturday Review, Feb. 5, 1899.
“Who Was Mother Goose?” Thomas Wilson. St. Nicholas.
An investigation of the foregoing volumes will show a series of Mother Goose stories other than those written by Perrault. These are well-known rhymes and jingles principally from England, and are of indefinite and undetermined age.
The edition above mentioned by W. H. Whitmore, gives its history of the English and American Mother Goose. The collection was first made for and by John Newbery of London, about A.D. 1760. Its popularity was due to the Boston editions of Monroe & Francis, A.D. 1824–1860.
The first rhyme in these editions was styled “A Love Song”:
Mr. Whitmore examines the claim made for the first time in 1856 that the origin of these melodies was due to Mrs. Elizabeth Goose, or Vergoose, of Boston, and that her son-in-law, Thomas Fleet, published a volume containing them in 1719, and pronounces the claim without foundation.