Fondslijst van J. Hetzel & Cie te Parijs 1883

This is a promotional lithograph by an anonymous artist, advertising the children's book collection of the Parisian publisher, J. Hetzel & Co., in 1893. What’s most striking is the central list of titles surrounded by vignettes of children deeply absorbed in reading. We see them both individually and in small groups, suggesting that literacy was becoming a shared cultural experience for children of the bourgeoisie. The lithograph also testifies to the institutional structures that were developing in France to promote education at the time. The artist is anonymous, but we know they were employed by Hetzel, and would probably have been well versed in popular visual culture. Catalogues and inventories such as this provide historians with insights into the values and cultural norms of the time, as well as the ways in which literature and education were being marketed to children.