HoB_ABCs

Title The Railway Alphabet

Brief description This book's wood-engraved illustrations are hand-colored.

Full description This alphabet book associates each letter with a part of railway transportation through rhyme and illustration, introducing children to a new vocabulary of industrial transport. Each illustration prominently features the letter as an architectural support for graphic lines that span the image, much like railway tracks. The alphabet is displayed as an essential part of railway transport, linking industrial progress with literacy in the mind of the young reader.

Literacy Literacy is expressed as a necessary part of technological progress, commercial culture, and industrialization in the text. Each phrase begins with a letter (i.e. A is for . . .) and the letters are a structural form in each of the images. This emphasis on the alphabet within the text conveys the importance of learning the code of alphabetic literacy in order to be an active member in the world the text depicts. The book highlights the technological advances of its time, focusing on the mechanics of the railway and the social order it imposes. In the book's images, human figures are subsidiary to the technological and infrastructural elements of the railway. For example in the image for "K stands for keeper, who fastens the doors, to keep safe with keys all the goods and stores," the image prominently features the train doors with a small keeper figure in the foreground. In this industrialized world, it is necessary for children to learn the vocabulary of technology in order to gain the cultural literacy necessary to become part of the mechanized commercial system. The most telling example occurs as a warning: "U is for urchin, so simple and small who cannot make out how the train goes at all." This letter is paired with "V is for Viaduct", and in the accompanying image, the urchin is shown as a small, foolish figure in the foreground set against a massive viaduct, representing the overwhelming infrastructure of the industrialized world. This visual conveys the message that literacy, both alphabetic and technological, is a necessary step towards becoming a productive member of a new industrial society.

Childhood This book introduces the child to a vocabulary of industrial commerce and trade, and locates childhood within the commercial and social system of Victorian England. The child is described as part of this system: Y is yourself, coming home from the school, when lessons are all said according to rule. The image associated with Y depicts an older boy leaning out of a railway car towards parental figures waiting with disinterest on a station platform. In this image, the child becomes a commodity that the railway transports from the school, a place of ideological production. In the Victorian Era, English public schools were institutions designed to inculcate youth with the values of dominant culture. The child reading this text can only return home when lessons are all said according to rule, a description of education that emphasizes indoctrination and internalization of cultural rules. Children are not explicitly depicted elsewhere in the book, except as small figures in public places under parental supervision. Children are included in the illustrations for I, J, and O as docile creatures obedient to their mother's guiding touch. These images model the restraint and control children are expected to display during the Victorian Era. This book is designed for an older child as suggested by the multi-syllabic words, lengthy sentences, and complexity of the perspectival engravings, and can be considered an educational tool that further instills the cultural ideologies of Victorian England.

Iconography The illustrations in The Railway Alphabet exhibit the cultural iconography of technology and industrialization. Throughout the book, people are drawn in a small scale when compared with the machines and built infrastructure. People are either depicted as part of the industrial machine, such as in the image for "K is for Keeper," or people are small figures within a crowded train station, such as in the illustration for "O is for Office." The scale of illustrated figures in the book visualizes the idea that people are part of a larger industrial system driven by technology, an iconographic feature throughout the book. The image for "I is for Index," depicts a telegraph machine in operation. These images inform the child reader that technological imagery is something they should be familiar with in order to understand their world. Socio-economic class is also visually present in the book. The figures shown in tandem with the train are all very well dressed. The women are drawn in elaborate dresses and bonnets, while men wear top hats and pocket watches. This middle class wealth is contrasted in the book by the image for "N is for navigation," which shows a man in overalls working with a pick-axe to build the rails for the train. "U is for Urchin," also shows a poorly dressed child who is watching a train pass him by. These images create a clear distinction between those who ride the train and those who do not. Though the man in the overalls is building the railway, the book depicts him separately and in contrast to the well-dressed people that use the fruits of his labor. The cultural iconography of the book creates a world in which success is connected to an understanding of technology rather than labor.

Production Dean & Son published The Railway Alphabet in London between 1857 and 1865. Thomas Dean founded this publishing firm some time before 1800, and Thomas' son George became a partner of the enterprise in 1847. Dean & Son was one of the first publishing companies to take advantage of the lithographic printing processes invented in Germany in 1798. The publishing company specialized in creating "toy" or novelty books from 1840 through the 1880s. The Railway Alphabet's illustrations are hand-colored wood engravings are a labor-intensive production process. The book is hand-sewn with three stitches that are protected by a colored-paper cover. Though the book does not have the same level of novelty as some of Dean & Son's other publications, the complex and careful, hand-colored illustrations make the book an engaging physical object.