The Evolution of Prize Bindings 1870–1940: their Design and Typography lauren alex ohagan Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, schools and Sunday schools commonly awarded books to children in recog- nition of good behaviour or attendance. The widespread distribu- tion of prize books grew chiefly as a direct consequence of the 1870 Education Act – the first piece of legislation to deal with education in England and Wales – which saw the awarding of books as a new, formalised measurement of competency. Initially, the only feature that distinguished a prize book from a normal book was the premium ex libris pasted on the endpaper that outlined the child’s name, the awarding institution and the reason for the prize. However, the downward spread of schooling, as well as the Victorian obsession with Britain’s growing ‘vanity trade’, was the catalyst that led publishers to create the concept of prize bindings – a new type of book marketed explicitly at teachers and superintendents and moulded to the requirements of the organisa- tions which gave them away. Little attention was paid to the quality of the text itself, which publishers saw as disposable. Indeed, denominational magazines of the time described most prize books as ‘second-rate tales’ and ‘innocent rubbish in the shape of wishy-washy stories’ with ‘namby pamby elements’. 1 Instead, publishers concentrated on making the outside of the book as aesthetically appealing as possible, leaving the 1 . Taken from Sunday School Chronicle, 30 December 1897, p.771, ‘Function of the Sunday School Library’, Methodist Recorder, 15 March 1915, ‘Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School Department’ and Methodist Recorder, 15 April 1894, ‘Books for the School Library’ respectively and cited in Dorothy Entwistle’s 1990 PhD Thesis enti- tled Children’s Reward Books in Nonconformist Sunday Schools, 1870–1914: Occurrence, Nature, and Purpose .
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