The Osborne Collection: Children's Literature up to 1910

The Osborne Collection encompasses the development of English Children's literature up to 1910, including:

• a fourteenth-century manuscript of Aesop's fables
• fifteenth-century traditional tales
• sixteenth-century school texts and courtesy books
• godly Puritan works
• eighteenth-century chapbooks, moral tales and rational recreations
• Victorian classics of fantasy adventure and school stories up to 1910 - the end of the Edwardian era

Within the collection are:

• Florence Nightingale's childhood library
• Queen Mary's children's books
• materials pertaining to members of the Taylor family of Ongar
• the Pettingell Collection of periodicals and penny dreadfuls
• extensive holdings of the works of G.A. Henty
• the John Sullivan Hayes Collection, predominantly nineteenth and twentieth-century English Children's books and considerable Canadiana