Antique and Vintage Popup Books

Though associated with children's books, popup books (also known as pop-up, pop up, or moveable books) were made only for adults prior to the 19th century. One of the first books to feature a quasi-mechanical device dates to the 13th century and utilized paper discs, called volvelles, that could be turned to create different combinations of letters and words. Other early moveable books, known as lift-the-flap books, were produced to teach medical students anatomy—one book from the 16th century used seven layers of paper that could be lifted, one at a time, to reveal musculature and the circulatory system in humans. In fact, children's books as a category did not arrive in the West until 1744, when an English publisher named John Newbery printed A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, whose intended audience was exclusively young readers. By the mid-1860s, a London printer named Robert Sayer had published as series of lift-the-flap books he called Metamorphoses before changing their name to the more fanciful Harlequinades. By 1810, another London publisher, S&J Fuller, produced a series of moveable books to accompany his line of paper dolls. During the early 1820s, several lift-the-flap books were published based on illustrations by a painter named William Grimaldi—his Toilet Book enumerated virtues for girls, while a later title, A Suit of Armour for Youth, described moral goals for boys. Mechanized books began to be mass produced in the 1860s, when Dean & Son of London published the first of some 50 moveable-book titles. Ribbons designed to be pulled by readers to cause precisely cut scenes to pop up were bound into Dean & Son books. Other devices introduced by the publisher were Venetian-blind effects, in which numerous strips of paper on a page, and therefore the images created by those strips, could all be changed at once with a single, gentle tug. Naturally, other London publishers wanted in on this growing market, and one of the most successful was Raphael Tuck, who we know today as a publisher of exceptionally beautiful and complex valentines, puzzles, and paper dolls. Books sold as part of "Father Tuck's 'Mechanical' Series" included popup books and other moveable books, but unlike his English competitors, Tuck had his books printed in Germany, whose printers were then considered the best in the world. Indeed, one of the best 19th-century popup-book designers, Lothar Meggendorfer, was based in Munich. His books made liberal use of paper levers and metal rivets to permit multiple effects on a single page. After World War I, an English publisher named S. Louis Giraud devised what may be the first pure popup book, in which the effects appeared—popped up!—as each page of a book was turned. Giraud is also known for making such books affordable, which was a boon to business as the world sank into the Great Depression of the 1930s. During those otherwise gloomy years, New York publisher Blue Ribbon teams with Walt Disney to produce popup and moveable books featuring Disney's growing menagerie of characters. Another American publisher of popup books was McLoughlin Brothers, who had first made a name for themselves in the children's-book market in the 1880s. In 1939, McLoughlin released the first of 10 Jolly Jump-Up books, which featured illustrations by the great Geraldine Clyne.