AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY
185 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA 01609-1634
A research library of American history and culture through 1876
www.americanantiquarian.org
Contact: James David Moran
(508) 471-2131 (office)
(508) 248-4694 (home)
(508) 783-5085 (cell)
E-mail: jmoran@mwa.org
Photo caption for The Cries of New-York
This mid-nineteenth century example of a children’s picture book depicting
street vendors follows a long tradition of children’s literature about street vendors and their
cries dating back to the late seventeenth century in London. This is a folio picture book
format, with wood-engraved illustrations by Nicolino Calyo (1799-1884). The brief cries
serve as the basis for descriptive verse by Frances Osgood (1811-1850), a poet and friend of
Edgar Allan Poe.
This item is part of the exhibition In Pursuit of a Vision: Two Centuries of
Collecting at the American Antiquarian Society on view at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th
Street, New York, from September 12 – November 17, 2012. This exhibition is in honor of
the Society’s bicentennial this year. In Pursuit of a Vision tells the story of the significant
collectors, librarians, and bibliographers who developed and expanded the Society’s
collections from its founding in 1812. The AAS library, located in Worcester,
Massachusetts, contains over four million items from 1640 through 1876 including the
largest collection of pre-1821 American imprints in the world.
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