Dean & Son: A History of the Family, Firm, and Movable Books

As published by vintagepopupbooks.com in the May 2013 edition of the Movable Book Society Newsletter, "Movable Stationary"

Table of Contents

1. The Bailey Family: The Roots of Dean & Son
2. Dean & Munday
3. Thomas Dean & Co.
4. Dean & Son: The George Alfred Henry Dean Years, 1856–1891
5. Dean & Son Limited: The Next Generation
6. Modern-Day Dean & Son
7. Dating Dean & Son Movable Books
8. An International Dynasty

The Bailey Family: The Roots of Dean & Son

Most of the wonderful nineteenth-century Dean & Son movable books that are such a delight to collect were produced under the later generations of the Dean family, particularly George Alfred Henry Dean. The roots of the publishing business, however, reach much further back through George Dean’s maternal Bailey ancestors.

The earliest ancestor we can identify in this line is Thomas Bailey of the parish of St. John, Wapping, described in the Stationers’ Company records as a yeoman. He was George Alfred Henry Dean’s maternal great-great-grandfather.

It was his son, another Thomas Bailey, who entered the printing trade and established the branch of the family that would eventually lead to Dean & Son.

Thomas Bailey was bound as an apprentice to London printer William Osborne on April 3, 1733, for the customary seven-year term. Osborne himself was no staid printer of scholarly works: he had already attracted official attention for producing what authorities called “low, seditious stuff,” including political ballads and controversial pamphlets. Bailey therefore learned his trade at the lively and sometimes disreputable end of eighteenth-century London printing.[1]

Thomas completed his apprenticeship and was admitted to the freedom of the Stationers’ Company in 1741. By 1744, when he took his first recorded apprentice, James Chetwood, the Stationers’ Company registers gave Bailey’s own business address as Billiter Lane, Leadenhall Street.[1]

By the 1750s his operation was established at the Ship and Crown in Leadenhall Street, eventually identified as No. 110 Leadenhall Street.[1][2]

This was not yet the respectable international children’s publishing house the Dean family would later create. Thomas Bailey operated in what bibliographer Nathan Garvey has aptly described as the “margins of the trade.” His business dealt heavily in inexpensive popular literature: sensational narratives, criminal lives, jest books, religious and instructional works, and short romantic fiction.[1][3] Bailey’s cheap fiction was generally produced in small, inexpensive formats. Surviving examples are often octavos or duodecimos of roughly thirty-two pages, commonly priced at only fourpence or sixpence. These were not substantial bound volumes intended for libraries, but short, affordable publications aimed at the broad popular market. One of the earliest surviving examples of Bailey’s romantic fiction is Henrietta de Bellgrave, issued by Bailey in 1744; the surviving copy is described as a second edition, showing that this sort of inexpensive sentimental fiction was already circulating through the press by the mid-1740s.

Garvey suggests that many Bailey publications were aimed primarily at the London street trade and distributed through news carriers and hawkers. The Ship and Crown was well placed for such a business: Leadenhall Street lay beside India House and the great Leadenhall Market, in a commercially busy district frequented by merchants, tradespeople, poorer residents and visitors to the City.[1]

Some of the fiction was mildly scandalous by eighteenth-century standards. Bailey’s catalogue included inexpensive tales of love, seduction, betrayal and improbable adventure. Recent scholarship cautions against saying that virtually everything Bailey published was a reprint, but reprints, abridgements and recycled popular stories clearly formed an important part of the business.[1][3]

The books themselves could also serve as advertisements for Bailey’s other services. One surviving imprint announced that Thomas Bailey was a “Copper-Plate and Letter-Press PRINTER” and informed gentlemen and shopkeepers that they could have their bills neatly printed at his establishment.[2]

The Ship and Crown offered an even stranger sideline. Bailey sold patent medicines.

By the early 1760s the establishment was functioning as something close to a combined printing office, bookshop and medicinal warehouse. Advertisements actually described it as “Bailey’s Printing Office and Medicinal Warehouse” and “Bailey’s Original Medicinal Warehouse.” Alongside books and job printing, customers could buy an assortment of proprietary remedies.[1] A surviving Bailey edition of Eliza Haywood’s The City Jilt advertises Maredant’s Antiscorbutic Drops at six shillings a bottle and promises cures for maladies including “Scurvy” and “Leprosy.” The same imprint advertises tradesmen’s bills printed by letterpress or from copperplates.[2]

Imprint wording from a Thomas Bailey edition of The City Jilt, reproduced in George Frisbie Whicher, The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood (1915), p. 181.

Garvey notes that Maredant’s Drops contained mercuric chloride, flavored with gentian, ginger and orange peel — a poisonous mixture by modern standards.[1]

The story became even stranger in 1764, when Bailey appears to have fallen out with surgeon John Norton, the man associated with Maredant’s Drops. Norton began advertising that the medicine was no longer sold at Bailey’s shop. The Bailey family responded publicly, insisting that the “GENUINE MAREDANT’s DROPS” were still being sold at the Ship and Crown and claiming that the remedy had first been prepared and sold there in England. Their advertisement even specified that bottles were sealed with red wax impressed “BAILEY’S POWERFUL MAREDANT’S DROPS” to distinguish their product from rivals.[1]

So the ancestral business behind Dean & Son was, at one point, simultaneously a printing office, publisher of inexpensive romantic fiction, commercial job printer, patent-medicine warehouse and participant in an eighteenth-century dispute over competing versions of a supposed cure-all.

Charlotte Charke and the Bailey Press

Among the more colorful authors associated with Thomas Bailey was Charlotte Charke (1713–1760), actress, writer and daughter of the famous actor-manager and Poet Laureate Colley Cibber.

Bailey printed three short novels attributed to Charke: The Mercer; or, Fatal Extravagance, The Lover’s Treat; or, Unnatural Hatred, and The History of Charley and Patty; or, The Friendly Strangers.[3][4]

Charke’s life was itself as extraordinary as many of the stories printed by Bailey. She worked as an actress, lived for periods in severe financial difficulty and frequently appeared in male clothing both on stage and in her private life.

Her biographer has suggested that she may have had these short works cheaply printed by Bailey and then carried copies around herself to sell to retail booksellers. Modern scholarship emphasizes that there is no hard documentary proof that she actually distributed the books this way, but the possibility gives a vivid glimpse into the precarious world of cheap publishing in which Bailey operated.[3]

Elizabeth “Betty” Bailey Takes Over

Thomas Bailey died in December 1764. His widow Elizabeth, usually called Betty, succeeded him at the Ship and Crown.

His will makes clear that Elizabeth’s succession was deliberate. Thomas instructed his wife, ‘Elizabeth otherwise Betty Bailey,’ to continue the business after his death ‘for the Increase of my Estate and the better Maintenance of herself and my youngest daughter Jane.She is independently documented as a printer and bookseller and appears to have operated the business from her husband’s death until approximately 1767.[3][5]

Surviving books bear her own imprint. An edition of Eliza Haywood’s The Distress’d Orphan, or, Love in a Mad-House, for example, reads:

“printed and sold at Mrs. Bailey’s printing-office, the Ship and Crown, Leaden-Hall-Street.”

The imprint even continues the family tradition of advertising job printing, adding that tradesmen’s bills were printed “neat and reasonable.”[5]

Elizabeth was therefore not merely a widow whose deceased husband’s name remained over the door. She was identified in the trade as printer and bookseller in her own right. The Bailey family would repeat this pattern more than once. Women did not simply inherit the family printing concern; they actively ran it and ultimately determined how it passed to the next generation.

Thomas and Elizabeth had sons Thomas and William, both of whom entered the printing trade. The younger Thomas continued the original branch for a time and became free of the Stationers’ Company in 1767. By late 1776 that branch had moved from Leadenhall Street to Star Alley.[3] His brother William, however, created the branch that would ultimately lead directly to Dean & Son.

William Bailey and “The Little a”

William Bailey (1743–1794) was apprenticed to his father in 1758 and became free of the Stationers’ Company in 1767.[1]
The Stationer, Printer, and Fancy Trades’ Register recalled in 1891 page 329, that the family business had once traded under the curious style ‘The Big A, Little a, Bouncing B Publishing Company.

He soon established an independent printing business, and by about 1770 he was operating at 41 Leadenhall Street under one of the most memorable shop signs in the family’s history:

A a B

The sign became associated with the old nursery-rhyme phrase:

“BIG A, LITTLE a, BOUNCING B.”

Whether William himself deliberately based his sign on that rhyme or whether customers later supplied the interpretation is difficult to prove, so it is best treated as a traditional explanation. What is certain is that the “little a” became such a recognizable feature of the business that many publications referred to the establishment simply as “the little a.”[6]

Some imprints effectively dispensed with Bailey’s name and announced that the work was “printed and sold at the little a.”

In modern terms, it functioned rather like a logo.

William’s printing office was at 41 Leadenhall Street from about 1770 to 1785 and at 42 Bishopsgate Street Within from about 1785 to 1790. Records also identify him as both printer and music seller.[6]

His trade was considerably broader than the romantic chapbooks associated with the earlier Bailey press. He printed and sold songs and music as well as popular books and commercial material, and the surviving trade records show that he trained a substantial number of apprentices during his career.[6]

William also had a flair for topical opportunity.

During the exceptionally severe winter of 1788–89, the River Thames froze and Londoners established one of the celebrated Frost Fairs directly on the ice. Printers hauled presses onto the frozen river and sold souvenir sheets to visitors.

William Bailey was among them.

A surviving January 1789 broadside reads:

“The Silver Thames was frozen o’er,
No difference ’twixt the Stream and Shore:
The like no Man hath seen before,
Except he liv’d in Days of Yore.”

At the bottom Bailey proudly announced that it had been printed “On the Ice, at the Thames Printing Office” during the severe frost and concluded: “Printed by Me, William Bailey.”[6][7]

For a few extraordinary days, one of the printing presses in the family line that eventually produced Dean movable books was literally operating on top of the frozen River Thames. William’s business also participated in the eighteenth-century fashion for rhyming advertisements. One surviving advertising verse associated with his shop promised customers:

“Your Shop-Bills also at any time,
You may have put into jingling Rhime.”[6]

Between the “little a,” Frost Fair printing and rhyming advertisements, William Bailey clearly understood the value of making a printing business memorable.

Susan Bailey Takes Over

William Bailey married Susanna Hawes, usually called Susan, in 1767.

They had sons as well as two daughters who would prove crucial to the later history of the business: Anna Maria Bailey, born in 1782, and Mary Anne Bailey, born in 1785.[8][9]

William died in 1794. Once again, a Bailey widow took charge.

Susan Bailey succeeded her husband and continued operating the printing and publishing concern under her own name. The London Museum specifically records that Susan took over William’s firm after his death and continued the business herself.[8]

Her publications retained much of the old Bailey flavor. Surviving books include inexpensive romantic and sentimental narratives, and the business continued to undertake commercial printing.

Susan’s movements can now be documented more accurately than in older Dean histories. Trade records place her at 50 Bishopsgate Street Within and also at 119–120 Petticoat Lane between 1799 and 1804. By 1806 she was operating from 35 Threadneedle Street.[6][8]

The London Museum preserves a trade card printed by Susan Bailey at 35 Threadneedle Street and dates it to 1806, providing particularly useful physical evidence for her presence there.[8]

Susan did something else that would permanently change the direction of the Bailey printing business. She took a young man named Thomas Dean as an apprentice!

Thomas Dean Enters the Bailey Story

Thomas Dean was born in London in 1783, the son of George Dean, a smith.

On March 7, 1797, Thomas was formally apprenticed through the Stationers’ Company to Susan Bailey. The apprenticeship record identifies his father as George Dean of Crown Street, Finsbury Square.[10]

The young printer therefore learned his trade inside the Bailey family business. But Thomas Dean’s relationship with the Baileys soon became personal as well as professional. On December 6, 1804, he married Susan Bailey’s daughter Mary Anne.[10]

During correspondence with movable-book researcher Jo Diedrich, Roger Williams of New Zealand, a family historian with a distant ancestral connection to the Dean family through Marianne Sweeting Lambert, shared genealogical research that helped resolve a longstanding confusion in the Dean family history. Williams questioned the previously published dates for Thomas William Dean and pointed out that the old genealogy would have made him implausibly young to be George Alfred Henry Dean's father. He located Thomas William Dean's 1809 baptismal record, together with a sworn correction made by Thomas Dean himself in 1830 confirming that Thomas William was the son of Thomas and Mary Ann Dean. He also identified Mary Ann Bailey's 1785 baptism and her 1804 marriage to Thomas Dean. Taken together with later census, probate and family records, this evidence helped establish that Thomas William Dean and George Alfred Henry Dean were brothers, both sons of Thomas Dean and Mary Ann Bailey Dean.

Mary Anne had been born on February 27, 1785. Later records identify her as a printer, bookseller, publisher and lithographer in her own right — a useful reminder that the women in this family were more than names in a genealogy.[9] Susan’s other daughter, Anna Maria Bailey, had been born on December 6, 1782.[11]

By the time Susan Bailey died in 1810, both daughters were married, and both were connected to men trained in the printing trade. But Susan did not simply leave her business to those men. She left it to her daughters.

Susan Bailey’s Remarkable Will

When Susan Bailey died in 1810, the printing concern that had descended through the Bailey family did not pass to her sons or directly to her sons-in-law.

Her will left the business jointly to Mary Anne and Anna Maria The wording was unusually protective. The business was left to the two daughters for their “own sole use and benefit,” with provisions intended to prevent the property from automatically falling under the control of either their present or any future husbands.[9][11] That provision is particularly striking in 1810.

The London Museum independently confirms the succession, stating that after Susan’s death the firm passed to her daughters Anna Maria and Mary Anne.[8]

Whatever happened later in the practical management of the company, the legal chain is interesting. The printing concern that would eventually become Dean & Son passed from William Bailey to Susan Bailey and then through their daughters. Mary Anne Bailey had already married Thomas Dean, the young man who had entered the family as Susan’s apprentice. The Bailey family’s eighteenth-century printing business was now poised to acquire a new name.

Principal References

1. Nathan Garvey, “A Dynasty on the Margins of the Trade: The Bailey Family of Printers, ca. 1740–1840, Part 1,” Script & Print 32, no. 3 (2008/2009): 144–162. This is the principal scholarly source for Thomas Bailey’s apprenticeship to William Osborne on April 3, 1733; his father Thomas Bailey of Wapping, yeoman; his freedom of the Stationers’ Company in 1741; his Billiter Lane address; the early Bailey family business; its cheap-print activities; and the patent-medicine trade.
2. Grub Street Project, The City Jilt: or, the Alderman Turn’d Beau, ESTC T57429. Records Thomas Bailey at the Ship and Crown, Leadenhall Street, and preserves the imprint advertising letterpress and copperplate job printing as well as Maredant’s Antiscorbutic Drops.
3. David Atkinson, “Street Literature and Cheap Fiction,” in Cheap Print and Street Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century. Summarizes and reassesses Garvey’s work on the Bailey press, documents its cheap-fiction output and succession from Thomas to Elizabeth and then the younger Thomas, and cautions against characterizing virtually all Bailey fiction as reprints. It also discusses the three Charlotte Charke novels and the possibility that Charke distributed them herself.
4. Cambridge University, Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles, “Charlotte Charke,” together with surviving bibliographical records. Documents Bailey editions of The Mercer; or, Fatal Extravagance, The Lover’s Treat; or, Unnatural Hatred, and The History of Charley and Patty.
5. Grub Street Project, The Distress’d Orphan: or, Love in a Mad-House, ESTC N498466. Provides a surviving Elizabeth Bailey imprint reading “Mrs. Bailey’s printing-office, the Ship and Crown” and dates her activity following Thomas Bailey’s death to approximately 1764–1767.
6. Exeter Working Papers in Book History, “London 1775–1800: B,” together with related Bailey trade records. Principal source used here for William Bailey’s addresses, his designation as printer and music seller, Susan Bailey’s later addresses, and William’s January 1789 Thames printing.
7. William Andrews, Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in Great Britain, reproducing the January 1789 Thames broadside signed “Printed by me, William Bailey.” This independently corroborates Bailey’s printing operation on the frozen Thames.
8. London Museum, Susan Bailey trade-card records, including the 1806 example from 35 Threadneedle Street. The museum explicitly states that Susan took over William Bailey’s printing and publishing firm after his death in 1794 and that on her death in 1810 it passed to daughters Anna Maria and Mary Anne.
9. Laurence Worms and Ashley Baynton-Williams, British Map Engravers – A Supplement, “Mary Anne Dean.” Documents Mary Anne Bailey Dean’s birth, later occupations and inheritance of Susan Bailey’s printing business jointly with her sister.
10. Laurence Worms and Ashley Baynton-Williams, British Map Engravers – A Supplement, “Thomas Dean.” Documents Thomas Dean’s birth, March 7, 1797 apprenticeship to Susan Bailey, freedom of the Stationers’ Company in 1809 and marriage to Mary Anne Bailey on December 6, 1804.
11. Laurence Worms and Ashley Baynton-Williams, British Map Engravers – A Supplement, “Anna Maria Munday.” Documents Anna Maria Bailey’s birth on December 6, 1782 and, most importantly for this section, quotes Susan Bailey’s will leaving the family printing concern to her daughters for their “own sole use and benefit.”

When Susan Bailey died in 1810, the family printing business passed to her two daughters, Mary Anne Bailey Dean and Anna Maria Bailey Munday. Both women had married men trained within the Bailey printing circle: Mary Anne had married Thomas Dean in 1804, while Anna Maria married Thomas Munday in 1805.[1][2][3]

Susan Bailey had made a determined effort to protect her daughters' ownership of the business. Her will left the printing concern to Mary Anne and Anna Maria for their "own sole use and benefit," independent of the control of their present or future husbands.[1][2] In practice, however, the business increasingly became publicly identified with the husbands. By about 1811 the inherited Bailey concern was operating under the name Dean & Munday.[1][3][4]

Mary Anne Dean and Anna Maria Munday nevertheless remained important to the legal history of the firm. Records identify the sisters as the women through whom the Bailey printing business passed into the Dean and Munday families, and they were at least nominally recognized as principals of the concern.[1][2] There is a certain irony here. Susan had deliberately tried to preserve the business for her daughters, yet the company by which history remembers them took the surnames of their husbands.

Both sisters had large families, while Thomas Dean and Thomas Munday became increasingly visible in the day-to-day commercial operation. Whatever the precise division of labor, the public identity of the concern became Dean & Munday.

The firm operated from Threadneedle Street and developed into much more than a children's-book publisher. It worked as printer, bookseller, publisher and lithographer, producing popular literature, maps, prints, commercial work and, eventually, some of the earliest novelty books associated with the Dean name.[1][3][4]

Dean & Munday remained very much a family business. Thomas Dean had entered the Bailey concern as Susan Bailey's apprentice in 1797 before marrying Mary Anne. Thomas Munday had been apprenticed to William Bailey before marrying Anna Maria.[1][3]

By the 1830s another generation had entered the partnership.

A particularly valuable primary source appears in The London Gazette in June 1837. The notice identifies four partners:

Thomas Dean
Thomas Munday
Thomas William Dean
Thomas Henry Munday

They were conducting business at 35 and 40 Threadneedle Street in the City of London and were described explicitly as "Printers, Booksellers, and Lithographers."[5]

Most importantly, the Gazette tells us precisely what happened in 1837. Dean & Munday itself was not dissolved. The partnership was dissolved only "so far as regards" Thomas William Dean and Thomas Henry Munday. Thomas Dean and Thomas Munday continued the partnership.[5]

Thomas William Dean was a son of Thomas Dean and Mary Anne Bailey Dean and the older brother of George Alfred Henry Dean. He was born on June 29, 1809, and baptized at St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, on July 23. An unusual sworn correction entered in the parish record in 1830 confirms that the original entry had mistakenly recorded the parents as "Thomas & Mary Deal"; Thomas Dean himself declared that the correct entry was Thomas William, son of Thomas and Mary Ann Dean.[6]

This evidence is important because Thomas William Dean has sometimes been confused with his father, Thomas Dean (1783-1856). They were different men. Thomas William participated in Dean & Munday and withdrew from the partnership in 1837, while his father Thomas remained in the business with Thomas Munday.[5][6]

Image: The London Gazette, June 1837, p. 1441. Notice recording the withdrawal of Thomas William Dean and Thomas Henry Munday from the Dean & Munday partnership at 35 and 40 Threadneedle Street. The firm is explicitly described as "Printers, Booksellers, and Lithographers." Thomas Dean and Thomas Munday continued the partnership.[5]

The notice above gives us an unusually clear glimpse of the family business during a period of expansion and transition. It confirms the two Threadneedle Street addresses, the breadth of the firm's activities and the participation of a younger generation in the partnership.

It is therefore more accurate to describe 1837 as a restructuring of Dean & Munday rather than the dissolution of the firm itself.

Thomas Munday was also involved in a copyright dispute reported at length in the Morning Post in July 1837.[3] Earlier histories have sometimes attempted to connect this litigation with the later end of Dean & Munday, but no evidence has been found proving that the two events were causally related. They occurred during the same general period and should be treated separately.

George Alfred Henry Dean was also entering the family business during the final years of Dean & Munday. A contemporary trade obituary published in 1891 recalled that "at the age of eighteen the late Mr. Dean entered his father's publishing business of Dean and Munday in Threadneedle-street."[7]

George was born in 1822, so he entered the concern around 1840, just as the Dean & Munday era was drawing to a close. The obituary is especially valuable because it establishes that George learned the publishing business within Dean & Munday itself rather than joining the family concern only after the later Dean & Son name had appeared.[7]

Dean & Munday as Printers and Lithographers

The Gazette's description of Dean & Munday as "Printers, Booksellers, and Lithographers" is confirmed by surviving contemporary work.[5]

Dean & Munday produced maps and large lithographic prints in addition to books. Library and Archives Canada preserves an 1834 map carrying the explicit imprint:

"Lithographed & Printed by Dean & Munday, Threadneedle St. London."[8]

Another surviving map dated 1833 similarly carries a Dean & Munday Threadneedle Street printing credit.[8]

These objects are particularly useful because they provide direct contemporary evidence that the firm was actively engaged in lithographic and cartographic printing during the 1830s.

A striking lithograph of East India House dating from 1830 also survives. The London Picture Archive identifies John O'Connor as the artist and Dean & Munday as the engravers.[9] The image depicts the London headquarters of the East India Company. The existence of the print does not by itself prove that the East India Company commissioned it, but it provides an intriguing contemporary connection between Dean & Munday and an institution that later publishing histories specifically associated with the firm.[9]

Dean & Munday and the East India Company

A retrospective history published in The Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record in 1922 states that Dean & Munday undertook printing work for the East India Company.[10]

Older accounts sometimes make the much broader claim that Dean & Munday performed all of the Company's printing. That statement should be treated cautiously unless contemporary East India Company records can be located to confirm it. What can safely be said is that the firm was remembered within the publishing trade as having performed substantial India-related work.[10]

An earlier and particularly colorful account appeared in George Alfred Henry Dean's 1891 obituary. It stated that Dean & Munday "did the whole of the work of the India Office" and claimed that lithographic stones used for the work had to be rubbed clean every night under the supervision of government officials and redrawn the following morning.[7]

The terminology requires caution. The formal India Office was not created until 1858, well after the Dean & Munday period. The obituary was therefore almost certainly using later terminology to describe earlier official India-related work. Nevertheless, as a near-contemporary trade recollection, it is valuable evidence that substantial and sensitive institutional lithographic work formed part of the firm's remembered history.[7]

The same obituary preserves a memorable story about Thomas Dean. Seeking a cheaper method of producing small advertising handbills, Thomas reportedly waited until he had several different orders and then printed them together rather than setting up each small job separately. His efficiency apparently caused such comment in the trade that it was rumored that he "had the devil in him, and was a dangerous man."[7]

The contrast with the earlier Bailey business is striking. Within only a few generations, the family concern had developed from a relatively modest printer of cheap popular literature into a versatile London establishment producing books, maps, lithographs and institutional work.

The First Dean Novelty Books

For collectors of movable books, however, the most exciting development of the Dean & Munday period was the appearance of some of the earliest transformation books associated with the Dean firm.

Among these were the little books generally known as Dame Wonder's Transformations.[11] Their mechanism was wonderfully simple. A hole was cut through each illustrated page. A face printed on the final leaf remained visible through the openings while the surrounding figure changed as each page was turned. The same face could therefore appear successively as entirely different characters. There were no pull-tabs, strings or complicated mechanical structures. The simple act of turning the pages created the transformation.

Surviving institutional records confirm that books in this series appeared under the Dean & Munday imprint. The Opie Collection of Children's Literature records, among others:

Dame Wonder's Transformations of the Shillings Tables and Dame Wonder's Transformations of the Pretty Picture Pence Tables.[11]

This is particularly important to the history of movable books because it places Dean's experimentation with interactive printed structures firmly within the Dean & Munday period, before the later names Thomas Dean & Co., Thomas Dean & Son and Dean & Son became famous for movable publishing.

Bryn Mawr College preserves a later Dean & Co. example, The Orphan Girl, dating from approximately 1843-1845. Although that particular book belongs to the period immediately after Dean & Munday, it demonstrates the same pierced-page transformation principle and has been identified as belonging to Dean's early Dame Wonder novelty-book tradition.[12]

These books were small and mechanically simple, but the principle behind them was significant: the physical construction of the book itself altered the picture seen by the reader. That concept would become central to the increasingly elaborate movable books Dean produced later in the nineteenth century.

An American Version of the Idea

The Dame Wonder format also crossed the Atlantic.

New York publisher Edward Dunigan issued transformation books employing the same basic pierced-page principle during the 1840s. A surviving copy of Dame Wonder's Transformations: Master Rose contains six transformation leaves and bears an ownership inscription dated 1845.[13]

The Dunigan books employ different illustrations and text adapted for an American audience, but the underlying construction closely resembles that of the English Dame Wonder books.

Comparison of surviving examples suggests that Dunigan was adapting a format already associated with the Dean series. No contract or contemporary statement proving a direct relationship between the publishers has yet been located, however, so this is best described as a strong bibliographical resemblance rather than a proven act of copying.

Image: American adaptation of the Dame Wonder transformation format, published by Edward Dunigan in New York, circa 1845. The pierced pages allow the face printed on the final leaf to remain visible while the surrounding figure changes as the pages are turned. From the collection of VintagePopUpBooks.com.[13]

Later American publications appeared under altered titles and formats, and some abandoned the pierced-page mechanism altogether.

McLoughlin Bros. later issued material associated with Dame Wonder after acquiring portions of Dunigan's publishing business. In our research to date, however, we have not located a McLoughlin issue retaining the original pierced-page transformation mechanism. That remains an observation based on surviving copies and catalogues examined to date, rather than a claim that no such McLoughlin example could exist.

The End of Dean & Munday

The 1837 Gazette notice did not end Dean & Munday. Thomas Dean and Thomas Munday continued the partnership after the withdrawal of Thomas William Dean and Thomas Henry Munday.[5]

The partnership survived for another three and a half years and was formally dissolved on December 25, 1840.[1][2][3]

Even then the Dean & Munday name did not disappear immediately. Surviving publications show the imprint continuing into approximately 1842, most likely because existing stock, plates, title pages and other publishing material remained in use after the legal partnership itself had ended.[1][4]

By this point George Alfred Henry Dean had begun his career within the family concern. He was gaining experience in publishing, printing and lithography that would become increasingly important in the next stage of the firm's development.[7]

The Bailey printing concern had become Dean & Munday. Now the Dean branch of the family was about to take the business into another phase — one in which children's books, illustrated printing and movable paper mechanisms would become increasingly important.

Thomas Munday survived the dissolution of Dean & Munday by several years. A contemporary death notice in The Gentleman’s Magazine records that he died at Woolwich on March 8, 1849, aged sixty-eight, and describes him as ‘late of the firm of Dean and Munday, Threadneedle-street. [14]

Principal References for Dean & Munday

1. Laurence Worms and Ashley Baynton-Williams, British Map Engravers – A Supplement, "Mary Anne Dean." Documents Mary Anne Bailey Dean's inheritance of Susan Bailey's printing business, her occupations as printer, bookseller, publisher and lithographer, and her association with Dean & Munday.
2. Laurence Worms and Ashley Baynton-Williams, British Map Engravers – A Supplement, "Anna Maria Munday." Documents Anna Maria Bailey Munday's inheritance of the Bailey printing concern and quotes Susan Bailey's provision that the business be held by her daughters for their "own sole use and benefit."
3. Laurence Worms and Ashley Baynton-Williams, British Map Engravers – A Supplement, "Thomas Munday." Documents Thomas Munday (1780-1849), his apprenticeship to William Bailey, marriage to Anna Maria Bailey, work as printer, lithographer, bookseller, stationer and publisher, the Threadneedle Street addresses, his involvement in the 1837 copyright case, and the December 25, 1840 dissolution of Dean & Munday.
4. British Map Engravers – A Supplement, "Dean & Munday." Firm entry documenting the Dean & Munday partnership and its surviving printed, cartographic and lithographic work.
5. The London Gazette, June 1837, p. 1441. Primary notice identifying Thomas Dean, Thomas Munday, Thomas William Dean and Thomas Henry Munday as partners trading at 35 and 40 Threadneedle Street as "Printers, Booksellers, and Lithographers." The notice states that the partnership was dissolved only as regards Thomas William Dean and Thomas Henry Munday, while Thomas Dean and Thomas Munday continued the business.
6. Parish register of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, baptism of Thomas William Dean, July 23, 1809, born June 29, 1809, together with sworn correction dated September 1, 1830, in which Thomas Dean confirms that Thomas William was the son of Thomas and Mary Ann Dean and corrects the erroneous original entry "Thomas & Mary Deal." Record identified and supplied by Roger Williams, family historian with links to the Dean family.
7. "The Late Mr. G. A. H. Dean," The Stationer, Printer, and Fancy Trades' Register, June 21, 1891, p. 329. Contemporary trade obituary of George Alfred Henry Dean. Records that George entered his father's Dean & Munday publishing business at age eighteen; describes the firm's India-related lithographic work; and preserves the story of Thomas Dean's economical handbill-printing method and the resulting trade rumor that he "had the devil in him, and was a dangerous man."
8. Library and Archives Canada, cartographic records for Dean & Munday, including an 1834 map bearing the imprint "Lithographed & Printed by Dean & Munday, Threadneedle St. London," together with a Dean & Munday printed map dated 1833. Contemporary object evidence of the firm's lithographic and cartographic printing.
9. London Picture Archive, The London Archives, "East India House," 1830, record no. 2301. Identifies John O'Connor as artist and Dean & Munday as engravers of a lithographic view of East India House. The print demonstrates Dean & Munday's lithographic activity but does not by itself establish that the East India Company commissioned the work.
10. "Messrs. Dean & Son, Ltd.," The Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record, May 13, 1922, p. 479. Retrospective publishing-trade history reporting Dean & Munday's work for the East India Company. Used cautiously because it was published many decades after the events described.
11. Opie Collection of Children's Literature, Bodleian Libraries, pre-1850 catalogue. Records Dean & Munday editions of Dame Wonder's Transformations of the Shillings Tables and Dame Wonder's Transformations of the Pretty Picture Pence Tables, providing institutional bibliographical evidence that the transformation series appeared under the Dean & Munday imprint.
12. Marianne Hansen, "Transformations of Images and Texts: The Orphan Girl," Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, March 31, 2020. Discusses Dame Wonder's Transformations as an early Dean novelty-book line and explains the pierced-page mechanism. The featured copy of The Orphan Girl is a later Dean & Co. issue, approximately 1843-1845, and is used here principally as evidence for the construction of the transformation format.
13. Edward Dunigan, Dame Wonder's Transformations: Master Rose, New York, circa 1845. Surviving copy with six pierced transformation leaves and an 1845 ownership inscription. Used as evidence for the American adaptation of the Dame Wonder format; comparative conclusions concerning Dean, Dunigan and later McLoughlin versions are based on continuing bibliographical research and examination of surviving copies.
14. The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, 1849, p. 443. Death notice for Thomas Munday

Thomas Dean was already an experienced printer, publisher and lithographer, and contemporary trade history remembered him as an unusually inventive businessman. An 1891 obituary of his son George Alfred Henry Dean recalled that “Old Mr. Thomas Dean” devised a remarkably economical method of printing handbills. Instead of printing each small order separately, he waited until he had several different orders and printed them together, thereby reducing costs. His success apparently attracted considerable attention in the trade: according to the obituary, “it became rumoured in the trade that he had the devil in him, and was a dangerous man.”[2]

The same period also saw important developments in the firm’s illustrated printing. Dean & Munday had already worked extensively in lithography, and Thomas Dean & Co. continued and expanded that tradition. A retrospective history published in The Publishers’ Circular and Booksellers’ Record in 1922 recalled that the firm made steady progress in its methods of reproduction, moving from stencil and hand-colouring toward increasingly sophisticated lithography and color-block work.[3]

George Alfred Henry Dean was already closely involved in the business. The 1891 trade obituary states that he had entered his father’s Dean & Munday publishing concern in Threadneedle Street at the age of eighteen.[2] His position became increasingly important: in the 1851 census Thomas Dean and George were recorded together at 35 Threadneedle Street as partners in the publishing business, while George’s younger brother Frederick Clarence Dean was working as a printer. Thomas William Dean, George’s older brother and a former Dean & Munday partner, was by then living separately and working as a wholesale lithographer.

Portrait of George Alfred Henry Dean from “The Late Mr. G. A. H. Dean,” The Stationer, Printer, and Fancy Trades’ Register, June 21, 1891, p. 329.

The National Portrait Gallery preserves a particularly useful example of this early work: The Queen and Prince Albert at Home, a hand-coloured lithograph published by George Alfred Henry Dean and dated circa 1844.[4] It provides direct evidence that George was already participating in the firm’s lithographic publishing while still a young man.

During the 1840s the Dean firm was also producing hand-colored movable prints. Surviving examples include open-the-flap prints in which a hinged portion of the lithographed image lifts to reveal a second scene underneath. These early interactive prints are especially important to the history of movable books because they show that Dean was experimenting with physical movement and visual transformation before the more elaborate movable books for which Dean & Son later became famous.

One such example in our collection is a Dean & Co. hand-coloured lithographic print dating from approximately the mid-1840s. A hinged flap incorporated into the scene lifts to reveal a hidden image beneath. Mechanically it is simple, but the basic principle is already recognizably Dean: the reader physically manipulates the printed image to change what is seen.[5]

Dean & Son London hand colored movable print from the collection of vintagepopupbooks.com circa: 1840

The firm’s address history during this period is more complicated than a simple move from one building to another. A retrospective history in The Publishers’ Circular stated that in 1845 the business moved westward from Threadneedle Street to Ludgate Hill, first occupying premises on the north side and later on the south side of the street.[3]

Dean & Son:

Dean & Son: The George Alfred Henry Dean Years, 1856-1891 Thomas Dean died on May 13, 1856, aged seventy-four. A contemporary death notice described him as "of Brixton-hill, Surrey, and Ludgate-hill, city," neatly connecting his home with the London publishing business he had spent much of his life developing.[1] In an extraordinary family coincidence, his son George Alfred Henry Dean would die on the same date exactly thirty-five years later.

Caption: Contemporary notice of the death of Thomas Dean, published May 14, 1856. It records his death on May 13 at age seventy-four and describes him as "of Brixton-hill, Surrey, and Ludgate-hill, city." Courtesy of Roger Williams.[1]



Thomas's death did not leave the firm without an experienced successor. George Alfred Henry Dean (1822-1891) had entered his father's Dean & Munday business at the age of eighteen and had spent years learning the trade. More importantly, the 1851 census records Thomas and George together at 35 Threadneedle Street as partners in the publishing business. George's younger brother Frederick Clarence Dean was then working as a printer, while their older brother Thomas William Dean had already pursued a separate career in lithography and printing.

The Dean household at 35 Threadneedle Street in the 1851 census.


Thomas Dean and his son George Alfred Henry Dean are recorded as partners in the publishing business, while George's younger brother Frederick Clarence Dean is listed as a printer. The record provides unusually direct evidence that George was already an established partner five years before his father's death. Courtesy of Roger Williams.[2]

After Thomas's death, the shortened name Dean & Son became the familiar identity of the publishing house. George was not simply an heir who inherited a successful family concern: he was already an experienced publisher and partner. Under his direction Dean & Son entered the period for which it is now most celebrated, becoming one of the most important publishers in the nineteenth-century history of movable and interactive children's books.



The Rise of Dean's Movable-Book Empire Dean & Son did not invent the idea of a movable book. Movable paper devices had existed for centuries, and Dean itself had experimented with transformations and interactive printing well before George took control. What Dean accomplished during the second half of the nineteenth century was something different and arguably more important: it developed movable children's books into a sustained commercial publishing program, producing them in remarkable numbers and in an extraordinary variety of mechanical forms.[4]

George Alfred Henry Dean (1822–1891), one of the most important figures in the nineteenth-century history of Dean & Son, suffered from angina pectoris during the final years of his life but apparently retained his mental sharpness. He died at Southsea on May 13, 1891, aged sixty-eight, and was buried at Ladywell and Brockley Cemetery in London beside his wife, Emily “Emma” Dean, who died in 1902.[1][2]

After his death, control of the family publishing business passed to his sons George Fenner Peat Dean and Henry Samuel Dean. On February 24, 1892, the firm was incorporated as Dean & Son, Limited. The International Bookseller explained that following the death of the head of the firm, the Dean family had decided that it was best to reorganize the business as a limited company, with the former partners becoming directors while the capital remained unchanged.[3]

In March 1892 The Paper Makers’ Circular reported that the ‘well known firm of Dean & Son, 160A Fleet Street’ had been registered as a limited liability company under the name Dean & Son, Limited. The notice identified the partners in the former firm as George Fenner Peat Dean, Henry Samuel Dean, J. E. Tetley and P. Warnford, and stated that the new company would continue the business as ‘publishers and wholesale stationers.’[33]

The younger generation continued Dean & Son’s longstanding involvement with novelty and movable books. During the 1890s the firm exhibited its children’s publications at important trade exhibitions and received numerous awards. At the Royal Aquarium Exhibition of 1892, Dean displayed movable toy books in various stages of manufacture, giving visitors an unusual glimpse of how these complicated books were constructed.[4] Contemporary newspapers, however, occasionally mocked the abundance of exhibition medals and suggested that some could be obtained for “a certain amount of hard cash.”[5]

Henry Samuel Dean: Publisher and Inventor

Henry Samuel Dean became one of the most inventive members of the Dean family. His importance to the firm extended far beyond management: he was personally involved in developing new methods of book construction.

As early as 1890, Henry Samuel Dean, then of 166 Fleet Street, obtained British Patent No. 17,105 for a “novel method of making-up books.” The patent related to the construction of transformation and pantomime toy books. Surviving Home Pantomime Toy Books even carry the wording “Patented, No. 17105,” providing a direct connection between Henry’s invention and the books themselves.[6]

This patent is particularly significant because it shows that Henry was experimenting with movable-book mechanisms more than a decade before the invention of the rag book. His later cloth-book patent was therefore part of a longer career devoted to changing the physical form of children’s books.[6]

By the early twentieth century Henry had become managing director of Dean & Son Ltd. and was actively developing the firm’s American trade. In 1906 The Stationer, Printer and Fancy Trades’ Register reported a “Welcome Home” dinner at the Savoy Hotel following his return from a successful business tour of the United States. The article shows Henry as a well-established figure in the publishing trade and records that one of Dean’s Pig Books was passed around the table for the guests to sign before being presented to him as a souvenir of the evening.[7]

Dean & Son’s American business was already substantial. A 1901 legal dispute, Molling & Co. v. Dean & Son Ltd., concerned approximately 40,000 books intended for an American purchaser and a dispute over their inspection and rejection after reaching America.[8] A second American case, Dean & Son, Ltd. v. W. B. Conkey Co., decided in Illinois in 1913, concerned Dean’s commercial relationship with W. B. Conkey Co. and royalties associated with Dean’s Toy Books.[9] Together with Henry’s 1906 American business trip, these cases demonstrate the importance of the United States to Dean & Son by the beginning of the twentieth century.

A 1906 trade account provides a rare glimpse of the firm’s working life. Henry Lardner retired after forty-four years with Dean & Son, having entered the Ludgate Hill establishment in 1862 in what was described as a ‘very humble capacity.’ George Alfred Henry Dean later placed him on the road as a commercial traveller, and from 1874 Lardner represented the firm across the South Coast, West of England and the Midlands. At his retirement dinner, speakers recalled other Dean employees who had served the firm for fifty or even sixty years, suggesting an unusual degree of continuity within the company. At the same 1906 gathering, a formal toast was made to ‘Dean’s Rag Book Company, Limited,’ whose secretary responded, providing contemporary evidence of the associated company operating alongside Dean & Son Limited. [31]

Although Dean & Son’s great period of movable-book innovation had been closely associated with George Alfred Henry Dean, the production of elaborate movable books did not stop with his death in 1891. A wonderful example is Cinderella, No. 4 in Dean’s Scenic Series, published in the 1890s. Its layered three-dimensional (pop-up) scene shows that the firm continued producing sophisticated scenic movable books under the next generation of Dean family management. The "pop-up" series consisted of four volumes: No. 1, A Visit to the Farm; No. 2, Red Riding Hood; No. 3, The Three Bears; and No. 4, Cinderella.

Image from the vintagepopupbooks.com collection



Dean’s experiments with novelty publishing did not end with movable paper mechanisms. In 1909 the firm advertised Wilhelmina: The Adventures of a Dutch Doll by Nora Pitt-Taylor, illustrated by Gladys Hall, as ‘A BOOK AND A REAL DOLL COMBINED.’ The advertisement explained that a small Dutch doll was ribboned to the book’s cover. An original boxed example preserved by the Museum of Childhood retains the small wooden peg doll representing Wilhelmina, confirming the unusual format. Surviving copies of the book are fairly common, but examples retaining the original doll appear to be much scarcer.
(Note to collectors: Dean & Son, did not manufacture custom, branded toys for this book. Instead, they bought mass-produced, traditional "penny wooden" or "Grodnertal" dolls in bulk from German suppliers. Because thousands of identical generic dolls were circulating at the time, there are no unique serial numbers, maker's marks, or branding stamped onto the wood to differentiate a "book doll" from an ordinary toybox doll.)

Image Herbert Greenhough Smith, ed., The Strand Magazine, 1909, p. 111. Advertisement for A. W. Dean & Son, Ltd., 160A Fleet Street, promoting Wilhelmina and O’Kissme San as “A BOOK AND A REAL DOLL COMBINED,” with a real doll attached to the book.

The Birth of Dean’s Rag Book Company

Henry Samuel Dean’s most famous innovation arose from the simple problem of making a book that babies and very young children could not easily destroy.

In 1902 Dean & Son experimented with a children’s book made from cloth rather than paper. The result was The Life of a Bold A.B. on His Ship in the Rolling C, a rhyming educational alphabet book generally regarded as the first Dean rag book. Modern scholarship describes its unusual construction and records that the experiment was sufficiently successful for a third impression to be ready by Christmas 1902.[10]

Its success led to the formation of Dean’s Rag Book Company Ltd. in 1903. The official Companies House record for Dean’s Rag Book Company Limited, company no. 00078243, gives its incorporation date as November 5, 1903.[11]

On December 18, 1903, Henry filed his invention for a “Book with Cloth Leaves.” The invention was later granted as U.S. Patent No. 784,477 on March 7, 1905. The patent names Henry Samuel Dean as inventor and gives his address as 160 Fleet Street, London.[12]

Together, Henry’s 1890 and 1903 patents demonstrate a continuing interest in developing new physical forms of the children’s book. In 1890 he was working on mechanical transformation and pantomime books; thirteen years later he was patenting an entirely different book structure made from cloth.[6][12]

The rag books were soft, washable, flexible and extremely difficult to tear. Dean’s Rag Book Company promoted them as practically indestructible and adopted one of the most memorable trademarks in children’s publishing: two dogs pulling at opposite ends of a book.

The surviving U.S. trademark record provides particularly useful primary evidence for the early history of this emblem. It identifies Henry Samuel Dean of London and describes the mark as “the representation of two dogs pulling a book.” The record states that the device had been in use since June 25, 1903, and that Dean filed the American trademark applications on January 13, 1904. The registrations covered “books made of textile fabric.”[13]

This places the fighting-dogs device at the very beginning of the Rag Book Company. Later versions of the familiar emblem have also been associated with artist Stanley Tyreman Berkeley, so care should be taken not to assume that every surviving version of the dogs is necessarily identical to the earliest 1903 trademark device.[10][13]

Dean’s Rag Book Company soon diversified beyond bound cloth books into printed rag sheets, cut-out doll sheets, cloth dolls and other printed-fabric products, and eventually into soft toys and teddy bears. Specialist histories document the company’s rapid expansion into toys, with clearly catalogued Dean teddy bears appearing by 1915.[14]

According to The Book: The Journal of the Publishing Industry, vol. 81 (1904), p. 727, Dean’s Rag Book Company had already established a reputation for producing practically indestructible cloth books suitable even for the youngest children.[15]

Their success also attracted competition. In a 1910 newspaper case reported under the title “Rag Toy Books in Court,” a London bookseller was fined for attaching a Dean trademark label to a book that had actually been published by Raphael Tuck. Tuck was not implicated in the deception, but the case illustrates both the commercial value of the Dean name and the importance the company placed upon protecting its rag-book identity.[16]

Image: Dean & Son Ltd. exhibition stand at the British Industries Fair, May 1924. The photograph shows the publisher’s extensive display of books at Debrett House, 29 King Street, W.C.2., and provides a rare view of how Dean presented its publications to the trade in the early twentieth century. The Publishers’ Circular and Booksellers’ Record, May 17, 1924, p. 617.

For readers especially interested in this branch of the company, we recommend Neil Miller’s The Dean’s Ragbook Company Limited: The First 100 Years, 1903–2003. Dean & Son Ltd. continued to control Dean’s Rag Book Company until 1952, when the two companies separated.[17]




Dean & Son had a fairly structured management team by 1907: H. S. Dean as managing director, F. G. Green as director, and Oliver Booth as company secretary. .Dean & Son maintained an extensive commercial network outside London. The firm maintained a substantial regional sales network, with representatives and customers spread across Manchester, Liverpool, Preston, Lancaster, and other northern cities One of its most important regional representatives was John Henry, "the firm’s able and popular representative for Manchester and district", who represented both Dean & Son Ltd. and Dean’s Rag Book Co. Ltd. in the North of England. When the firm honored him with a complimentary dinner at Manchester’s Midland Hotel in 1907, F. G. Green, a director of Dean & Son, presided, Henry Samuel Dean attended as managing director, and some seventy customers of the firm were present. A 1910 trade profile of Henry illustrates how Dean’s publishing business depended not only on its London offices but also on long-serving regional representatives who maintained relationships with booksellers throughout the country. We see again and again in old trade journals and reference books examples of Dean & Son formally recognizing long service and sales success, bringing senior management together with regional customers and trade contacts, and treating its representatives as important extensions of the firm rather than simply travelling salesmen. Taken together, these reports suggest that the company placed considerable value on employee loyalty, personal relationships and continuity within the book trade.[32]

George Fenner Peat Dean

Henry’s elder brother, George Fenner Peat Dean, continued as a publisher and director of Dean & Son Ltd. For many years his complete name was difficult to establish because contemporary British business records usually identified him simply as George F. P. Dean.

A contemporary British estate notice describes him as “Mr. George F. P. Dean, of Woodville Priory, Honor Oak Rise, S.E., and of Fleet Street, E.C., publisher, of the firm of Dean & Son, Ltd.” The notice records his age as fifty-five and places the gross value of his estate at approximately £8,786, with net personalty of approximately £8,224.[18]

The mystery of his initials has now been resolved.

A family burial record identifies him as George Fenner Peat Dean, but much more importantly, his original French civil death registration independently records his full name as “Dean Georges Fenner Peat.”[19]

The Chamonix death record provides an extraordinary amount of additional information. His death was registered on June 28, 1909. The record states that George Fenner Peat Dean had died the previous day, June 27, at noon, at the Hôtel Savoy in Chamonix.[19]

He was fifty-five years old, an éditeur, or publisher, and célibataire, unmarried. He had been born at Streatham in England and was domiciled in London. His parents are identified as the deceased George Dean and Emma Alcock. The record also specifically describes him as “de passage à Chamonix,” meaning that he was merely visiting or passing through the town rather than residing there.[19]

This one document therefore confirms his full name, age, occupation, marital status, parents, birthplace, London domicile, exact place of death and exact date and time of death.

It also corrects a long-repeated account that George died while holidaying in Switzerland after contracting “blood poisoning from some unwholesome fish.”[20] The report of his sudden illness may be correct, but the location was not: the official civil record establishes that George died in Chamonix, France.[19]

Because Chamonix lies close to Switzerland and formed part of the wider Alpine tourist circuit, the reference to Switzerland may have resulted from later confusion over the location of his holiday.

His exact date of death can also now be established as June 27, 1909. A British notice incorrectly gave June 29, but both the official French civil registration and the surviving inscription on George’s grave give June 27.[18][19][21]

George Dean’s Grave in Chamonix

George Fenner Peat Dean was not returned to England for burial. Instead, he was buried in the small Protestant cemetery beside the Anglican chapel in Chamonix.

His surviving gravestone reads:

“In Affectionate Memory
of
George F. P. Dean
Honor Oak London
Died June 27th 1909
Aged 55 Years.”[21]

The reference to Honor Oak corresponds exactly with the British estate notice identifying his residence as Woodville Priory, Honor Oak Rise.[18]

George’s burial in France was not as unusual as it might initially seem. Chamonix attracted large numbers of British tourists and mountaineers throughout the nineteenth century. An Anglican chapel was established there around 1859–60 to serve the growing British Protestant community.[22]

Because Protestants could not originally be buried in the Catholic cemetery under the same arrangements as local Catholics, the Anglican community eventually obtained authorization for a Protestant burial ground beside the chapel.[22]

By the time George died in 1909, the cemetery was already an established burial place for British and other Protestant visitors who died in the Chamonix valley. His civil death record confirms that he was only visiting Chamonix, but there was therefore an appropriate local Protestant cemetery in which he could be buried.[19][22]

The church and cemetery survive today. The chapel later passed to the French Protestant community and in 1981 was sold to the Église Réformée de France for the symbolic price of one franc.[22]

The photographs reproduced here of the church, cemetery and George Dean’s grave were taken by Mrs. Gewa Thoquet, whose research in Chamonix also helped locate and interpret the original civil death record.[21][23]

The former Anglican chapel at Chamonix, France, and the grave of George Fenner Peat Dean (1854–1909), publisher of Dean & Son Ltd. Dean died while visiting Chamonix on June 27, 1909, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery beside the chapel. His gravestone records his London residence at Honor Oak and his age, fifty-five. Photographs by Gewa Thoquet.[21][23]

After George’s Death

George Fenner Peat Dean’s unexpected death left Henry Samuel Dean as the principal Dean family figure in the business. He continued alongside his younger brother A. W. Dean and other directors, including Francis G. Green and A. G. M. Hesilrige. The 1906 trade-journal account identifies Hesilrige specifically as vice-chairman.[7]

Dean & Son and Dean’s Rag Book Company continued to prosper, although the two businesses increasingly developed distinct identities. The Rag Book Company expanded deeply into toys and teddy bears, while Dean & Son continued publishing books for children.[14][17]

The End of Dean Family Control

In 1921 the direct control of Dean & Son by the Dean family came to an end. Henry Samuel Dean and his younger brother A. W. Dean retired from the board, and in September Dean & Son Limited was acquired by Odhams Press for a reported £456,316.[2

Management then passed to figures associated with Odhams Press, including H. Green, F. G. Green, A. G. M. Hesilrige and S. Elias.

Julius Salter Elias, managing director of Odhams Press, became chairman of Dean & Son. Longstanding Dean directors remained with the company, providing continuity during the transition.[24] Elias later became Baron Southwood and ultimately Viscount Southwood.[25]

Dean & Son continued trading under its historic name. In 1922 the company moved from Fleet Street to 29 King Street, Covent Garden. During the 1930s it relocated again to Ludgate Hill.[24]

The Dean & Son imprint was kept and Odhams also maintained the kind of company traditions that had characterized the firm before the Odhams takeover. In July 1924 the staff of Dean & Son Ltd., then based at Debrett House in Covent Garden, travelled to Brighton for the firm’s annual outing, with lunch held at the Old Ship Hotel. The gathering included senior figures such as F. G. Green, A. G. M. Hesilrige and S. J. Elias, providing a small but vivid glimpse of the company’s working life during the Odhams era.

Image: The Bookseller and the Stationery Trades’ Journal, 1924, p. 77, “Messrs. Dean & Son’s Annual Outing.” Contemporary notice describing the Dean & Son Ltd. staff outing to Brighton on July 26, 1924, and naming a number of the firm’s senior staff and directors.

Under Odhams ownership Dean entered another important period of novelty-book publishing. During the 1930s it produced Walt Disney books, including Mickey Mouse Presents His Silly Symphonies: Babes in the Woods; King Neptune and Mickey Mouse in King Arthur’s Court. Dean described their movable structures as “Scenic Illustrations.”[26][27]

Dean was also associated with the popular Mickey Mouse Annual, while Odhams launched Mickey Mouse Weekly in 1936.[28]

The Disney connection continued into the 1950s before Odhams lost its Disney publishing rights in 1957.[28]

The Later Rag Book Company

Dean’s Rag Book Company eventually followed a separate path from Dean & Son. The companies separated in 1952, after which the Rag Book Company concentrated increasingly on toys and teddy bears.[17]

Production later moved from London to Rye, Sussex, and subsequently to Pontypool in Wales. Companies House property and charge records document the company’s presence at Rye, while specialist histories trace the subsequent development of its Welsh operations.[29][30]

The company underwent substantial restructuring and changes of ownership during the later twentieth century. Because the original Dean’s Rag Book Company Limited, company no. 00078243, remains on the Companies House register, it is more accurate to describe these later events as restructurings and changes of operating ownership rather than simply saying that “Dean’s Rag Book Company entered liquidation.”[11][29]

The Dean name and its famous two-dog trademark nevertheless survived. Neil and Barbara Miller were instrumental in reviving the Dean identity in the collector market, and later production concentrated heavily on limited-edition collector bears.[17][30]

For readers especially interested in this branch of the business, Neil Miller’s The Dean’s Ragbook Company Limited: The First 100 Years, 1903–2003 provides a detailed history of the company’s rag books, dolls, toys and teddy bears.[17]

Acknowledgment

Many thanks to Mrs. Gewa Thoquet, a German-born author and historical researcher residing in France who specializes in French genealogy and local history. Gewa has kindly worked with us to help piece together the history of George Fenner Peat Dean and Henry Samuel Dean.

Her research in Chamonix was particularly valuable in locating the original civil death registration of George Fenner Peat Dean and clarifying the circumstances of his death and burial. The photographs reproduced here of the Protestant church in Chamonix, the cemetery and George Dean’s grave were also taken by Mrs. Thoquet.[19][21][23]

Her assistance has enabled us to correct the long-repeated statement that George Dean died in Switzerland and to establish instead that he died at the Hôtel Savoy in Chamonix, France, at noon on June 27, 1909.[19]

Principal References for “History Continues”

1. National Portrait Gallery, London. “George Alfred Henry Dean (1822–1891).” Identifies Dean as a publisher of pop-up books and provides his full name and life dates.
2. Contemporary death, family and burial records for George Alfred Henry Dean and Emily “Emma” Dean, including Ladywell and Brockley Cemetery records. Exact newspaper citation for the account of his final illness and angina pectoris should be added when the original clipping is identified.
3. The International Bookseller, vol. 1 (1892). Contemporary notice concerning the reorganization of Dean & Son as Dean & Son Limited following the death of George Alfred Henry Dean.
4. Contemporary report of the 1892 Royal Aquarium / printing and publishing exhibition describing Dean & Son’s movable toy books displayed in stages of manufacture. Exact periodical title, issue and page to be inserted from the original clipping.
5. Contemporary newspaper editorial concerning exhibition medals and the comment that such awards could be obtained for “a certain amount of hard cash.” Exact newspaper citation to be inserted from the original clipping.
6. The Illustrated Official Journal (Patents), 1890. British Patent No. 17,105, Henry Samuel Dean, 166 Fleet Street, London, for a “novel method of making-up books.” Surviving Home Pantomime Toy Books also bear the wording “Patented, No. 17105.”
7. “Welcome Home Dinner to Mr. H. S. Dean,” The Stationer, Printer and Fancy Trades’ Register, June 1906, pp. 32c–32e. Contemporary report of the May 14, 1906 Savoy Hotel dinner honoring Henry Samuel Dean after his business tour of the United States; identifies him as managing director and records the signed Pig Book presented to him.
8. Molling & Co. v. Dean & Son Ltd. (1901), 18 T.L.R. 217. Legal dispute concerning approximately 40,000 books intended for an American purchaser and the buyer’s right to inspect and reject the goods.
9. Dean & Son, Ltd. v. W. B. Conkey Co., 180 Ill. App. 162 (Ill. App. Ct. 1913), Gen. No. 17,994, filed April 3, 1913. American legal case concerning Dean & Son’s commercial relationship with W. B. Conkey Co. and royalties associated with Dean’s Toy Books.
10. Jacqueline Reid Walsh and Rebecca Rouse, “Understanding the Design Values of Baby Books: Materiality, Co-presence, and Remediation,” Children’s Literature in Education 54 (2023): 354–375. Discusses Henry Samuel Dean’s experiments with cloth books, The Life of a Bold A.B. on His Ship in the Rolling C, its construction and early commercial success.
11. Dean’s Rag Book Company Limited, Companies House, company no. 00078243. Official corporate record giving the company’s incorporation date as November 5, 1903.
12. Henry Samuel Dean, “Book with Cloth Leaves,” U.S. Patent No. 784,477. Application filed December 18, 1903; patent granted March 7, 1905. Names Henry Samuel Dean as inventor and gives his address as 160 Fleet Street, London.
13. U.S. trademark registrations for Dean’s textile books, filed January 13, 1904. The surviving registration record describes the trademark as “the representation of two dogs pulling a book,” states that the device had been in use since June 25, 1903, and applies to “books made of textile fabric.”
14. Brighton Toy and Model Museum, “Dean’s Rag Book Company.” Secondary history of the company’s cloth books, printed fabric products, toys, fighting-dogs trademark and later teddy-bear production.
15. The Book: The Journal of the Publishing Industry, vol. 81 (1904), p. 727. Contemporary discussion of Dean’s Rag Book Company and its practically indestructible cloth children’s books.
16. “Rag Toy Books in Court,” 1910 newspaper report concerning the improper application of a Dean trademark to a Raphael Tuck publication. Exact newspaper title, date and page should be added from the original clipping.
17. Neil Miller, The Dean’s Ragbook Company Limited: The First 100 Years, 1903–2003. Pontypool, Gwent: The Dean’s Ragbook Company Ltd., 2002. 192 pp. ISBN 0-9543416-0-0.
18. Contemporary British estate notice for George F. P. Dean, of Woodville Priory, Honor Oak Rise, S.E., and Fleet Street, E.C., publisher of Dean & Son Ltd. Records his age as fifty-five and the value of his estate.
19. Archives départementales de la Haute-Savoie, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc civil death register, 1909, p. 274, entry for “Dean Georges Fenner Peat.” Records that he died June 27, 1909, at noon at the Hôtel Savoy; was fifty-five years old, an éditeur, unmarried, born at Streatham, domiciled in London, son of George Dean and Emma Alcock, and “de passage à Chamonix.”
20. Contemporary or near-contemporary report describing George Dean’s fatal illness as “blood poisoning from some unwholesome fish.” The account should be used for the reported illness but not for its statement that he died in Switzerland, which is contradicted by the official Chamonix record.
21. Grave of George Fenner Peat Dean, Protestant cemetery beside the former Anglican chapel, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. The surviving inscription records “George F. P. Dean / Honor Oak London / Died June 27th 1909 / Aged 55 Years.” Photographed by Gewa Thoquet.
22. Ville de Chamonix-Mont-Blanc and local historical sources concerning the former Anglican chapel and Protestant cemetery at Chamonix, including its use for British and Protestant visitors and the later transfer of the chapel to the French Protestant community.
23. Gewa Thoquet. Private research and correspondence concerning George Fenner Peat Dean’s death and burial; photographs of the former Anglican chapel, Protestant cemetery and Dean grave at Chamonix.
24. Contemporary 1921 publishing-trade reports concerning the acquisition of Dean & Son Limited by Odhams Press, the retirement of Henry Samuel Dean and A. W. Dean, the reported purchase price of £456,316 and changes to the company board. Exact periodical citation should be added once the original report is identified.
25. Biographical records for Julius Salter Elias, later Baron Southwood and Viscount Southwood.
26. Mickey Mouse Presents His Silly Symphonies: Babes in the Woods; King Neptune: With “Scenic” Illustrations. London: Dean & Son Ltd., 1934. Surviving copies document Dean’s Disney movable-book publishing under Odhams and its use of the term “Scenic Illustrations.”
27. Mickey Mouse in King Arthur’s Court: With “Scenic” Illustrations. London: Dean & Son Ltd., c. 1934. Bibliographical evidence for Dean’s continued use of “Scenic Illustrations” on Disney movable books.
28. Odhams Press and British Disney publishing histories concerning Mickey Mouse Annual, the launch of Mickey Mouse Weekly in 1936 and the termination of the Disney publishing relationship in 1957.
29. Companies House, Dean’s Rag Book Company Limited, company no. 00078243, property and charge records documenting later operations, including premises at Rye, Sussex.
30. Specialist histories of Dean’s Rag Book Company documenting production at Rye and Pontypool, later changes of ownership and the revival of the Dean name and two-dog trademark under Neil and Barbara Miller.
31. The Stationer, Printer and Fancy Trades’ Register, April 1906, pp. 25–28, “Forty-four Years’ Service With One Firm: Retirement of Mr. Henry Lardner.” Contemporary account of the retirement of a Dean & Son employee who entered the firm in 1862 and served for forty-four years; includes recollections of long-serving employees, George Alfred Henry Dean’s role in Lardner’s career, and a toast to Dean’s Rag Book Company, Limited.
32. The Publisher: The Journal of the Publishing Industry, 1907, p. 152, “Complimentary Dinner to Mr. John Henry at Manchester.”
33. The Paper Makers’ Circular, March 10, 1892, p. 92. Contemporary notice announcing that the firm of Dean & Son, 160A Fleet Street, had been registered as Dean & Son, Limited

Modern-day Dean & Son imprint:

Below, we try to summarize Dean & Son's complicated journey through various publishing companies and buy-outs. Dean & Son Limited and the Dean & Son imprint continue to this day.

Under Odhams Press: The Disney Years

Following the acquisition of Dean & Son Limited by Odhams Press in 1921, the historic Dean name continued to be used for children’s and novelty publishing. Dean remained especially active in movable books.

During the 1930s Dean published British editions of several Walt Disney novelty books, including Mickey Mouse Presents His Silly Symphonies and Mickey Mouse in King Arthur’s Court. Rather than using the term “Pop-Up,” Dean described the movable constructions as “Scenic Illustrations.”

This terminology was not accidental. “Pop-Up” had become closely associated with Blue Ribbon Books’ American trademark and marketing, and foreign publishers generally adopted alternative terms for their editions. Dean’s choice of “Scenic Illustrations” also echoed its own nineteenth-century tradition of publishing “Scenic Books.”[1]

Other Dean Disney novelties of the period included books associated with Snow White that incorporated three-dimensional spectacles. Dean was also associated with The Mickey Mouse Annual, which ran through numerous editions from about 1930 into the 1940s. Odhams launched Mickey Mouse Weekly in 1936, further strengthening the company’s relationship with Disney publishing in Britain.

In 1939 Dean & Son moved to 41–43 Ludgate Hill, London, an address that continued to appear on its books for many years.

The Disney relationship eventually ended in 1957 following a dispute over publishing rights. Odhams lost the Disney licence that year, and Mickey Mouse Weekly ceased publication soon afterward.

Postwar Dean & Son

Dean continued to publish movable and novelty books after the Second World War. Titles from the 1950s and later included Mickey’s Treasure Trove, Visit to the Zoo, Bobby Bear’s Pop-Up Book and Dean’s Big Top Circus Pop-Up Book.

Although ownership changed repeatedly, the Dean name remained valuable as a specialist children’s publishing imprint.

Odhams became part of the Fleetway/Mirror publishing group in 1961. International Publishing Corporation, or IPC, was formed in 1963, bringing together a number of major British newspaper, magazine and book-publishing interests.

Dean & Son subsequently came under the Hamlyn publishing umbrella while continuing to operate as a specialist children’s publisher.

Corporate Restructuring

The corporate relationships became increasingly complicated during the 1970s and 1980s.

Dean remained associated with Hamlyn, which itself moved through several ownership changes. In 1983 the Dean and Hamlyn publishing operations were combined under the name Dean’s International Publishing.

Books from this period identify the company as Dean’s International Publishing, a division of The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited. During the 1983–1986 period, the company gave its address as 52–54 Southwark Street, London.

The Dean’s International Publishing name was relatively short-lived. Hamlyn was reacquired by its founder in 1986 and was subsequently acquired again by Reed Publishing International in 1987. Through these changes the Dean name continued to appear on children’s books, even though the original company was by then part of much larger publishing organizations.

Egmont and the Final Chapter of Dean & Son Limited

Egmont later acquired Reed’s children’s publishing interests, including the Dean publishing operation, in 1998.

Dean & Son Limited itself continued to exist as a registered British company long after it had ceased functioning as an independent publishing house. Its registered office changed several times over the years, including addresses in Fulham Road, Handforth in Cheshire, Kensington High Street, Nicholas Road and finally 2 Minster Court, London.

By its final years the company was classified as non-trading and dormant.

The formal end came in 2021. Dean & Son Limited, company no. 00035861, filed an application for voluntary strike-off on July 21, 2021. The first Gazette notice appeared on August 3, and the company was formally dissolved on October 19, 2021.[2]

The legal company incorporated on February 24, 1892 therefore ceased to exist after almost 130 years.

The Dean name, however, did not disappear with the company.

The Dean Imprint Under HarperCollins and Farshore

In 2020 HarperCollins acquired Egmont Books UK as part of a wider purchase of Egmont’s book-publishing businesses in Britain, Germany and Poland. The transaction was completed in April 2020.[3]

The former Egmont Books UK operation was subsequently renamed Farshore in early 2021.

The Dean imprint survived within this new structure. Farshore continued to use Dean as a specialist imprint for consumer-led and bespoke publishing produced directly for retailers rather than primarily for the conventional bookshop market.[4]

Modern Dean editions therefore sometimes appear as “Dean, part of Farshore” and identify Farshore as an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

This creates an interesting distinction in the modern history of the firm. Dean & Son Limited, the legal company incorporated in 1892, was dissolved in 2021, but the Dean publishing name survived as an imprint within Farshore and HarperCollins.

Recent books can still be found carrying the Dean Publishing name alongside Farshore editions, particularly in licensed children’s publishing and editions produced for particular retail channels.[5]

Thus the Dean name has proved more durable than the company that created it. From Thomas Dean’s early nineteenth-century toy books, through the movable books of George Alfred Henry Dean, Henry Samuel Dean’s patented innovations, Odhams and Disney, Hamlyn, Reed and Egmont, the Dean imprint has survived through more than two centuries of radical change in children’s publishing.

Principal References for Modern-day Dean & Son imprint section above:

1. Dean & Son / Blue Ribbon Disney movable-book research concerning the British use of “Scenic Illustrations” rather than the trademark-associated American term “Pop-Up,” and Dean’s earlier use of “Scenic Books.”
2. Companies House, Dean & Son Limited, company no. 00035861. Application for voluntary strike-off filed July 21, 2021; First Gazette notice August 3, 2021; company formally dissolved October 19, 2021.
3. Publishers Weekly, April 1, 2020, reporting HarperCollins’ agreement to acquire Egmont Books UK, together with Egmont’s German and Polish book operations, with completion expected by April 30, 2020.
4. Publishing histories of Egmont/Farshore describing the Dean imprint as specializing in “consumer-led, bespoke publishing direct to retailers.” Later books identify Dean as part of Farshore and Farshore as an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
5. Current retail/catalogue records continue to identify some children’s titles under “Dean Publishing,” alongside Farshore editions, demonstrating continued modern use of the Dean publishing name.

More Interesting Notes:

Dating Dean & Son Movable Books

The early Dean’s company was best known for its movable and toy books.Although some institutional sources have substantially underestimated the scale of the firm’s output, our own year-long research through Google Books, publisher advertisements, catalogues and surviving examples has identified more than 200 Dean & Son titles with movable, transformation, scenic, pull-tab, peepshow or other interactive elements issued before 1900. We are continuing to document these titles and will be publishing our working bibliography on vintagepopupbooks.com.

Dating Dean books can be surprisingly difficult. Many were published without a printed date, popular titles could remain in production for years, and the same title might appear in several slightly different issues. No single clue should normally be relied upon. The most accurate dating comes from combining the publisher’s address, firm name, rear-cover printer’s key, advertisements, series, printing method, illustrations and mechanical construction.

The Printer’s Key

Many Dean books carry a small code on the rear board or rear pastedown, often incorporated into an advertisement. These codes can provide one of the most useful clues for dating an otherwise undated copy.

The format generally consists of a quantity followed by the month and the final two digits of the year. Examples recorded on Dean books include:

1000 2,57 — 1,000 sheets printed, February 1857

4000 3,59 — 4,000 sheets printed, March 1859

8000 2,61 — 8,000 sheets printed, February 1861

6000 5,61 — 6,000 sheets printed, May 1861

Booktryst has documented this dating method using surviving Dean books, including examples carrying the “8000 2,61” type of printer’s key.

It is important, however, to understand exactly what the number represents.

The code appears to relate to the printing of the advertising or cover sheet rather than necessarily to the complete book. Thus a code reading “8000 2,61” indicates that 8,000 copies of that particular printed sheet were produced in February 1861. It does not necessarily prove that 8,000 copies of the book itself were printed.

The advertising sheet and the book were separate components, and the same advertisement may have been used with more than one title or impression. The printer’s key is therefore excellent evidence for the date of the physical cover or advertising material, but it should not automatically be interpreted as an exact edition size or exact publication date for the book itself.

Different copies of the same title may carry different codes. This can be extremely useful in establishing a sequence of issues. For example, copies of The Old Woman and Her Silver Penny have been recorded with advertising material dated February 1861 and again in May 1861. That strongly suggests successive production or issue states within a very short period, although the codes alone should not be described as proof that the complete book had first and second print runs of precisely those quantities.

Publisher’s Addresses

The address printed on a Dean book is another extremely useful dating tool. Because the firm moved repeatedly during its long history, the address can often establish a useful date window for an otherwise undated publication.

Our working chronology, assembled from dated imprints, Google Books, trade directories and other surviving records, is:

1770–1785 — 41 Leadenhall Street

1785–1790 — 42 Bishopsgate

1790–1807 — 50 Bishopsgate

1808 — 35 Threadneedle Street

1816 — 40 Threadneedle Street

1833 — 35 Threadneedle Street

1845 — 11 Ludgate Hill

1855 — 11 Ludgate Hill and 31 Ludgate Hill

1865 — 65 Ludgate Hill

1873 — 160A Fleet Street

1922–1932 — 29 King Street, Covent Garden

1933–1938 — No. 6, La Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill

1939–1977 — 41–43 Ludgate Hill

Later registered addresses included:

1992–1998 — 81 Fulham Road, London

1998–2000 — Wilmslow Road, Handforth, Cheshire

2000–2012 — 239 Kensington High Street, London

2012–2019 — 1 Nicholas Road, London

2019–2021 — 2 Minster Court, London

The British Museum independently documents Dean at Threadneedle Street, Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street, while the Reference Catalogue of Current Literature records Dean & Son at St. Dunstan’s Buildings, 160 Fleet Street, repeatedly from 1874 through 1913.

Some later nineteenth-century advertisements also give addresses in Johnson’s Court or Gough Square in association with the Fleet Street operation. These appear to represent production or manufacturing premises connected with the main Fleet Street office rather than necessarily a complete relocation of the company.

Firm Name as a Dating Clue

The form of the publisher’s name can also help establish a date range.

Dean & Munday — generally before 1843

Thomas Dean & Co. — approximately 1843–1847

Thomas Dean & Son — approximately 1847–1856

Dean & Son — from about 1856 onward

Dean & Son, Limited or Dean & Son Ltd. — from the company’s incorporation on February 24, 1892

The exact transition was not always instantaneous. Old stock, title pages and covers could continue in use after a change in business name, so these should be treated as working ranges rather than absolute cut-off dates.

Series as Dating Evidence

Dean developed identifiable movable-book series at different points in the nineteenth century.

The New Scenic Books appeared around 1856 and used layered cut-out scenes arranged one behind another to create a three-dimensional peepshow effect. The University of North Texas describes these as among the earliest books that modern readers would recognize as true pop-ups.

Dean also developed pull-tab “Living Pictures” during the late 1850s and 1860s. The Royal Punch & Judy is a notable early example. The University of North Texas credits Dean with pioneering pull-tab animation during this period.

The Home Pantomime Toy Books belong principally to the later nineteenth century and use pages or image sections of different sizes so that turning a portion of the image transforms the scene. Surviving examples include Beauty and the Beast and Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves.

Other recognizable Dean series include the Dame Wonder transformation books, Surprise Panoramic Toy Books and the Surprise Model series. The series title should always be considered together with the address, printer’s key and other physical evidence rather than used alone.

Printing Technique

The printing method can provide another broad dating clue.

Earlier Dean productions were commonly printed in black and then colored by hand. Hand-coloring can often be recognized by slight variation from copy to copy and by color extending irregularly beyond the printed outlines.

A particularly valuable firsthand recollection comes from Henry Lardner, who entered Dean & Son on August 4, 1862. Speaking more than forty years later, Lardner recalled that when he joined the firm, much of its illustrated work was still colored by hand, “colour printing being a patent.” He contrasted this with the increasingly sophisticated and artistic color printing the firm was producing by the early twentieth century.[11]

Lithography increasingly replaced earlier printing techniques during the nineteenth century. Dean was an early adopter of lithographic printing, and some early lithographs were still colored by hand.

By the later nineteenth century chromolithography allowed multiple colors to be printed mechanically. Many Dean toy books from the 1870s and 1880s show the rich, saturated color characteristic of chromolithography.

Some later Dean books were printed by continental lithographic firms, including Emrik & Binger of Haarlem. A printer’s credit of this type can provide another useful clue when dating a title.

Illustrators

Artist attribution can occasionally help narrow a date, although the majority of Dean’s movable books were published anonymously.

Alfred Henry Forrester, better known as Alfred Crowquill, illustrated Dean works including Little Plays for Little People. Because Crowquill died in 1872, genuine work attributed to him provides an obvious upper boundary.

Richard André, the pseudonym of William Roger Snow, was closely associated with later Dean novelty books, including Home Pantomime Toy Books. His Dean work is particularly associated with the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Walter Stranders is associated with later panoramic works such as The House That Jack Built, helping place those examples toward the later 1880s.

Artist attribution should be used cautiously because illustrations were sometimes reused and many editions carried no artist credit.

American Imprints and Distribution

American publisher or distributor information can also help narrow the date of a Dean edition.

E. P. Dutton became an American agent for Dean publications around 1880, and Dean books bearing a Dutton connection are particularly associated with the early 1880s.

Later Dean books sometimes carry the imprint of International Art Publishing Co. in New York, Philadelphia or Chicago. These generally belong to the later nineteenth or very early twentieth century.

Dean also had a documented American commercial relationship with W. B. Conkey by the early twentieth century. A 1913 Illinois court case involving Dean & Son and Conkey concerned Dean Toy Books and royalties. This establishes a commercial relationship by that date, although it should not automatically be interpreted as proof that Conkey was Dean’s exclusive American distributor.

Patents

Patent references can provide a firm terminus post quem — a date before which a particular issue could not have appeared.

Henry Samuel Dean obtained British Patent No. 17,105 in 1890 for a “novel method of making-up books.” Surviving editions of the Home Pantomime Toy Books bearing the wording “Patented, No. 17105” must therefore date from 1890 or later, even though the series itself originated earlier.

Henry’s later patent for books with cloth leaves dates from 1903 and is associated with the creation of Dean’s Rag Book Company. A book bearing the Rag Book Company imprint or the relevant cloth-book patent information therefore belongs to the twentieth century.

Advertisements on the Book

The titles advertised on Dean covers are often extremely helpful.

If a rear advertisement includes a title known to have first appeared in 1861, for example, the book carrying that advertisement cannot have been assembled before that title existed.

Advertisements can therefore establish a terminus post quem even when the book itself carries no date.

Comparing several copies of the same Dean title can be especially revealing. Changes in advertised titles, prices, addresses, printer’s keys, bindings and cover designs may expose different issues or periods of manufacture even when the title page remained unchanged.

Use All the Evidence Together

No single dating method is foolproof.

For the most reliable result, we recommend considering all available evidence together: the publisher’s address, the form of the Dean firm name, the printer’s key, books advertised on the covers, series designation, printing technique, movable mechanism, illustrator attribution, patent references, British or foreign distributor, binding and cover design, comparison with other surviving copies, and dated trade advertisements, catalogues and reviews.

The rear-cover printer’s key remains one of the most useful individual clues, but its limitations are important. It dates the printed cover or advertising sheet rather than necessarily providing an exact publication date and print run for the complete book.

Used together, however, these clues can often narrow an undated Dean movable to a surprisingly small period and may even reveal distinct issues that have previously been treated as identical.

Principal Sources for "Dating Dean & Son books"

1. Booktryst, “Dean & Son Movable Books and How To Date Them,” 2012. Discussion of Dean rear-cover printer’s keys and surviving examples used for dating.
2. British Museum, “Dean & Co.” Institutional record documenting Dean publishing addresses, activities and later ownership.
3. British Book Trade Index, “Dean & Munday” and related Dean trade records. Documents Threadneedle Street addresses, book-trade activities and variant Dean firm names.
4. University of North Texas Libraries, “A Tour Through Their History: Dean and Son.” Documents Dean as the first publisher to produce movable books on a large scale, its dominance of the toy-book market from the 1840s to the 1880s, and the New Scenic Books introduced around 1856.
5. State Library Victoria, “Early History of Movable and Pop-Up Books,” 2018. Discusses Dean’s specialist production of mechanical books, including peepshows and transformational plates.
6. Indiana University Lilly Library, “The Golden Age of Pop-Up Books,” 2016. Identifies Dean & Son as the foremost nineteenth-century movable-book publisher and discusses the New Scenic Books, dissolving views and other Dean mechanisms.
7. The Reference Catalogue of Current Literature, as indexed by the University of Iowa Lucile Project. Records Dean & Son at St. Dunstan’s Buildings, 160 Fleet Street, in numerous editions between 1874 and 1913.
8. University of Kentucky, Richardson Collection of Movable Books. Institutional collection and research guide devoted to movable-book history.
9. University of Florida Digital Collections. Individual catalogue records for Dean & Son publications, useful for checking imprints, addresses and catalogued date ranges.
10. Vintage Pop-Up Books research archive and Dean & Son history. Original research based on Google Books, surviving imprints, advertisements, auction records and physical copies, including the address chronology, patent research and an ongoing bibliography identifying more than 200 Dean movable and interactive titles issued before 1900.
11. The Paper-makers’ Circular, 1901, p. 370, “Messrs. Dean & Son, Limited: Annual Outing.” Contemporary account of the firm’s annual staff outing, including Henry Lardner’s recollection that he entered Dean & Son on August 4, 1862, when much of the firm’s illustrated work was still colored by hand, and his comparison of those earlier methods with the firm’s later color printing

An International Dynasty……

Dean & Son’s success in the international market was rooted in a multifaceted strategy that involved both translation and cultural adaptation. Instead of simply exporting English-language books to other English-speaking markets, Dean & Son collaborated with European publishers to produce editions tailored to local languages and cultural preferences. This adaptability allowed them to reach a wide range of readers, thus expanding their brand’s global appeal.

A key aspect of Dean & Son's strategy was their participation in a network of European publishers, which enabled them to efficiently distribute books across borders. By leveraging these partnerships, they gained access to established distribution channels, eliminating the need for costly infrastructure. This network allowed Dean & Son, along with other English publishers, to enter new markets more effectively and with lower financial risk.

Crucially, Dean & Son’s success was also tied to their willingness to modify content to suit various international audiences. Popular stories were often re-illustrated and occasionally adjusted in terms of narrative elements to align with the cultural expectations of different regions. This editorial flexibility ensured that their books were not only widely appealing but also resonated with readers in diverse markets. By doing so, Dean & Son ensured that English children's literature could transcend language barriers, further solidifying their international presence.

To strengthen their brand identity abroad, Dean & Son developed distinctive trademarks and series that were easily recognizable to foreign audiences. This brand-building effort helped their books stand out in competitive international markets, making them a trusted name among parents and educators.

By focusing on local partnerships, cultural customization, and strong brand development, Dean & Son, alongside their peers, set the stage for the global distribution of children's books in the late 19th century. The collaborative efforts extended beyond mere distribution; European partners often contributed to the illustration and adaptation process, ensuring that the books were well-suited to the tastes of local readers. This combination of strategic alliances, content adaptation, and innovative branding allowed Dean & Son to remain competitive in an evolving global market, ultimately paving the way for the flourishing international children's book industry in the early 20th century.

An example of an International Partnership:
Guérin-Müller (later A. Capendu), a French publisher with a book titled "Le Polichinelle des Champs-Élysées" (c. 1880), produced in Paris, has a sales catalog with a reference to Dean & Son. This suggests that Dean & Son might have had a commercial relationship or an influence on the French publisher’s works, particularly in the production of movable books.

"The Royal Punch & Judy" (1861) bu Dean & son, is similar to The "Polichinelle des Champs-Élysées" book, published by Guérin-Müller around 1880. The presence of Dean & Son's name on the lower cover of "Le Polichinelle des Champs-Élysées" likely indicates a commercial relationship or partnership between the two publishing houses. If a publisher like Guérin-Müller included Dean & Son's name on the book, it typically implies a commercial arrangement. This could mean that Dean & Son had some role in producing or distributing the book, or that they licensed their name or format to Guérin-Müller.

Impact of Copyright Laws:

The evolution of copyright laws during the 19th century had a profound impact on publishing practices. Initially, lax enforcement allowed for widespread piracy and unauthorized reproductions. However, the establishment of the Berne Convention in 1886 marked a turning point by requiring member countries to recognize and enforce copyright protections internationally. This development prompted publishers to shift from competitive practices like piracy to more collaborative and legally compliant strategies, fostering a more ethical and cooperative international publishing environment.

Prior to the Berne Convention, the movable books that Dean & Son and other publishers produced likely circulated in a somewhat "wild west" environment where piracy was common. It wasn't until after 1886 that publishers were compelled to form legal partnerships and adhere to stricter copyright protections, thus reducing the prevalence of pirated editions. That said, by the time the Berne Convention introduced stricter copyright protections, Dean & Son had already established a foundation of international partnerships that went beyond mere replication. Their very early strategy of leveraging French production strengths not only expanded their influence but also laid the groundwork for more formalized collaborations in the years that followed, thereby reducing the prevalence of pirated editions.

The uploaded image below provides additional context confirming that Dean & Son actively collaborated with French manufacturers as early as the 1860s. Specifically, in an announcement published in The Bookseller dated August 26, 1861, Dean & Son declared that they had made arrangements with two of the largest French manufacturers to supply the English market with photographic portrait albums. The announcement emphasizes that English manufacturers could not compete with the French in terms of "taste, quality, or cheapness."

Dean & Son were known for being prolific exporters, and they often relied on commission agents to expand their reach into international markets. These commission agents acted as intermediaries, helping to distribute Dean & Son’s movable books across various countries by leveraging their local networks.Agents were responsible for promoting Dean & Son's publications within their territories. They organized events, collaborated with local bookstores, and utilized regional advertising channels to increase visibility and drive sales. Agents managed the logistics of distributing books to various retailers and outlets within their regions. This included overseeing transportation, storage, and inventory management to ensure timely availability of publications. Maintaining open communication channels, commission agents provided Dean & Son with valuable feedback on market reception, sales performance, and emerging trends. This enabled the publisher to make informed decisions regarding future publications and marketing strategies.By employing commission agents, Dean & Son effectively localized their operations without the need for direct presence in foreign markets. This approach not only reduced operational costs but also allowed for a more agile response to market demands and cultural preferences. The agents' deep local knowledge and established networks were instrumental in building Dean & Son's brand reputation and expanding their readership globally. This allowed Dean & Son to penetrate foreign markets without having to establish their own distribution infrastructure abroad.

For example, Dean & Son collaborated with the well-known French publisher A. Capendu, who released a French edition of their popular book, The Royal Punch & Judy, under the title Théatre Enfantin. Le Ménage de Polichinelle around 1880. By using commission agents and partnering with local publishers like Capendu, Dean & Son were able to adapt their books to local tastes and languages, effectively broadening their customer base. Polichinelle, also known as the French counterpart to the iconic English character Punch, was presented in a vibrant, interactive format that used tabs and movable elements to engage children. Another, unrecorded Capendu has surfaced and is shown below. Capendu's publication was not merely a translation but rather a cultural reinterpretation designed to appeal to French sensibilities. Capendu's Polichinelle book was part of a series of Dean books that not only adapted stories but also innovated with movable features that were appealing in the French market. These adaptations showcased Capendu's ability to blend English storytelling techniques with French artistic styles, making the books more desirable for French consumers.

Vintage Pop-up Books has a wonderful example: See this book at vintagepopupbooks.comFrench adaptation of Dean's Punch Books

Another example of a likely International Dean book that is very different from Dean's English version is the Dutch edition of a Dean & Son* Movable Dress Book - Rudolf en Susanna of Beloonde Ouderliefde - 1865. It shares notable similarities with Dean & Son's "dress books," particularly in its use of real fabrics to create a three-dimensional effect in illustrations. Another clue is indicated by the cover stating it was translated from English. However, without identifying the exact English title, it’s challenging to confirm whether it was a direct adaptation of a specific Dean & Son book or simply influenced by their style and format. See this book here: Dutch Version of a Dan Dress Book






Whereas a Dutch edition of Dean's New Scenic Books Robinson Crusoe, Belinfante's NIEUWE PRENTENBOEKEN ,used the exact same images as the English version - only the text was changed to read in Dutch.

See this book at vintagepopupbooks.com Dean's new Scenic Book in Dutch


Sweden: We have also identified a Scandinavian edition published in Malmö by Envall & Kull. under the title Historien om en Gammal Sockertunna (“The Story of an Old Sugar Tub”) The imprint at the foot of the cover also names J. G. Hedbergs Bokhandel, which functioned as the bookseller/distributor rather than the primary publisher.
Envall & Kull also published a Swedish edition of "Visit to the Country" (VTC images from vintagepopupbooks.com collection)
The Swedish titles from Envall & Kull that we have seen state printed by "Dean & Son London" on the back cover.


An example of the Swedish edition of Tale Of Old Sugar Tub has appeared at auction (Auctionet), illustrating the same distinctive barrel scene and thread-operated pop-up construction:



Below we have Belinfantes Nieuwe Prentenboeken Robinson Crusoe. It was published by Gebroeders Belinfante (Belinfante Brothers)
( available from the vintagepopupbooks.com collection) https://www.vintagepopupbooks.com/Robinson-Crusoe-Dutch-Edition-Dean-Scenic-Book-p/d-13b.htm




Perhaps the Piece de resistance For Dean collectors is the elusive first title in their 1860's first foray into "pop-up" type books - the scenic series - Aladdin
We have spent several years trying to acquire images Aladin. Thankfully, a wonderful collector named Zhang Liu who resides in in Shanghai China was able to send us images of her French Version of Dean & Sons Aladin. The French edition was published by Guerin Muller and is entitled Aladin Ou La Lampe Marveilleuse conte Imite des Mille et Une Nuits. For the delight of moveable book collectors everywhere, we have chosen to publish all of her images here.













Below is an example of A Dean & Son 1890's pop-up book that was published in an identical version - except for the language - in German
See this book at: Dean's Visit to the Farm pop-up book German edition







According to Literary News in 1880, “Dean & Son, the famous London publishers of toy books for children, have made an arrangement with E. P. Dutton & Co., of New York, giving them the exclusive agency for America for their publications.” However, it remains unclear how long this relationship lasted, as advertisements for Dean & Son’s books under Dutton’s name appear primarily in 1882 and 1883.

D

We know that the primary American Publisher for the later 1880s and 90’s (1884 – 1910?) was International Art Publishing Co., Ltd. in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. By 1913 they were using Chicago publisher W. B. Conkey as evidenced by a long court transcript online from April of 1913 between Henry Dean and Chicago publisher W. B. Conkey. Dean claimed that Conkey had not paid all of the agreed royalties for Dean’s Toy Books. There are other examples of when exporting wasn’t always a smooth business for the Deans. In 1901, there was a court case between Molling & Co (a German printer) and Dean & Son Ltd. It seems that Molling was contracted to supply Dean with printed books intended for England and America. The books sent to America were rejected as not being of the quality agreed upon and were sent back to England. Dean & Son also published illustrations printed by other printers. Some of Dean & Son’s series of toy books from the 1870s and 1880s were printed by the Dutch printing house Emrik & Binger at Haarlem in the 1870s and 1880s. For more extensive information on International Dean & Son titles and exporting, see Pictures for Children’s Books on the 19th-century international market: an introductory study by © Göte Klingberg and The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books.

High Society...

Dean & Son Toy books were so popular in the nineteenth century that this lady even won 1st prize for donning a costume, at the fancy dress ball at Covent Garden, made of Dean’s Toy Books printed on satin!

More References:

Author's Note: This composition serves as an informational piece rather than a scholarly research document. Despite this, considerable effort has been dedicated to ensuring the content's accuracy and engagement. The material draws upon a wide spectrum of resources, with explicit citations included for direct quotations only. Should you require specific source details for any content, please reach out to us at [email protected]