The Vision of Dante, illustrated by Walter Crane: A Story for Little Children and a Talk to their Mothers
Chicago: Chicago Kindergarten College, 1892. First Printing. Wraps. 11.5 x 9.25 inches, stiff textured card covers, gray linen backed spine, good with some stains, wear, corner and edge loss to covers, previous owner's name in ink on first blank, pages a little toned but contents very good. 25 leaves printed on rectos only, with 3 being full page woodcuts by Walter Crane. Very uncommon in the trade, and only copies of the second printing have appeared at auction (from 1894) in the last many decades. Harrison was a very influential educator in the kindergarten movement of the 1880s and was a follower of Frobel, so influenced by his ideas that she traveled to Berlin in 1889 to study at the Pestalozzi-Frobel-Haus. (Her appendix in this book, addressed to parents, explicitly references Frobel, who also thought highly of teaching Dante to the young; she refers to him as "the apostle of childhood.") She also studied and incorporated the ideas of Montessori into her pedagogy and wrote a number of books on the subject of early childhood education, including the bestselling "A Study of Child Nature" (1890 et passim). Jane Addams of Hull House, said of her colleague and friend, that Elizabeth Harrison "has done more good than any woman I know. She has brought light and power to all the educational world." Good. Item #H36170
Price: $450.00 save 25% $337.50