Henry and Emma’s Visit to the Zoological Gardens, in the Regent’s Park.

Interspersed with a familiar description of the manners and habits of the animals contained therein. Intended as a pleasing companion to juvenile visitors of this delightful place of recreation and fashionable resort. A new edition, with additions to the present season, by J. Bishop. With twelve illustrative coloured engravings. London : Dean and Munday, n.d. [but 1829 or 1830]. Second edition. Small octavo, original pictorial grey wrappers (cloth reinforcement to spine), title page with contemporary inscription, frontispiece with coloured engravings of the entrance to the Zoological Gardens and The Great White or Polar Bear, pp 36, 5 leaves each with a pair of hand coloured plates: the Bear Pit and the Brahmin Bull; the Sheep and Goat House and the Deer House; the Monkey Poles and the Otter Cavern and Pond; the Squirrel Cage and the Ostrich House; the ‘Kanguroo’ Shed and the Indian Elephant; the gutters of a few leaves with paper reinforcements, internally clean and sound, with only a small amount of foxing, the colour illustrations still vibrant.

According to Martin Zerling (Zoos in Encyclopedia of children and childhood, vol. 3. New York : Macmillan, 2004, p 923), Henry and Emma’s Visit was the very first guidebook to the Zoological Society of London’s Zoological Gardens, which were opened to the public in Regent’s Park in 1828. This publication ‘addressed children as the main guests’. The first edition, which presumably appeared in 1828, contained only 28 pages. The present copy is the enlarged edition, probably produced for the Gardens’ second season in 1829. This was the final edition of Henry and Emma’s Visit, as in 1830 it was superceded by a much more substantial guide, The Zoological Keepsake; or, Zoology, and the Garden and Museum of the Zoological Society, which nevertheless was still designed for a young audience.

The text makes mention of both the emu and the dingo, referred to as the ‘Australian dog’, and includes a delightful description of the ‘Kanguroo’ shed: ‘The young party were delighted at seeing the young Kanguroos sport about their mother, and at the least alarm jump into a kind of pouch nature had furnished her with, for the purpose of protecting them from danger’ (p 34).

Rare. Two copies recorded in Australian collections (State Library of New South Wales; National Library of Australia).