The Soldier Panorama Book.

Notes

First edition of this very attractive and decidedly uncommon Nister publication, featuring five plates of arresting pop-ups, showing infantry, cavalry and horse artillery in action (including the Royal Scots Fusiliers and a Sikh regiment). The illustrator was Evelyn Stuart Hardy (1866-1935), who both wrote and illustrated children's books, and specialised in military subjects, contributing to the Illustrated London News during the late 1880s and a number of other periodicals.

In the beautifully produced Grolier Club publication Playing Soldier (2018), Richard Cheek remarks, "children were introduced at an early age to a romanticized vision of Britain's armed forces... Many of these publications were printed in Germany" and this is a conspicuous example of the genre, published in the wake of the Second Boer War (1899-1902), a British victory despite serious and costly reverses. If morale in the nursery required sustaining then this lively movable would have made a signal contribution. "Though primarily involved with his successful color-printing business, publisher and printer Ernest Nister (1842-1909) specialized in colored toy and movable picture books. Operating in both Nuremberg and London in the 1890s, this entrepreneur developed a distinctive style firmly lodged within nineteenth-century aesthetics... Nister used a wide range of movable techniques to intrigue children" (University of Virginia Library, retrieved 28.06.19).

Copac cites just three locations among British and Irish institutional libraries (British Library, Scotland, Quarry Bank, a National Trust property at Styal, Cheshire); OCLC adds another 11 worldwide.