*The Mermaid “at Home!”* (1809) — The Public Domain Review

The best children’s books are those that can entertain readers of any age. The Mermaid “at Home!” (1809) achieves this with a simple, playful trope: a mermaid proclaims “a submarine feast”, and we, as readers, are the invitees. Across the full-colour plates that follow, we’re treated to “grand entertainment” of an aquatic kind, filled with visual and verbal jokes at the expense of the mermaid’s neighbours. We meet the “pike” and “sword[fish]” in battle, a pipefish blowing smoke at an irate fishwife, and a beatific monkfish overseeing the union of a well-heeled cod and his mate. The shark is a gambler, the dolphin a fashionable gentleman. The entertainment culminates with the spectacle of “his majesty”, the whale, spouting.