Mary And Her Cat: Title Page
The title page features the title of the book, publishing information, the price of the book, and a picture of Mary, Nurse Brown, and Muff the cat. Amidst today’s world of publishing, elaborate book covers, and carefully crafted blurbs, Mary and Her Cat’s title page may seem rather lackluster. However, Nuria Yáñez-Bouza and María E. Rodríguez-Gil, authors of “The Title-Page in Eighteenth-Century Grammar Books,” adhere that the title page is doing important work as the ‘threshold’ of the book. They say, “The main argument is that in order to gain a full understanding of a book we need to see beyond the text itself, for, as he argues, the text ‘rarely appears in its naked state, without the reinforcement and accompaniment of a certain number of productions…like an author’s name, a title, a preface, illustrations’. All of these elements ‘present’ the book to the world,” (dx-doi-org.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu).
Mary and Her Cat does initially appear quite naked, bereft of an illustrated cover, author, or preface. Thus, its remaining title page and illustrations throughout the text are significant. Yáñez-Bouza and Rodríguez-Gil state, “For the producers – authors, publishers and printers – paratextual practices offer the opportunity to present the text to its (prospective) readers, since the paratext ‘involves a series of first order illocutionary acts in which the author, the editor, or the prefacer are [...] informing, persuading, advising, or indeed exhorting and commanding the reader,’” (dx-doi-org.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu). We can see evidence of this as the title extends to include “In Words Not Exceeding Two Syllables.” Here, one of the producers is informing the reader that the text doubles as both a children’s book and a grammar book. The title page also includes the price of the book, one shilling (12.5 cents), to persuade the reader of its affordability. Yáñez-Bouza and Rodríguez-Gil mention “the main function of the paratext is ‘to persuade people to buy and read the book,” but also to “try to influence the way it is received” (dx-doi-org.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu). An essay published by The Hockliffe Project, further illuminates the use of multiple illustrations in a children's book. They say, "In all its various editions, the book also contains a substantial number of illustrations, which Caroline Clifford points out, are what draws a child to a book, and instills in her the desire to read it," (hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk).
Besides telling a children’s story and acting as grammar literature, Mary and Her Cat also contains topics such as obeying one’s parents, being kind to animals, and doing charity work for children in need. From the title page’s illustration, we can see a well-dressed and respectable–looking child reaching up to an older woman, with a cat standing dutifully by. The title portrays the expectation of the book revolving around Mary and the cat, but the illustration focuses primarily on Mary and Nurse Brown. Yáñez-Bouza and Rodríguez-Gil state how “aesthetics predominated over the textual relationship of the title to the content of the book” (dx-doi-org.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu). Usually, they continue to note, the publisher and printer had more control over the book cover and title page than the author did, because those pieces of the book were valued more for their advertising worth. This is one example of the multiplicities of authorship, and how authorship as we know it today, is in fact much more fluid and ambiguous than once thought.