Dashing heroes, evil bandits, high drama and adventure. Toy theaters, beloved playthings of the 19th century, offered all these. Charles Dickens staged productions with them in his living room. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an ode to them. And a 14-year-old Winston Churchill was said to vault over the counter of a local stationer’s to grab the latest title.

Long before Netflix or video games, these tiny paper theaters served as home entertainment, outlets for imagination crafted for young people but popular with adults, too.

The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division has dozens of the miniature theaters, many in colorful boxes containing magical characters and intricate scenes from the past. Over the past few years, Library paper conservators have been painstakingly mending damage caused by historical use, making sure researchers can draw insights from the theaters for years to come.

For “a penny plain and twopence coloured” — the title of Stevenson’s tribute — the stationer in his city sold “pages of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning fortresses and prison vaults — it was a giddy joy,” he recalled, and the shop itself was a lodestone rock for “all that bore the name of boy.”

At first, English publishers sold sheets of principal characters from popular plays, imprinting the name of the theater staging a play and often the star actors. Enthusiasts — mainly boys and young men — bought them as souvenirs.
By 1812, sheets of scenes from plays were being sold with characters and, eventually, boxed kits appeared containing all the essentials of the stage: backdrops, curtains, props, orchestras and, of course, tiny actors, all to cut out and (if one spent just a penny) color. Some kits came with special script booklets or stage directions.
Nearly 300 toy productions, also known as juvenile dramas, were published in England between 1811 and 1860. Fans could choose military exploits (“The Battle of Waterloo,” “Conquest of Mexico,” “Invasion of Russia”), dramas and pirate stories (“Black Beard,” “Brigand and the Maid”) and even Shakespeare (“Macbeth,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” “Julius Caesar”).

Toy theaters

Such was the popularity of toy theaters that the first play written specifically for the medium, “Alone in the Pirate’s Lair,” published in 1866, made its way to the actual stage, followed by other original toy theater plays, according to theater historian Nicole Sheriko.
“They’ve turned out to be really compelling examples of what occupied a child in a certain period,” Mark Dimunation, RBSCD chief, said of a collecting effort focused not just on toy theaters, but also on other printed objects children played with, such as games, paper dolls and boxes with moving scenes.
The division initiated a “very self-conscious push” to collect these objects to complement its substantial holdings of children’s literature, Dimunation said. “They help us understand what is going on in some of the literature.”
Their research value also lies in the vivid hues imprinted on many, enabled by the rise of chromolithography in the 19th century. “They’re part of the history of printing, too,” Dimunation said. “The world suddenly becomes colorful.”
In England, the raucous stage of early 19th century London inspired the art form. But toy theaters flourished elsewhere as well — America, Germany, France — where they evolved and took different forms, a fact reflected in the collections.

Multiple theaters in the Library’s collection are panoramas — paper scenes wrapped around rods. When turned, cranks on either side of the theater advance scenes. Sometimes, the scenes progress through a play; in other cases, they are unassociated with one another.
These theaters, especially, have wear and tear, as paper ripped as a panorama was unwound, or cranks went missing or broke over time. The Library’s conservation lab has treated both issues. Basia Nosek, a recent intern in the lab, crafted an entirely new wooden crank to restore one theater.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Betsy Haude of the Conservation Division finished work in the spring on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” a beautifully illustrated panorama in deep blues and greens based on Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

It arrived with tears that had been repaired by an earlier owner with pressure-sensitive tape, “which is terrible for paper,” Haude said. So, she carefully removed the tape and mended the tears with archival-quality materials.
Sometimes, however, when a historical mend is determined not to be causing damage, conservators leave it in place, not wanting to remove something that might tell a bigger story about the object and its use, Haude said.
She is the paper liaison to RBSCD. The division’s retired children’s literature specialist, Sybille Jagusch, reached out to her to assess which theaters needed treatment. Haude and colleague Gwenanne Edwards identified an initial batch most in need of repair.

Edwards completed work recently on a shadow puppet theater, a variety that includes cutouts that were placed behind the theater’s paper curtain. A light illuminated them from behind, and viewers could see silhouettes of the cutouts from the front. A single theater could have up to 100 puppets, some with moveable parts.
“The little players … sometimes had an unfortunate habit of creasing up or becoming unglued,” biographer Peter Ackroyd wrote of Dickens’ theaters.

“There’s a lot of structural work that we have to do with the puppets if it’s that kind of theater,” Edwards said.
As a final step before returning repaired theaters to RBSCD, conservators construct archival-quality housing to ensure their longevity.
The most popular English toy theater play, “The Miller and His Men,” debuted in London’s Covent Garden in 1813. The story climaxes with fire and an explosion, an exciting spectacle that, in toy form, caused some home setups to perish.

The play captivated Dickens and, many years later, Churchill. It’s possible Churchill’s immersion in the story even inspired some of his trademark rhetoric as the United Kingdom’s World War II prime minister, theater historian George Speaight speculates.

In the final scene of “Miller,” a cornered villain exclaims, “Surrender? Never! I have sworn never to descend from this spot alive!”
Can there be a remembered echo in Churchill’s dramatic words to the House of Commons in 1940? Speaight asks — “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds … we shall never surrender!”
Likewise with Stevenson: “What is ‘Treasure Island’ but one of the piratic dramas retold?” Speaight postulates.
Gradually, toy theaters faded in popularity as the 20th century brought new diversions. But their magic is such that even a researcher today, visiting the Library’s Rare Book Reading Room, is sure to find delight in the carefully preserved record left behind.

The Rise and Fall of Toy Theatre

One day in late winter 1884, the author Robert Louis Stevenson entered a grimy print shop near London’s Finsbury Square. The shop’s owner, W.G. Webb, had stayed up late the past few nights making notes for his famous friend, a longtime customer, about the curious world of the English “toy theatre”—a popular art form (now all but vanished) that replicated the dramas of the day in miniature. Stevenson was at work on an essay about that world for The Magazine of Art. Webb was a prolific toy theatre producer at the time, and his name was almost synonymous with what was called “Juvenile Drama.”
Years later, Webb’s grandson recalled the scene that followed. “Here, Mr. Stevenson,” Webb asked, “where do I come in in this?”

To contemporary eyes, the English toy theatre might seem to offer only a kind of surreal nostalgia. The tiny actors, arms spread in comically theatrical attitudes, seem to squint at us from a timeless dream world. But those little figures once felt very much alive. What’s left of them offers small glimpses of history—ones not available anywhere else.

“You don’t come in at all,” Stevenson replied. “I come in.”
“This won’t do,” old Mr. Webb answered. “I’ve helped you in this history. Without my help it would not be written. I have given you the information and besides you are using my pictures for the illustrations.”
“There was a fearful row in the shop,” the younger Webb wrote, and before the shouting was over, the elder man had torn his notes to bits under Stevenson’s nose.
On his way out the door, the nettled author shook a finger. “This is going to cost you something, Mr. Webb,” he said. “This is going to cost you a great deal.”
Later that spring, Stevenson published his essay on toy theatre (“A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured”), making no mention of Webb but instead praising his chief rival, Benjamin Pollock. In his essay Stevenson included the address of Pollock’s shop in nearby Hoxton, and concluded, “If you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock’s…”

Webb’s print shop is long gone; but, more than a century after Stevenson’s essay, the name of Pollock lives. Pollock’s today, in fact, is split like Gaul into three parts connected only by the name and the history. Pollock’s Toy Museum, on Scala Street in London’s Bloomsbury, welcomes 10-12,000 visitors a year to an exhibit of rare old toys and a shop that sells toy theatres and plays; a mile to the south, in the bustling Covent Garden Market, Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop does a brisk business in nostalgic toys and reissued toy theatre paraphernalia; finally, there is Pollock’s Toy Museum Trust, which has no physical location but labors to keep the lore and tradition of toy theatre alive.

Toy Theatre museum is housed in a pair of unrestored Georgian homes

To contemporary eyes, the English toy theatre might seem to offer only a kind of surreal nostalgia. The tiny actors, arms spread in comically theatrical attitudes on elaborate sets, seem to squint at us from a timeless dream world, like the caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland.” But those little figures once felt very much alive—they are drawings of real actors familiar to every theater-goer in Victorian England. What’s left of them offers small glimpses of history—not available anywhere else—of the stagecraft and personalities of the 19th-century British stage. “The toy theatre is much more than just a toy,” the famed British actor Peter Baldwin wrote in 1992. “The spirit of early nineteenth century theatre can only be recaptured by the scene and character sheets of the English Juvenile drama.”

A toy theatre was, as we will see, a tiny but complex structure—as intricate and lovingly assembled, in its way, as model railroads can be for today’s hobbyists. In its prime, it was not a nostalgic hobby but a breathless bulletin from the newly emerging world of mass communications and global celebrities—a chance for ordinary people to touch their heroes in person.

As the Industrial Revolution gathered speed in the early 19th century, masses of former country folk emigrated from the countryside into English cities. They often sought escape, even if only temporarily, from the harsh conditions of factory labor and tenement life. The popularity of gin was one result, but the theatre offered a healthier respite. Plays became mass spectacles akin to contemporary Broadway shows like “The Lion King” or “Spider-Man.” The demand for “cheap seats” was rapacious; when Covent Garden raised ticket prices in 1809, playgoers rioted inside the theatre, night after night, for three months—until the disorder compelled the owners to apologize and reduce them. Meanwhile, theatres grew. By mid-century, for example, Drury Lane seated 3,000; the Sadler’s Wells featured a tank in front of the stage where the producers staged mock naval battles.

Theatrical publishers—shops with names like West, Jameson, and Hodgson—dispatched multiple artists to the opening of each new production. One artist would hastily sketch the actors, mimicking their theatrical poses; another would draw the scenery, producing backdrops and wings. A writer hastily annotated the script to show where and how action occurred. The team turned over their drawings to the printer, who prepared sheets depicting the actors, scenery, and a tiny booklet of script.

The rendering of the scenery and actors is antique but far from crude; among the art workers who grubbed out a living in the trade were the youthful poet and artist William Blake and George Cruikshank, later a famed caricaturist and illustrator of Dickens. Once drawn, the sheets were printed through a combination of etching, engraving, and lithograph. These were sold by the sheet (as Stevenson noted) either in black-and-white (to be hand-painted by the buyer) or (for double the price) already colored. Children bought them to use as toys, but adults also treasured them as souvenirs of their favorite actors and beloved performances.

A toy theatre was quite small—the stages were about 6.5 inches wide, roughly the width of a 1950s-era, black-and-white TV screen. The tiny actors were sold on individual papers sheets somewhere around 9.5 by 7.5 inches—each sheet containing as many as four “actors,” who might be different characters or simply the same actor in different theatrical poses: defiance, devotion, or despair, as different moments in the script demanded. Each “actor” was cut out, pasted onto a card, and fastened to special wire slides that would allow the “performer” to slide them on and offstage through grooves in the wooden base. Convention called for the performer to wiggle the “actor” back and forth as he (or a friend) uttered the lines, varying his or her voice as different characters required. Tiny oil lamps provided authentic theatrical lighting.

A typical theatre—such as “Pollock’s Regency,” which is sold now in a large booklet along with scenes, script, and “actors” for “Sleeping Beauty”—included a colorful proscenium, complete with a painted orchestra beneath the stage; a paper curtain; a stage floor, wings, and a back wall. An individual play will offer one or two scene backdrops, to be slipped in against the back wall.

famous film of ‘Hamlet,’ complete with five

Over the years the scripts became somewhat abbreviated versions of the actual play. In “Blackbeard the Pirate,” for example, the dialogue occupies about three pages. Prince Abdallah and the British Navy rescue the fair princess Ismene from the vile lusts of the pirate chief: “Foolish woman!” the pirate boasts, “You are the princess of a puny kingdom, but I, I am the uncrowned emperor of the Seven Seas!” Replies the haughty beauty, “I care nothing for your threats and do not boast too soon, proud pirate.” The manly British tars, dressed in flat hats and striped jerseys, put Blackbeard to flight singing “Huzzah for the Red, White, and Blue!”

Some plays are more elaborate. One, called “Jack Sheppard,” contains 64 pages of script. Another favorite was “The Miller and His Men,” based on an 1813 production at Covent Garden; the young Winston Churchill treasured this classic because it ended with the explosion of a tiny wad of gunpowder (which sometimes set fire to the entire theatre, though usually with no loss of full-sized human life).

Presenting the plays to an actual audience, however, was not really the aim for many of Webb’s and Pollock’s customers. “Yes, there was pleasure in the painting,” Stevenson wrote in his essay on toy theatre. But when all was painted, it is needless to deny it, all was spoiled. “You might, indeed, set up a scene or two to look at; but to cut the figures out was simply sacrilege; nor could any child twice court the tedium, the worry, and the long-drawn disenchantment of an actual performance…”.

Instead, the charm of toy theatre for many was simply the chance to be connected to a real play, and a real cast, and to the glamorous rococo world that was the Victorian stage.
Like that theatre itself, toy theatre’s great days were winding down by 1870. By 1884, only Webb and Pollock, friendly rivals, remained in the business, and Stevenson’s essay warned of the art form’s imminent disappearance. Benjamin Pollock, however, kept his shop afloat until his death, at age 80, in 1936. A few years later, the family sold the shop and stock to an Irish bookseller named Alan Keen. (Among his other schemes, Keen convinced film producer J. Arthur Rank to commission a toy theatre of Laurence Olivier’s 1948 famous film of “Hamlet,” complete with five changes of scene and two plates of characters printed in color.)

The film of Olivier’s “Hamlet” is a classic, but the toy Olivier theatre was a flop. Hamstrung by debt, Keen ceased operations after the war. Then, in the mid-1950s, a flamboyant BBC journalist named Marguerite Fawdry contacted Pollock’s receiver. Her son played with toy theatre, and she wanted to buy a few of the special wire slides needed to bring the tiny characters alive. According to her 1995 obituary in “The Independent,” the accountant responded, “I believe there are hundreds of thousands in the warehouse, madam, but there’s no one who could look them out for you. Of course, you could, I suppose, buy the whole lot if you wanted them.”

So she did, and created the first incarnation of the Toy Museum.

Fawdry was, by all accounts, a magnetic personality. She attracted children still fascinated by the tiny actors and scenes, and recruited them as helpers. Among these protégées was Louise Heard, who now manages Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop in Covent Garden. The store sells copies of original Victorian theatres and plays, and also produces and sells entire new theatre sets, including a moody 2014 evocation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” by noted illustrator Kate Baylay.