Books by Iona Opie

A magnificent survey of over 85 games played by children, largely out of sight of adults, in the 1960s, in the street, playground and wasteland.

First published in 1959, Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called "the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out."

The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book contains 800 nursery rhymes and ditties which are the heritage of our oral tradition. All the well-known rhymes are included as well as many rare ones. Special sections are devoted to lullabies and dandling rhymes, toe rhymes, catches, charms, traditional street cries, riddle verses, nursery maxims, and humorous ballads.The text is further enlivened by 600 illustrations, many of them eighteenth- and nineteenth-century woodcuts and engravings.