Dean & Son

Dean & Son was a 19th-century London publishing firm, best known for making and mass-producing moveable children's books and toy books, established around 1800. Thomas Dean founded the firm, probably in the late 1790s, bringing to it innovative lithographic printing processes. By the time his son George became a partner in 1847, the firm was the preeminent publisher of novelty children's books in London. The firm was first located on Threadneedle Street early in the century; it moved to Ludgate Hill in the middle of the century, and then to Fleet Street from 1871 to 1890. In the mid-20th century the firm published books by Enid Blyton.

Dean & Son were one of the first firms to introduce pop-up books for children—which they were able to publish in large numbers. In the 1860s they invented "living picture" books, "animated" by pulling a tab and moving the pictures. Their "pantomime books" were books where the scenes changed in the pictures, created by the use of different page sizes. The books were characterized by engraved illustrations (using technology developed in Germany in the 1790) that were then lavishly hand-coloured. By the end of the 1850s they published more than 200 titles, each book of equal size, each costing sixpence.

The books' subject matter varied, from fairy tales, to stories about anthropomorphized animals, to well-known stories such as Robinson Crusoe. Generally, the books were meant to entertain rather than to be didactic or provide instruction, although some of their books, such as Dean's Moveable Dogs Party, showed upper class Victorian class divisions and taught social mores.

The books were expensive to make: they were printed on letterpress, then hand-coloured in "pochoir" stencil method, and most likely printed in limited editions. Nevertheless, the firm was the first to bring to the mass market moving picture books, having up to 50 titles of moveable books in print by the latter half of the 19th century, making them leading publisher of these books.

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