Peter Parley's Visit to London During the Coronation of Queen Victoria

Peter Parley's Visit to London - During the Coronation of Queen Victoria by Samuel G. Goodrich. Goodrich was born at Ridgefield Connecticut the son of a Congregational minister. Goodrich was largely self-educated and became an assistant in a country store at Danbury Connecticut which he left in 1808 and later again at Hartford Connecticut until 1811. From 1816 to 1822 he was a bookseller and publisher in Hartford. He visited Europe from 1823 to 1824 and moved to Boston in 1826. In 1833 he bought 45 acres (180000 m2) in nearby Roxbury and built a home in what is now Jamaica Plain. There he continued in the publishing business and from 1828 to 1842 published an illustrated annual The Token to which he was a frequent contributor both in prose and verse. A selection from these contributions was published in 1841 under the title Sketches from a Students Window. The Token also contained some of the earliest work of Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Parker Willis Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Lydia Maria Child. In 1841 he established Merry's Museum which he continued to edit till 1854. Goodrich was associated with his brother Charles A. Goodrich in writing books for the young. His series beginning in 1827 under the name of Peter Parley embraced geography biography history science and miscellaneous tales. Of these he was the sole author of only a few but in 1857 he wrote that he was the author and editor of about 170 volumes and that about seven millions had been sold. An English writer George Mogridge also used the name Peter Parley raising objections from Goodrich who had the prior claim.. Well my little friends here is your old acquaintance Peter Parley come to tell some more of his amusing Tales. You wonder I dare say what could tempt such a frail old man as I am to leave home and come so far. You shall hear.. A Coronation you must know is a sight not to be seen every day in the United[2] States where we have neither King nor Queen so thinks I to myself I hear a great deal about the grandeur of the spectacle which is to be exhibited at the crowning of Queen Victoria and though I have seen many grand sights in my day I have never seen a Coronation so I shall just get into one of these new steam ships which take one across the Atlantic Ocean so quickly and have a look at the affair. I shall besides have an opportunity of seeing the kind London friends who treated me so handsomely when I was last in England and then I shall have such lots of new stories for my young friends. I must—I shall go!