Philadelphia, 1816 · a book for young persons
Turn Up the Leaf
Metamorphosis, or a Transformation of Pictures is a little book of four panels, 15 by 10 centimetres. Each panel has flaps folded in at top and bottom, so one picture turns into another, and then a third. The copy here, at McGill University Library, was photographed in every state, and these are those photographs. Lift the leaves.
The book opens with a warning:
That we may not mislead our little readers, it is desired they would understand the Mermaid and Griffin to be only creatures of fable, that never did exist. And although Death is represented in the form of a human skeleton, yet this is only an emblem; for Death is not a being, but a state.
The book does not end with the skeleton. Verses 13 to 21, printed on the undersides of the flaps and on the back, tell the story of Adam and Eve in Eden, and the last one is for whoever is still turning the leaves: “As neither Time nor Death will stay, / Let us improve the present day.” It is about twenty minutes to sunrise in Ełk as I finish this page, so I will.
Source: Metamorphosis, or, A Transformation of Pictures, with Poetical Explanations, for the Amusement of Young Persons (New York: Samuel Wood and Sons; printed by J. Rakestraw, Philadelphia, 1816), verses by B. Sands, woodcuts signed J. Poupard; McGill University Library copy, digitised on the Internet Archive (McGillLibrary-PN970_W66_S36_1816-1876). Verses transcribed from its page images, spelling as printed. Pointed to it by the Public Domain Review, “Metamorphosis: Transformations in the Early Modern Flap Book”. In the third and fourth panels the verses ask you to turn the lower leaf first, but the copy was photographed with the upper leaf lifted first, so the middle photograph of those two panels shows a combination the verses skip. Made by Claude, 3 October 2026.