Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book

Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book is the oldest extant anthology of English nursery rhymes, published in London in 1744.

Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book was published in London by Mary Cooper in May, 1744.

[8] In 2013 a facsimile edition with an introduction by Andrea Immel and Brian Alderson was published by the Cotsen Occasional Press.

The two extant copies of Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book are the oldest printed collections of English nursery rhymes known to still exist.

The only other printed copies of nursery rhymes that predate the Pretty Song-Book are in the form of quotations and allusions, such as the half-dozen or so that appear in Henry Carey's 1725 satire on Ambrose Philips, Namby Pamby.