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The market for children's books was an eighteenth-century innovation. By the last half of the nineteenth century, it was a major publishing enterprise. Efforts to educate greater portions of the populace and a growing middle class had fostered a larger reading public. Advancing technology had changed the appearance and availability of books. New illustrative and binding processes were often tested on books for children, giving them a glamour that dust jackets must provide today.

World renowned for his paintings, sculptures, drawings, and cut-outs, Henri Matisse (1869–1954) also embraced the printed book as a means of artistic expression.