The layout of the work cleverly leads the reader to the pop-up scenes. The lithograph on the front board shows children and their mothers standing in line to enter the menagerie, surrounded by exotic animals and a black man holding a snake. Then follows the title page, suggesting the reader is visiting the menagerie during feeding time. On the back of the title- page is the poem "Der Ausrufer schreit": a crier calling children into the menagerie.

The six leaves of plates each contain a panel of animals in the wild surrounded by a black ornamental border. When the panels are lifted, they reveal three-dimensional pop-up scenes showing animals in cages, with rhymed text on the page below.

The panels include an Arctic scene with walruses and polar bears, a forest with giraffes, monkeys and parrots, a jungle scene with alligators and snakes, an Egyptian scene with baboons and a rider on a camel, and finally a forest scene with bears and foxes.

The pop-up scenes show two girls visiting an aquarium, an elephant stealing a man's hat, girls looking at monkeys and a dog in a cage, an exotic dancer and a snake charmer, Ella the lion tamer, and finally a cage with a tiger, a hyena with a cub, and a monkey.

The book was reprinted several times, but the concise descriptions in WorldCat make it almost impossible to identify the various editions. Our copy appears to be the same edition as the one held at the Library of Congress. It appears that this edition is the first, while subsequent editions were published as a leporello with a slightly different design (the pages have red and blue instead of black ornamental borders).

A rare pop-up book showing animals in the wild and in a zoo

€ 950,00

Grosse Menagerie. Heute und jeden Tag, so oft man's sehen Mag. Grosse Vorstellung von Tieren auf zwei Beinen und auf Vieren.

Esslingen, Gedruckt und verlegt von J. F. Schreiber, [1882?].
35 x 25 cm. [2] pp. [6] leaves of lithographed plates, each containing a panel, which when lifted reveals a three dimensional pop-up scene with rhymed text on the page below. In original publisher's half cloth, the front board with lithographed.

The leaves were held together with four staples, most leaves, however, have been detached and strengthened with strips of paper and, in two instances, with strips of cloth. The pop-up scenes, however, are rather well-preserved, with only some minor damages: a few bars of the cages have been torn, and one part of the aquarium has a tear in the upper left hand corner. The most serious damage is a parrot that has been detached (and loosely inserted).

A rare pop-up book showing animals in the wild and in a zoo

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