Chiefly British children's books, from the earliest period to the present, collected by Iona and Peter Opie, and housed in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. The collection contains more than 20,000 titles, organized into units by book type. The collection preserves nearly 1,100 chapbooks, battledores (two or three-page primers), and card-covered toy books; 4,000 comics, children's magazines, and penny dreadfuls (Victorian serials for children); and 12,000 bound volumes of children's stories and nursery rhymes, books on games and amusements, picture books, movable books, reversible books, rag books, miniatures, and other items. Some 800 titles included were published before 1800.