Edward William Cole (1832–1918) ran Cole’s Book Arcade in Melbourne — rainbow arch, cheap books, and a genius for selling wonder to kids and adults in the same aisle. His Funny Picture Book first hit the counters at Christmas 1879, not 1882. Early printings were slim; by the time Cole died the book had swollen through dozens of editions into a fat Victorian bran-tub of puzzles, poems, jokes and picture “Lands.”
What you’re scrolling is an album of those pages — humour, moral cartoons, and Arcade self-promotion — photographed for the blog, not a Sydney civic archive.
