Introduction

[Bob]

Hello. I found out about this group from the Victoria list. I've
always loved children's literature even if I am 61, and I hope to find
some lively discussion here.

My question is this: What place, if any, did the Romantic ideology
have in the depictions of children in children's literature? And, a
follow-up: Why does there seem to be so little children's literature
before the 19th century?

Bob

[Melynda...@gmail.com]

Hello, everyone. I'm Melynda Huskey, and I'm here from Child-Lit. My
research interests are in domestic and theological fiction for girls,
and I'm presently thinking a lot about ADT Whitney, Pansy, Charlotte
Yonge, and other Sunday School novelists.

Glad to be here, and looking forward to the conversations!

M.

[Naomi W]

Hi,

I'm Naomi Wood. I teach undergraduate and graduate children's and
adolescent literature courses at Kansas State University. I wrote my
dissertation on death in 19th century children's literature, with
special attention to Charlotte Yonge, Charles Kingsley, and George
MacDonald. (A LONG time ago!) I still like to write about all three,
though my current research interests lean more to fantasy than to
realism as a genre.

I'm a lurker (mostly) on Child_Lit and Victoria, but welcome the
opportunity to connect with other scholars who share my focus. Like
Melynda, I am interested in the theological expression of nineteenth
century writers (particularly since we inherited those themes through
C.S. Lewis et al).

[Ellen]

I'm sure there are probably standard academic answers to Bob's
question

> Why does there seem to be so little children's literature
> before the 19th century?

My answer, based on my (limited) knowledge of what was being
published, would be that it emerged more or less in tandem with the
novel, though one should also take account of the influence of the
religious tract. It seems that in the late 18th century publishers had
discovered that there was a market for fictional narratives that tried
to be realistic and contemporary. I'm thinking here of the publication
of Goody Two Shoes (1765), Barbauld's Lessons For Children (1778) and
Sandford and Merton (1783).

Dr Johnson, no doubt reflecting on what had been available to him as a
child, told Mrs Barbauld that "babies do not like books about babies",
but time has proved him wrong

[Jenny Schwartzberg]

Remember there were lots of school books, primers and catechisms from
the Middle Ages onwards. Children were reading chapbooks and Foxe's
Book of Martyrs and Pilgrim's Progress and other books before the rise
of fiction specifically aimed at children. The 18th century is the
turning point for children's books, probably due to changing perceptions
of childhood, i.e. that they had a right to play and pleasure. Also,
infant mortality was on the decline and children were living longer and
there were more of them. Parents were buying books for their children
and children sometimes had money themselves so publishers started really
marketing books aimed at children, to instruct and amuse them. This
really starts taking off in the 1740s-1750s, but you can find earlier
materials.

There's a lot of interesting books and information on 18th-c. and
earlier children's books. There are long novels from the 1660s in
Germany specifically stated in the prefaces as aimed at children, for
example.

Yours,
Jenny Schwartzberg
The Newberry Library

[Elisabeth Gruner]

Seth Lerer's new book (Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter) argues for a long tradition of children's literature before the 19th century, though much of it is not what we would call "children's literature" but rather teaching materials, adaptations of texts for student use, etc. 

But in general I'm inclined to link it to the rise of the middle class and the middle class ideal of childhood, which tracks nicely with the rise of the novel as well.

Elisabeth Rose Gruner

elisabet...@gmail.com

[Jenny Schwartzberg]

There are two different definitions at play here. I would use two
different phrases. The first is "children's books," which covers
anything read to children, read by children, taught to children, played
with by children, etc. The other is "children's literature", which
covers fiction for children, fairy tales, poetry, rhymes, etc.
specifically for children. The problem is that people use "children's
literature" indiscriminately to cover all of this and that gives rise to
arguments, etc.

My personal interest is in the history of "children's books," worldwide
and in all times and languages. I'm not an academic, rather a rare book
librarian at the Newberry Library where our collections hold many
children's books from the Middle Ages to the present day. I'm also the
curator of our fall exhibit: Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of
Children's Books http://www.newberry.org/exhibits/ChildrenBook.html

If any of you come through Chicago before Jan. 17th, do let me know and
I'll be delighted to give personal tours of the exhibit.

Yours,
Jenny Schwartzberg
The Newberry Library