Children’s Literature

C

The 17th and 18th Centuries

Works of moral and religious instruction written for children gained increased importance under the influence of Puritanism in the 17th and 18th centuries. The New England Primer (1690), printed in Boston, Massachusetts, by English-born publisher and journalist Benjamin Harris, is a typical example. It contains a rhymed alphabet, tables of syllables, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, and an account of the burning of a Protestant martyr at the stake. Preparation for possible sudden death and departure to the next world was a feature of the rhymes and stories in earlier editions of the Primer. Verses that became well known as a result of their inclusion in the Primer include the prayer “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” and the “Cradle Hymn” by English churchman Isaac Watts. Editions of The New England Primer were issued as late as the 19th century. The title of another contemporary children's book, Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes (1646), further indicates the religious tone of most of the children's literature of the period.

One of the most significant developments in children's literature was the use of illustrations. Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in Pictures), the first known children's picture book, was issued in Latin in 1658 by Czech educational reformer John Amos Comenius. An English translation appeared a year later. The book, illustrated by woodcuts, covers a wide range of subjects.

Classics of children's literature include adult books that also appeal to children or have been adapted for children. One is The Pilgrim's Progress (published in two parts, 1678 and 1684) by English author and preacher John Bunyan. It is a simple but forceful allegory of conflict between good and evil. Another is Robinson Crusoe (1719), the story of an ingenious and self-reliant castaway, by English novelist and journalist Daniel Defoe. This masterpiece served as a basis for another children's favorite, The Swiss Family Robinson (1812; translated 1814) by Swiss writer Johann Rudolf Wyss. Gulliver's Travels (1726), by Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift, which fascinates adults as a satire, is enjoyed by children for its fantasy. The first significant French children's book was Histoires ou contes du temps passé avec des moralités (1697; Stories or Tales from Olden Times, 1729), a collection of traditional fairy tales known also as Contes de ma mère l'oye (Tales of Mother Goose), by Charles Perrault. Its tales include “Sleeping Beauty,” “Cinderella,” ”Red Riding Hood,” and “Bluebeard.” The name Mother Goose became traditionally associated with nursery rhymes in England and the United States.

In the 18th century, English publisher John Newbery became the first to print attractive, inexpensive books for children. Containing stories, verses, puzzles, riddles, maxims, and lessons, the books sold in small paper-covered editions. Newbery's moral precepts were gentler and less forbidding than those promoted in the previous century. His best-known publications are The History of Little Goody Two Shoes (1765), erroneously credited to British author Oliver Goldsmith; A Little Pretty Pocketbook (1744); and Mother Goose's Melody (about 1765), reprinted in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1785.

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Until the late 18th century no clear distinction was made between instruction and entertainment in children's literature. Most stories and poems written for children were designed to convey useful information or moral advice. Largely because of the growth of religious freedom, especially in Great Britain and in the newly established American nation, and because of the egalitarian principles spread by the French Revolution (1789-1799), children's literature eventually became less didactic. A major influence in this development was French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, in his novel Émile (1762), pointed out that the mind of a child is not merely the mind of an adult in miniature, and that it must be considered on its own terms.

Authors influenced by Émile exhibited a tendency to overemphasize the guiding role of the wise and benevolent adult. An English example is The History of Sandford and Merton (3 volumes, 1783-1789) by Thomas Day. In this work the story is constantly interrupted by lengthy sermons that stress the work's educational purpose. A similar product of the Rousseau movement was the work of English novelist Maria Edgeworth, who wrote two collections of short stories for children, The Parent's Assistant (1796) and Moral Tales (1801).

Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) by English artist, poet, and mystic William Blake provide the first examples of literature concerned with the essential goodness of children in the spirit of Rousseau's educational philosophy. Blake's ideas on the innocence of children and their corruption by adult standards of belief and behavior are also derived from a blend of German mysticism, English Protestantism, and the political ideas of the French Revolution. Blake believed that passion, or feeling, according to the individual conscience, was superior to all intellectual rules. His writings and engravings were much too difficult for young readers to understand, but they influenced other authors and artists in the field of children's literature. Blake, like contemporary English poet William Wordsworth, portrayed childhood as a happy and virtuous time and considered growing up to be a saddening and complicated process.

III

The 19th and 20th Centuries

The romantic wave that swept Europe early in the 19th century also affected children's literature (see Romanticism). In Britain the writings of novelist Sir Walter Scott, who was noted for his tales of chivalry, were read with delight by older children. A revival of interest in the works of English playwright William Shakespeare resulted in one of the most popular children's books, Tales from Shakespeare (1807), consisting of versions of the Shakespeare stories by essayist Charles Lamb and his sister Mary Ann Lamb. Two American authors of the same period, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, wrote with historical vividness about the more recent American past. While their works were not written primarily for children, they became popular with young readers, and translations of the works of Cooper became favorites in Europe. Irving developed the legends of the Dutch settlers in New York State in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-1820), which contains the classic stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Cooper wrote about early American frontier life in his series known as the Leather-Stocking Tales, of which the most famous book is The Last of the Mohicans (1826).

Renewed interest in folklore, an aspect of the romantic movement, led to the enrichment of children's literature with myths, legends, and wonder stories. The German brothers Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm (see Grimm Brothers) made notable contributions in their volumes of stories known collectively in English as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Published between 1812 and 1815 and circulated in translations throughout the world, the volumes include tales such as “Hansel and Gretel,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “The Valiant Little Tailor,” and “Rapunzel.” More original and stylized versions of folktales were written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, whose collections appeared between 1835 and 1872; the first English translation was published in 1846. Some of the more famous Andersen stories are “Thumbelina,” “The Little Match-Girl,” “The Nightingale,” “The Red Shoes,” “The Ugly Duckling,” and “The Constant Tin Soldier.” American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne retold the classic myths of Greece in A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1852) and Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys (1853). In England, toward the end of the 19th century, Andrew Lang wrote one of the best-known collections of European fairy tales in a series of volumes beginning with the Blue Fairy Book (1889).

The avid response of children to myths and fairy stories demonstrated their wide range of imagination and their acceptance of both reality and fantasy. Edward Lear, English painter and author of limericks and nonsense verse, realized this and wrote works such as A Book of Nonsense (1846) and More Nonsense (1870). A combination of fantasy and humor was also achieved by English author and mathematician Lewis Carroll, pen name of Charles Dodgson, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872). According to some theories, the popularity of these works is to be accounted for by the mathematical logic underlying their fantasy; according to others, by the profound psychological perceptions in the fantasy. Above all, it is generally agreed that the two books are masterpieces of children's literature. The drawings of the original illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, made his name well known also.

British writer Oscar Wilde continued the creative fairy-tale tradition with The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Two other notable late-19th-century British writers for children were Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling. Stevenson's books Treasure Island (1883), A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), and Kidnapped (1886) have become classics, as have Kipling's animal stories in The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), and Just So Stories for Little Children (1902), based on the folk traditions of India. A number of poems by Kipling, especially “If,” are found in poetry anthologies for older children. In the United States during this period the most notable stories about animals were the dialect tales of Joel Chandler Harris in his Uncle Remus books (published between 1880 and 1906), in which he relied on the folk traditions of blacks in the South.

Fantasy continued to be a major mode of literature for children in the early 20th century. In 1900 L. Frank Baum published the first of his Wizard of Oz series. A perennial favorite with American children, the series was continued by other writers for many years after Baum's death. From his stage play Peter Pan (1904), a fantasy about a boy who refused to grow up, British novelist and dramatist Sir James Matthew Barrie adapted Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906) and Peter and Wendy (1911). Another fantasy that has become a classic is The Wind in the Willows (1908) by British writer Kenneth Grahame, which recounts the adventures of Rat, Mole, Badger, and their pompous friend Toad. English poet and novelist Walter de la Mare made a distinguished contribution to children's poetry with his Songs of Childhood (1902) and other collections. His anthology of children's poems Come Hither (1923) remains a classic, one of the most comprehensive of its kind.

Imaginative tales, based on the prowess of legendary figures such as Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry, Mike Fink, and Tony Beaver and on episodes in the life of the American pioneer Davy Crockett, continue to captivate American children. America Sings (1942) by poet and novelist Carl Lamson Carmer is an outstanding collection of such tales.

Realistic fiction includes two titles that have endured as childhood classics: Anne of Green Gables (1908) by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, about a spirited orphan growing up on Prince Edward Island, and The Secret Garden (1911) by American writer Frances Hodgson Burnett, which presents characters with whose development children can identify, as well as a story with a touch of mystery.

Several foreign children's classics have enriched English and American children's literature, including Heidi (1880; translated 1884) by Swiss writer Johanna Spyri, whose heroine is a spirited young girl living in the Swiss Alps; The Adventures of Pinocchio (1882; translated 1892) by Italian writer Carlo Lorenzini, better known as Carlo Collodi, whose hero is an irrepressible wooden puppet; and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (2 volumes, translated 1907) by Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, whose hero is a boy who rides over Sweden on the back of a goose. In another vein are books by late-19th-century French naturalist Jean Henri Fabre. These works, especially those about wasps, beetles, mason bees, and spiders, increased interest in science.

A

Illustrated Children's Books

A tradition of clear, colorful, and simple drawing for children in various styles gradually developed in the 19th century, especially in England. The more famous artists include Walter Crane, whose first series of toy picture books was issued between 1865 and 1873; Kate Greenaway, whose lovable children on flower-bedecked pages appeared in Kate Greenaway's Almanacs (1883-1897) and other books; and Randolph Caldecott, whose four-volume set of simple line drawings illustrating favorite nursery rhymes and works such as The Diverting History of John Gilpin, Three Jovial Huntsmen, and Come Lasses and Lads was published between 1878 and 1885.

Another outstanding British illustrator was Leslie Brooke, best known for the humorous, detailed animal drawings in his Johnny Crow's Garden (1903), Johnny Crow's Party (1907), Johnny Crow's New Garden (1935), and the collection The Golden Goose Book (1905). Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated books that have been called “classics in miniature,” including The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1900) and The Tailor of Gloucester (1902). The character of Peter Rabbit was adopted in stories written by Thornton Waldo Burgess, an American author of children's books on animals and wildlife.

B

Early Children's Magazines and Contributors

Magazines such as the American publications Youth's Companion, founded in 1827, and St. Nicholas, founded in 1873, were significant in the development of children's literature, and they continued their influence into the early years of the 20th century. The contributors included English writers such as Kipling; Americans Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Howard Pyle (who was noted also as an illustrator), and Oliver Wendell Holmes; and Canadian-born illustrator and author Palmer Cox, creator of the popular Brownies books.

Some American magazine contributors also became famous for their children's books. In Little Women (1868-1869), Alcott began a series of novels about New England family life that gained enduring popularity. Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) provides a lively picture of boyhood escapades in a Missouri town on the Mississippi River in the pre-Civil War era (before 1860). Twain's companion volume The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is considered by critics to be one of the masterpieces of American literature. Pyle's books retold English legends, as in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883) and The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903). Both are illustrated with his own drawings.

C

Fiction for Older Boys and Girls

Works of fiction written specifically for older boys and girls began to appear in the mid-19th century and became increasingly popular during the 20th century. The best known of such books include those by American author Horatio Alger, such as Ragged Dick (1867) and From Farm Boy to Senator (1882), based on the theme of success achieved through hard work and thrift. Other popular books for boys include the series about a schoolboy athlete named Frank Merriwell, written by Gilbert Patten under the pen name Burt L. Standish, and the series of adventure stories Onward and Upward by William Taylor Adams, who wrote under the pen name Oliver Optic. Love stories written for adolescent girls also first became popular in this period, notably Ramona (1884) by Helen Hunt Jackson and a series entitled What Katy Did by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who wrote under the pen name Susan Coolidge.

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