A Short History of Children’s Literature

Or

A Short History of the ChildOr

Is there a good reason to read or know about stories published so many years

ago?

By ER deMACALE

What is “children’s literature?” What is “childhood?”

• Meaning of “childhood” is ideological—socially constructed, constantly evolving

• Books “for children” reflect dominant cultural ideals

• Reinforce ideas about behavior, morality, gender roles, class structure, etc.—shape reader

• Reflect ideological lens of writer, culture—not created in vacuum

The “Golden Age” of Children’s Literature

• Ideology of the nuclear family takes shape in early 19th century

• Home & family as haven in heartless world

• Source of stability in increasingly materialistic, fractious world

• Powerful “cult of childhood”—child as icon of “lost” innocence, emblematic of past golden age of humanity

• Tensions: hierarchies, gender, class, race, literary marketplace

What did “childhood” mean? Historical Highlights

• 400 years ago: children born in state of sin ; childhood reading about religious guidance, indoctrination

• 250-300 years ago: “invention of childhood” as modern concept; children’s minds “a blank slate”—fill with proper information—logical, didactic texts

• 200 years ago: children naturally innocent; moral compass to society—imaginative texts

• 40 years ago: children need to read about harsh realities of life

• The earliest literature that has some connection to children.

• These fables were supposedly first ascribed in the 4th century bce (before common era), but it was Phaedrus, in the first century ce (common era) who wrote these fables in Latin verse.

• Of course at this time, children were not seen as a recognized audience.

• Their childhood was just a training

ground for a harsh adulthood.

Ancient art piece showing Aesop and his infamous Fox.

Aesop Fables

Manuscript Book Production - 800- 1200’s (largely religious)

St. Anselm- 1033-1109 • This Archbishop of

Canterbury wrote instructions about how children should behave, along with concepts about natural science and religion.

• In print, he was a first to feel children needed spiritual guidance.

Secular Book Production by Manuscript 1300-1400’s

The Canterbury Tales are those very naughty, bawdy stories by Geoffrey Chaucer. He was a master storyteller and set the stage for the power of an entertaining story. Albeit, not a children’s story. Geoffrey wrote by manuscript between 1387 and 1400; before the printing press was invented. There are many handwritten copies of the tales that exist today. The Canterbury Tales could be called adventure stories ala ‘Desperate Housewives’ for the secular middle class. In 1476 the printer William Caxton returned to London from Germany, bringing with him the type and craftsmen needed to set up a printing press at Westminster, the first in England. The venture proved an instant success. Caxton published around 100 books. In 1476 he published Canterbury Tales in movable type book form.

The Horn Book1440’s

• Little Wooden Paddles with pasted lessons covered with soaked real cow horn.

• They were designed to teach children letters

• Religious instruction was also emphasized.

• These darlings even made it to the New World with Puritan Children

The Printing Press Invented by Johann Gutenberg in c1450, the printing press made the

mass publication and circulation of literature possible. This was good for the world and good for the beginning of children’s literature.

.William Caxton –First English Printer• He was the first to translate

French stories into English.

• In the 1470’s he printed Morte d’Arthur, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, Boke of Histories of Jason, Reynart the Foxe and Aesop’s Fables.

• He intended these for adults but they were stories that delighted children.

Chapbooks • Folded paper booklet sold by

peddlers (chapmen) which appeared in the 1580s continuing through the 1800’s.

• Some told stories such as Who Killed Cock Robin, and Jack the Giant Killer.

• Some of the later chapbooks were loved by the common folk and their children

• They were frowned upon by the upper classes and the Clergy.

• Chapbooks were timeless books of jest and tales that often sprang out of folklore.

The First Picture Book?Orbis Sensualium Pictus150 illustrated chapters on the

teaching of Latin in a child’s voice. It contained short sentences about many subjects of world.Come boy! Learn to be wise.What doth this mean, to be wise?To understand rightly, to do rightly,and to speak out rightly, all that are necessary.Before all things, thou oughtest to learn the plain sounds, of which mans speech consisteth; which living creatures know how to make, and thy tongue knoweth how to imitate, and thy hand can picture out.Afterwards we will go into the world, and we will view all things.

http://education.umn.edu/EdPA/iconics/Orbis/Default.htm

The Puritans, Perdition and Primers

The New England Primer

• This was a textbook used by students in New England and in other English settlements in North America. It was first printed in Boston in 1690 by Benjamin Harris who had published a similar volume in London. It was used by students into the 19th century. Over five million copies of the book were sold.

• Besides reading lessons, other lessons such as James Janeaway A Token for Children: being the exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful deaths of several young Children. To which is now added, Prayers and Graces, fitted for the use of little Children provided important religious instruction to children.

• In each of Janeway’s twenty stories, the youthful hero or heroine (aged 5 to approximately 15) dies after having led a short but admirable life. Aware of their approaching death and well-versed in Scripture, their final days are pious and eloquent. This makes the Lemony Snicket books downright cheerful.

"Mr. John Rogers, minister of the gospel in London, was the first martyr in Queen Mary’s reign, and was burnt at Smithfield, February 14, 1554. His wife with nine small children and one at her breast following him to the stake; with which sorrowful sight he was not in the least daunted, but with wonderful patience died courageously for the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Fairytales Can Come True They Can Happen to You

Late 1600’s – 1700’s• Histoires ou contes du

temps passé avec des moralitiés and Contes de ma Mére l’Oye.by Charles Perrault or his eldest son?

• Even though he title his book Tales of Mother Goose. There were no Mother Goose rhymes just eight very familiar fairy tales.

• Some of these earliest printed fairy tales were collected by Perrault -- including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Red Riding Hood.

• Perrault’s versions are a bit different than the retold tales of today.

• No hunter saves Little Red and War abounds in Sleeping Beauty.

John Newbery • Perrault’s Mother Goose (the fairy

tale version) is translated by a R. Samber became a beloved Chapbook.

• The English publisher, John Newbery was delighted by it and improved the standard in publishing with children in mind.

• Newbery published his own Mother Goose book of Nursery rhyme.

• He may have been the first to discover the child as a consumer.

• Newbery employed many great original artists and he and his successors (relatives) had up to 400 titles for children.

More Newbery ImprintsNewbery’s Tom Telescope The First Informational Book

Little Goody Two Shoes with its lessons was fun and there are many references to its pleasure by the prominent English.

Mother Goose Flies to the United States in 1785

• The Original Mother Goose Melody and other Newbery imprints are printed by Isaiah Thomas with delight, but perhaps not legally.

• He was called the Patriot Printer, but he could have been called the printer pirate.

• Thomas was known for using fine quality paper and doing fine quality printing.

• He printed the revolutionary newspaper The Massachusetts Spy 

The Adventure Storywas born with Crusoe(not intended for children but the theme was commandeered by them)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 1719The shipwrecked Alexander Selkirk was

marooned on an island. He had to find food, shelter and fight off wild animals. With his found friend, Friday, he learns about nature, nurture and survival.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift 1726Although a lampoon on British society, the child

appeal comes from humor and the fantastic Lilliputians and the land of Giants, Brobdingnag. Swift complete with chip on shoulder wrote with magnificent skill.

The Early Children’s Poets(a long way from Shel Silverstein)

William Blake 1789Songs of Innocence These poems gave a vehicle for his

fantastic art.

Ann and Jane Taylor 1804Original Poems for Infant Minds“Twinkle Twinkle little star..” is an

example of these fun loving poems.

William Roscoe 1807 The Butterfly’s BallThe story is minimal, but the pictures

delight.

Rousseau and Didacticism(or everything in life is a lesson, a lesson, a lesson)

• In 1762 Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote a book for children called Emile.

• It told a story of a child living free learning from experiences and activities out of doors.

• It changed people’s attitude toward children.• However, instead of writing about the magic

of childhood, they wrote stories that instructed about nature, religion, and morality.

• This pedantic writing was carried through by many authors. (Finley’s Elsie Dinsmore. Goodrich’s Peter Parley geographies, histories, biographies)

Folk, Fairytale and Myth(taking the old stories and enchanting children)

• Hans Christian Anderson -Wrote fanciful tales he heard in his life and added his own imaginative story lines.

• The Brother’s Grimm – Collected and wrote down the folk stories the common German people.

• Joseph Jacobs - Collector of tales from English folk.

• Andrew Lang - Rewritten fairytales • Nathanial Hawthorne – Retold

famous Greek Myths for children more in their voice in the Wonder Book for Girls and Boys and Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys

• Charles Kingsley – Retold the Greeks Myths closer in grandeur to the originals in The Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for My Children

An Arthur Rackham illustration of the Grimm tale, Hansel and Gretal (circa 1900)

Writers and Books of the 19th Century(moving beyond Elsie and Peter to truely great books for children)

The Delightful RhymesClement Moore – Night Before

Christmas 1822

Edward Lear – Book of Nonsense -1846

Lear’s absurd limericks and verses still delight children in the 21st Century

Heinrich Hoffmann –Struwwelpeter – Slovenly Peter – 1844Rhyming stories that are still in print.Robert Louis Stevenson – Child’s

Garden of Verses- 1885Hillaire Belloc – The Bad Child’s Book of

Beast - 1896

Writers and Books of the 19th and Early 20th Century(The Birth of the Classics, part one )

The Fantastics• Charles Kingsley – The Water-Babies -1863• Charles Dickens – The Magic Fishbone and A Christmas Carol 1843• Charles Dodgson – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking

Glass 1965• Jules Verne -Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea 1869• George McDonald – The Light Princess 1867 At the Back of the North Wind

1871• Joel Chandler Harris – Nights with Uncle Remus 1883• Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Books 1894 – Just So Stories 1902• C. Collodi – Pinocchio 1892• Edith Nesbit – The Story of the Treasure Seekers 1899• L. Frank Baum – The Wizard of OZ - 1900• Kenneth Graham – The Wind in the Willows 1902• James Barrie – Peter Pan 1904 - At first a play and 1912 a book called Peter

and Wendy

Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out. - L. Frank Baum in 1900

Writers and Books of the 19th and Early 20th Century(The Birth of the Classics, part two)

The Realists• Mary Mapes Dodge Hans Brinker 1865• Jules Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea 1867• Louisa May Alcott Little Women 1868• Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884• Anna Sewell Black Beauty 1877• Lucretia Hale The Peterkin Papers 1880• Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island – 1883• Howard Pyle The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood 1883 The Wonder Clock -1897

Men of Iron - 1887 Story of King Arthur1903• Johanna Spyri Heidi 1884• Frances Hodgson Burnett Little Lord Faunteroy 1885

Secret Garden 1888• Jack London The Call of the Wild 1903

The Early Illustrators or how the art of the picture shaped the Children’s Literature

• Leslie Brooke (1862-1940)

• Randolph Caldecott (1846-1901) • Walter Crane (1845-1915)

• George Cruikshank (1792-1878)

• Edmund Dulac (1882-1953)

• Kate Greenaway(1846-1901(Listed on the left)

• Kay Nielsen (1886-1957)

• Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)

• Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)

• Howard Pyle (1853-1911)

• Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)

• William Heath Robinson (1872-1944)

• Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935)

• Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914

Between the wars:1920 -1940

• Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920)

• A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)• P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins (1934)

• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit• Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big

Woods (1932)