I. The English Side.
Whatever change in children’s literature was now to take place was due entirely to the increasing importance of elementary education. A long while was to elapse before the author was wholly freed from the idea that situations could be dealt with, apart from any overbearing morale, and even then he found himself constrained to meet the problem of giving information—of teaching instead of preaching.
The interest in external nature, the desire to explain phenomena according to the dictates of belief, infused a new element into authorship for young people. But those writers brought to meet this latent stirring of the scientific spirit all the harness of the old régime. First they thought that they could explain the evident by parables, but they found that fact was too particular for generalisations, and the child mind too immature for such symbol. Then they attempted to define natural objects from a childish plane, making silly statements take the place of truth. They soon became aware that their simple style had to deal with a set of details that could not be sentimentalised.
The truth of the matter is that a new impulse was started; the national spirit began to move toward a more democratic goal; the rank and file began to look beyond the narrow hill and dale; women sought wider spheres; the poor demanded constitutional rights; energy began to stir from underneath. The word modern was in every one’s mind. The old order changeth, giving place to new. The child’s intellect must be furnished with food for its growth; Rousseau’s doctrine of “back to nature” was found not to have worked; it was realised that special training must begin early for all the walks of life. Carlyle was pleading for a public library, education was widening its sphere.
In the preceding pages, we have tried to establish a continuous line of development in children’s books through several centuries; upon such a foundation the English story and the American story of to-day are based. The table of English writers on page 147 contains names of minor importance, but still forming a part of the past history—foreshadowers of the new era. For therein you will discover that juvenile literature first begins to show signs of differing from adult literature only in its power; that where Macaulay tells the story of England in terms of maturity, Miss Strickland, Lady Callcott, Miss Tytler, and Miss Yonge adopt a descending scale. Where children were wont to act in accord with the catechism, they are now made to feel an interest in their surroundings. Mrs. Marcet writes for them “talks” on chemistry and political economy, Mrs. Wakefield on botany and insects. The extension of schools meant that literature must be supplied those schools; writers were encouraged in the same way that Miss More was prompted to produce her “Repository Tracts.” Grammars and histories began to flood the market, and in the wake of Scott’s novels, taking into consideration the fact that books were being written for the purpose of information, the child’s historical story was a natural consequence. Thus we discover the connection between “Waverley” and Henty. The death-blow to fairy tales in England, brought about by the didactic writers, resulted in a deplorable lack of imaginative literature for children, until a German influence, around 1840–1850, began to take effect, and the Grimms’ Household Tales afforded a new impulse.[41] Mrs. Gatty, author of the famous “Parables of Nature,” deigned to rejoice over the classic nonsense of Lewis Carroll. The line of descent can be drawn from Perrault to Grimm, from Grimm to Andrew Lang’s rainbow series of folk-lore.
The table is intended to do no more than indicate the gradual manner in which this break took effect. The student who would treat the evolution fully will find it necessary to place side by side with his discussion of individual books for young people, a full explanation of those social changes in English history which are the chief causes of the changes in English literature. Children’s books are subject to just those modifications which take place in the beliefs, the knowledge, and the aspirations of the adult person. The difference between the two is one of intensity and not of kind. The student will discover, after a study of the development of the common school, how and why the educational impulse dominated over all elements of pure imagination; how the retelling craze, given a large literary sanction by such a writer as Lamb, and so excellently upheld by Charles Kingsley, lost caste when brought within compass of the text-book. He will finally see how this educational pest has overrun America to a far greater extent than England, to the detriment of much that is worthy and of much which should by rights be made to constitute a children’s reading heritage.
ENGLISH TABLE
Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield. 1751–1832. Member of Society of Friends; philanthropic work among the poor. Author: Juvenile Anecdotes; Juvenile Travellers; Conversations; Introduction to Botany; Introduction to Insects; Present Condition of Female Sex, with Suggestions for Its Improvement; Life of William Penn. Reference: D. N. B.[42]
Frances Burney (Madame D’Arblay). 1752–1840. Reference: D. N. B.
William Fordyce Mavor. 1758–1837. Ed. 1799, juvenile periodical for Walker, Newbery. Reference: D. N. B.
Joanna Baillie. 1762–1851. Work among the poor made her known as Lady Bountiful. Reference: D. N. B.
Jeremiah Joyce. 1763–1816. Author: Lectures on the Microscope.
Mrs. Jane Marcet. 1769–1858. Macaulay wrote: “Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet’s little dialogues on political economy could teach Montague or Walpole many fine lessons in finance.” Author: Scientific text-books; Conversations on Chemistry intended for the Female Sex; Conversations on Political Economy, imitated by Harriet Martineau in her Illustrations of Political Economy. Reference: D. N. B.
Mrs. Barbara Hofland. 1770–1844. Imitated the Edgeworth style. Author: Emily; The Son of a Genius; Tales of a Manor; Young Crusoe. Reference: D. N. B.
Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood. 1775–1851. Stories and tracts evangelical in tone. With her sister, Mrs. Cameron, invented a type of story for rich and for poor. Author: The Fairchild Family (intended for the middle classes); Little Henry and His Bearer. Reference: New Review (May 18, 1843); Life of Mrs. Sherwood by her daughter; D. N. B. An edition of The Fairchild Family, New York, Stokes, $1.50.
Jane Porter. 1776–1850. Reference: D. N. B.
Maria Hack. 1778–1844. Quaker parentage. A believer in the “walk” species of literature. Author: Winter Evenings, or Tales of Travellers; First Lessons in English Grammar; Harry Beaufoy, or the Pupil of Nature. Reference: D. N. B.
Mrs. Elizabeth Penrose. 1780–1837. Pseud. Mrs. Markham. Daughter of a rector. One critic wrote: “Mrs. Penrose adapted her history to what she considered the needs of the young, and omitted scenes of cruelty and fraud, as hurtful to children, and party politics after the Revolution as too complicated for them to learn.” Author: Began school histories in 1823; these were brought up to date afterward by Mary Howitt. Moral Tales and Sermons for Children. Reference: D. N. B.
John Wilson Croker. 1780–1857. One of the founders of the Quarterly Review; reviewed abusively Keats’s Endymion. Author: Stories from the History of England, 1817, which supplied Scott with the idea for his Tales of a Grandfather; Irish Tales. Reference: Jenning’s Diaries and Correspondence of Croker (London, 1884); Internat. Encyclo.
Lady Maria Callcott. 1785–1842. Author: Little Arthur’s History of England. Reference: D. N. B.
Mary Russell Mitford. 1787–1855. Careful detail of description, akin to Dutch style of painting. Author: Tragedies; Village Stories; Juvenile Spectator. She was among the first women to adopt writing as a profession. Miss Yonge speaks of her “writing so deliciously of children,” but she “could not write for them.” Reference: D. N. B.; Recollections; Letters.
Agnes Strickland. 1796–1874. “With the exception of Jane Porter, whom she visited at Bristol, and with whom she carried on a frequent correspondence, and a casual meeting with Macaulay, whom she found congenial, she came little in contact with the authors of the day.” Author: Lives of the Queens of England; Two Rival Crusoes. [Note the hybrid type of story that sprung up around the real Robinson Crusoe.] Edited Fisher’s Juvenile Scrap Book, 1837–1839. Reference: D. N. B.
Mrs. May Sewell. 1797–1884. Left Society of Friends for the Church of England. Wrote homely ballads. Vide daughter, Anna Sewell. Author: Her ballad, Mother’s Last Words, circulated about 1,088,000 copies when it first appeared. Reference: Mod. Biog.
Mary Howitt. 1799–1888. Authorship linked with that of her husband. In 1837 began writing children’s stories and poems. Her daughter, Anna Mary, also was a writer of children’s books. Author: Translator of Fredrika Bremer’s novels; editor, Fisher’s Drawingroom Scrap Book. Reference: Reminiscences of My Later Life (Good Words, 1886); D. N. B.
Catherine Sinclair. 1800–1864. Fourth daughter of Sir John Sinclair. Her work considered the beginning of the modern spirit. A friend of Scott. Author: Holiday House; Modern Accomplishment; Modern Society; Modern Flirtations. Reference: A Brief Tribute to C. S. (Pamphlet); D. N. B.
G. P. R. James. 1801–1860. Influenced by Scott and encouraged by Irving. Thackeray parodied him in Barbazure, by G. P. R. Jeames, Esq., in Novels by Eminent Hands; also in Book of Snobs (chaps. ii and xvi). Author of a long list of novels.
Harriet Martineau. 1802–1876. Reference: D. N. B.
Mrs. Margaret Scott Gatty. 1809–1873. She was forty-two before she began to publish. Vide Ewing. Author: Aunt Judy Tales; Parables of Nature; 1866—Aunt Judy Magazine (monthly), continued after her death, with her daughter as editor; stopped in 1885. Reference: Life in ed. Parables (Everyman’s Library); Illustrated London News, Oct. 18, 1873; Athenæum, Oct. 11, 1873, p. 464; D. N. B.
Anna Sewell. 1820–1878. Author: Black Beauty (1877). Reference: D. N. B.
Charlotte M. Yonge. 1823-. Author: Heir of Redclyffe; The Kings of England; The Chaplet of Pearls.
Mrs. Mary Louisa Whateley. 1824–1889. Went to Cairo and lived from 1861–1889, where she had a Moslem school. Wrote chiefly about Egypt. Fairy tale influence. Author: Reverses; or, the Fairfax Family. Reference: Hays’ Women of To-day; London Times (March 12, 1889).
Mrs. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. 1826–1887. Pseudo-fairy tale writer. Author: Adventures of a Brownie, etc.
Juliana Horatio Ewing. 1841–1885. Reference: J. H. Ewing and Her Books, by Horatia K. T. Gatty; D. N. B.
Ann Fraser Tytler. Daughter of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselel. Author: Leila on the Island; Leila in England; Leila at Home.