Le Théâtre d’Education was followed, in England, by Hannah More’s Sacred Dramas (1782).
Moral plays by the German Rousseauists, Engel and Weisse, were translated in The Juvenile Dramatist (1801), and Dramas for Children, imitated from the French of L. F. Jauffret, by the Editor of Tabart’s Popular Stories, was printed for M. J. Godwin, at the Juvenile Library, Skinner Street, in 1809. The table of contents includes “The Curious Girl;” “The Dangers of Gossipping”; “The Fib Found Out”; “The Little Coxcomb”.
These educational dramas are no more dramatic than the average moral tale. They may be regarded as a result of Rousseau’s realism, an effort on the part of educators to use the dramatic instincts of children to impress the lesson.
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Thomas Day (1748-1789) was educated at the Charter House and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was an intimate friend of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, although he had paid his addresses in turn to Honora and Elizabeth Sneyd, afterwards the second and third Mrs. Edgeworth.
Day was a member of Dr. Darwin’s literary circle at Lichfield, and was the author of verses and political pamphlets. The third edition of his poem “The Dying Negro” was dedicated to Jean Jacques Rousseau.
The History of Prince Lee Boo (1789) is an early example of this interest in coloured races. Children’s books of the early nineteenth century include many stories of the Slave Trade and adventures of Negroes. Some of the most popular were The Adventures of Congo (1823); Mary Ann Hedge’s Samboe; or, the African Boy (1823); Radama; or, the Enlightened African (1824).