A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

“The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the Learned in every Faculty are desired to observe that on the 1st of January, being New Year’s Day (Oh, that we may all lead new lives!), Mr. Newbery intends to publish the following important Volumes, bound and gilt, and hereby invites all his little Friends who are good to call for them at the Bible and Sun, in St. Paul’s Churchyard: but those who are naughty are to have none”.

Here follows a list of the “important Volumes”: “The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread: a little Boy who lived upon Learning;” Easter, Whitsuntide and Valentine “Gifts”; “The Fairing”; and after these an announcement of greater interest, that “there is in the Press and speedily will be published, either by Subscription or otherwise, as the Public shall please to determine, The History of Little Goody Two-shoes, otherwise called Margery Two-Shoes”.

The “Gifts” are so many variants of the Lilliputian Miscellany,[53] and as to Giles Gingerbread, there is nothing about him to attract a child, unless his name should conjure up a flavour of those gingerbread books sold at Fairs, which could be eaten when the reading grew tedious. The story (made to fit a penny chap-book) tells, without digression, how young Gingerbread learnt to read, that he might have a fine coach and emulate the success of one Sir Toby Wilson, who also was a poor man’s son.

But Goody Two-shoes, though it offers a similar prize for self-help, teaches no such politic morality. Indeed, it shows what can be done with the babies’ novel, by a writer who understands children and has a winning gift of humour; but for all that, it presents in epitome the whole Lilliputian Library.

The title-page at once proclaims its likeness to those records of triumphant virtue, the nursery “Richardsons”; the “Introduction” is a miniature essay on land-reform. Mr. Welsh, who reprinted Goody Two-Shoes in 1882, found an exact picture of the Deserted Village in the Parish of Mouldwell, where little Margery’s father suffers the “wicked Persecutions” of Sir Timothy Gripe and “an overgrown Farmer called Graspall”.

A passage at the close of the “Introduction” certainly lends some colour to the idea that it was a half-playful study of Goldsmith’s, for his serious argument:

“But what, says the Reader, can occasion all this? Do you intend this for children, Mr. Newbery? Why, do you suppose this is written by Mr. Newbery, Sir? This may come from another Hand. This is not the Book, Sir, mentioned in the Title, but the Introduction to that Book; and it is intended, Sir, not for those Sort of Children, but for Children of six Feet high, of which ... there are many Millions in the Kingdom”.

The change, after all, is merely from Lilliput to Brobdignag,—a voyage that represents no more difficulty to the editor than to Gulliver himself.

It is in Lilliputian pedagogy that the writer of Goody Two-Shoes has so completely outdistanced his fellows.

For although none of them could produce a more whole-hearted supporter of Locke’s theories than “little Two-Shoes”, she wastes no time in abstract reasoning, but puts them at once into practice.