(Classics of children's literature, 1621-1932)
Reprint of the 1902 ed. published by Longmans, Green, London, New York.
"Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), bibliography of his books for children": p.
SUMMARY: A collection of forty-seven poems about subjects and experiences familiar to children.
[1. English poetry] I. Title. II. Series.
[PR6007.E3S6 1976] 821'.9'12 75-32200
ISBN 0-8240-2310-2
Printed in the United States of America
Preface
The Romantic poets rediscovered a pastoral and Biblical dream: that a child was the most innocent and the wisest of us all. Wordsworth hailed him as "Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!" And in the next generation Victorian novelists took that dream seriously enough to make children the heroes and heroines of their most searching fictions. There had been no "children's literature" to speak of before, except for the oral and "popular" tradition, including lullabies and Mother Goose, some of which go back as far as Tudor and even medieval times.
Children's literature today is an immense and complex domain; and leaving aside for the present the works composed by children themselves, what remains varies tremendously in skill and delight, as well as in subtlety and intention. So I shall also set aside those minimal "vocabulary-building" tales and verses whose small virtues are rarely more than therapeutic, and direct myself only to that specialized but most important category—poems written by a skilled and adult poet but addressed to an audience of children who are likely to be read to until they are skillful enough to read the same verses for themselves.