CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

the body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain or instruct young people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories written exclusively for children, and fairy tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other primarily orally transmitted materials. Children's literature first clearly emerged as a distinct and independent form of literature in the second half of the 18th century, before which it had been at best only in an embryonic stage. During the 20th century, however, its growth has been so luxuriant as to make defensible its claim to be regarded with the respect-though perhaps not the solemnity-that is due any other recognized branch of literature. the body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain or instruct young people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories written exclusively for children, and fairy tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other primarily orally transmitted materials. Children's literature is a comparatively recent phenomenon, having emerged as a distinct and independent form only in the second half of the 18th century. Its late development may be traced to both economic and social factors. Before modern times children were widely regarded as simply diminutive or miniature adults, and a literature shaped to their unique needs and level of understanding was not thought to be necessary. Also, before the invention of printing, the making of books was simply too expensive and time-consuming to be used for any purpose involving children other than instructing them. Finally, it was only with the attainment of literacy by large numbers of people and the spread of mass education that there formed a market large enough to economically justify the creation and distribution of original works written specifically for young people. One of the first printed works of children's literature was the Moravian educator Comenius' Orbis Sensualim Pictus (1658; "The World of Pictures"), a teaching device that was also the first picture book for children. It embodied a novel insight: children's reading should be of a special order because children are different from adults in many respects. One of the earliest and most enduring classics of children's literature was Charles Perrault's fairy-tale collection entitled Contes de ma mre l'oye (1697), which was translated into English in 1729 as Tales of Mother Goose. Among its classic stories are "Cinderella," "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Sleeping Beauty," and "Puss in Boots." An English work considered to be the first novel written specifically for children, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, appeared in 1765. Among the most important early works for children in the Germanic languages was Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's folk-tale collection Kinder- und Hausmarchen (1812-22), which was translated into English as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Their stories include "Rumpelstiltskin," "Hansel and Gretel," and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." In the 1830s and '40s the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen wrote such fairy tales as "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Princess and the Pea." From these striking beginnings children's literature blossomed in the 19th century, particularly in western Europe and the United States, into a rich and complex genre serving children of all ages, from toddlers to adolescents. Among the more famous 19th-century works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll, Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain. Illustrations became a major part of children's books in the 19th century and were used, as they are now, to interest children in the stories and to help them visualize the characters and the action. The first modern picture book for children was The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901) by Beatrix Potter. In the 20th century the attainment of near-universal literacy in the developed nations guaranteed an audience of young readers numbering in the tens of millions. This century also witnessed major changes in both the marketing and content of children's books. The production of cheap hardcover and paperback books, the spread of children's bookshops, improvement of library services, the growth of serious attempts at reviewing children's books, and sophisticated marketing techniques have all combined to give children and adults greater access to, and information about, children's literature. The old moral tales have evolved into subtly didactic stories advocating racial and class understanding. Children's literature now embraces a child's imaginative world and daily environment, as well as certain ideas and sentiments characteristic of it. The population of this world is made up not only of children themselves but also of animated objects, plants, and grammatical and mathematical abstractions; toys, dolls, and puppets; real and chimerical animals; miniature or magnified humans; supernatural and fantasy figures; creatures of fairy tale, myth, and legend; and adults as seen through the child's eyes. Among the best-known authors of children's literature in the 20th century are Edward Stratemeyer, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), and Laura Ingalls Wilder of the United States; A.A. Milne and Kenneth Grahame of Great Britain; Jean de Brunhoff of France; and Erich Kstner of Germany. In the present day, children's literature almost rivals the diversity of popular adult literature, with books for young readers produced in such genres as science fiction, adventure, detective stories, animal stories, historical fiction, and stories dealing with social issues. Nonfiction genres such as biographies, histories, and encyclopaedias also have been written with a younger audience in mind. Additional reading Historical, critical (Europe): Bettina Hurlimann, Europische Kinderbcher in drei Jahrhunderten, 2nd ed. (1963; Eng. trans., Three Centuries of Children's Books in Europe, 1968). (England): Gillian Avery, Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children's Stories 1780-1900 (1965); Florence V. Barry, A Century of Children's Books (1922, reprinted 1968); Marcus Crouch, Treasure Seekers and Borrowers: Children's Books in Britain 1900-1960 (1962); F.J. Harvey Darton, Children's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life (1932); Roger Lancelyn Green, Tellers of Tales: British Authors of Children's Books from 1800 to 1964, rev. ed. (1965); Percy Muir, English Children's Books, 1600 to 1900 (1954); M.F. Thwaite, From Primer to Pleasure: An Introduction to the History of Children's Books in England, from the Invention of Printing to 1900 (1963); John Rowe Townsend, Written for Children: An Outline of English Children's Literature (1965). (Canada): Sheila Egoff, The Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Canadian Children's Literature in English (1967). (Anglo-American mainly): Cornelia Meigs et al., A Critical History of Children's Literature: A Survey of Children's Books in English from Earliest Times to the Present, rev. ed. (1969). (Germany): Irene Dyhrenfurth-Graebsch, Geschichte des deutschen Jugendbuches, 3rd rev. ed. (1967); H.L. Koster, Geschichte der deutschen Jugendliteratur (1968). (Sweden): Eva von Zweigbergk, Barnboken I Sverige 1750-1950 (1965). (France): Marie-Therese Latzarus, La Littrature enfantine en France dans la seconde moiti du XIXe sicle (1923); Jean de Trigon, Histoire de la littrature enfantine de ma Mre l'Oye au Roi Babar (1950). (Italy): Piero Bargellini, Canto alle rondini: panorama storico della letteratura infantile, 6th ed. (1967); Giuseppe Fanciulli, Scrittori per l'infanzia, 3rd ed. (1968); Louise Restieaux Hawkes, Before and After Pinocchio: A Study of Italian Children's Books (1933). (Spain): Carmen Bravo Villasante (ed.), Historia de la literatura infantil espaola (1963). (Latin America): Carmen Bravo Villasante, Historia y antologa de la literatura infantil iberoamericana, 2 vol. (1966); Dora Pastoriza de Etchebarne, El cuento en la literatura infantil, ensayo crtico (1962). General Richard Bamberger, Jugendlektre, 2nd ed. (1965); Eleanor Cameron, The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books (1969); Kornei Chukovsky, From Two to Five, rev. ed. (1968; Eng. trans. of the 20th Russian ed. of 1968); Hans Cornioley, Beitrge zur Jugendbuchkunde (1966); Margery Fisher, Intent upon Reading: A Critical Appraisal of Modern Fiction for Children (1961); Paul Hazard, Les Livres, les enfants et les hommes (1932; Eng. trans., Books, Children and Men, 4th ed., 1960); Enzo Petrini, Avviamento critico alla letteratura giovanile (1958); Lillian H. Smith, The Unreluctant Years: A Critical Approach to Children's Literature (1953); Dorothy M. White, Books Before Five (1954); Kay E. Vandergrift, Child and Story (1981). Bibliographic Virginia Haviland, Children's Literature: A Guide to Reference Sources (1966); Anne Pellowski, The World of Children's Literature (1968). Biographical Brian Doyle (ed.), The Who's Who of Children's Literature (1968); Muriel Fuller (ed.), More Junior Authors (1963); Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft (eds.), The Junior Book of Authors, 2nd ed. rev. (1951). Illustration Bettina Hurlimann, Die Welt im Bilderbuch (1965; Eng. trans., Picture-Book World, 1968); Lee Kingman, Joanna Foster, and Ruth Giles Lontoft (comps.), Illustrators of Children's Books: 1957-1966 (1968); Diana Klemin, The Art of Art for Children's Books: A Contemporary Survey (1966); Bertha E. Mahony et al. (comps.), Illustrators of Children's Books 1744-1945 (1947); Bertha Mahony Miller et al. (comps.), Illustrators of Children's Books, 1946-1956 (1958). Historical sketches of the major literatures England Overview The English have often confessed a certain reluctance to say good-bye to childhood. This curious national trait, baffling to their continental neighbours, may lie at the root of their supremacy in children's literature. Yet it remains a mystery. But, if it cannot be accounted for, it can be summed up. From the critic's vantage point, the English (as well as the Scots and the Welsh) must be credited with having originated or triumphed in more children's genres than any other country. They have excelled in the school story, two solid centuries of it, from Sarah Fielding's The Governess; or, The Little Female Academy (1745) to, say, C. Day Lewis' Otterbury Incident (1948) and including such milestones as Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857) and Kipling's Stalky & Co. (1899); and the boy's adventure story, with one undebatable world masterpiece in Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883), plus a solid line of talented practitioners, from the Victorian Robert Ballantyne (The Coral Island) to the contemporary Richard Church and Leon Garfield (Devil-in-the-Fog); the "girls' book," often trash but possessing in Charlotte M. Yonge at least one writer of exceptional vitality; historical fiction, from Marryat's vigorous but simple Children of the New Forest (1847) to the even more vigorous but burnished novels of Rosemary Sutcliff; the "vacation story," in which Arthur Ransome still remains unsurpassed; the doll story, from Margaret Gatty and Richard Henry Horne to the charming fancies of Rumer Godden and the remarkable serious development of this tiny genre in Pauline Clarke's Return of the Twelves (1962); the realism-cum-fantasy novel, for which E. Nesbit provided a classic, and P.L. Travers a modern, formulation; high fantasy (Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, Alan Garner); nonsense (Carroll again, Lear, Belloc); and nursery rhymes. In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the English furnished two archetypal narratives that have bred progeny all over the world, and in Mary Norton's Tom-Thumb-and-Gulliver-born The Borrowers (1952) a work of art. In Leslie Brooke (Johnny Crow's Garden) and Beatrix Potter (e.g., The Tale of Peter Rabbit) they have two geniuses of children's literature (and illustration) for very small children-probably the most difficult of all the genres. In poetry they begin at the top with William Blake and continue with Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Eleanor Farjeon, Walter de la Mare, A.A. Milne, and James Reeves. In the mutation of fantasy called whimsy, Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh) reappears as a master. In the important field of the animal story, Kipling, with his Jungle Books (1894, 1895) and Just So Stories (1902), remains unsurpassed. Finally the English have produced a number of unclassifiable masterpieces such as Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows (which is surely more than an animal story) and several unclassifiable writers (Mayne and Lucy Boston, for example). The social historian, surveying the same field from a different angle, would point out that the English were the first people in history to develop not only a self-conscious, independent children's literature but also the commercial institutions capable of supporting and furthering it. He would note the striking creative swing between didacticism and delight. He would detect the sources in ballads, chapbooks, nurses' rhymes, and street literature that have at critical moments prompted the imagination. What would perhaps interest him most is the way in which children's literature reflects, over more than two centuries, the child's constantly shifting position in society. Prehistory (early Middle Ages to 1712) "Children's books did not stand out by themselves as a clear but subordinate branch of English literature until the middle of the 18th century." At least one critic has used "prehistorical" to designate all children's books published in England up to 1744, when John Newbery offered A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. Before that, and as far back as the Middle Ages, children came in contact with schoolroom letters. There was the Anglo-Saxon theologian and historian the Venerable Bede, with his textbook on natural science, De natura rerum. There were the question-and-answer lesson books of the great English scholar Alcuin; the Colloquy of the English abbot Aelfric; the Elucidarium of the archbishop of Canterbury Anselm, often thought of as the first "encyclopaedia" for young people. Not until the mid-14th century was English (the genius of which somehow seems fitter than Latin for children's books) thought of as proper for literature. For his son "litel Lowis" Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in English the "Treatise on the Astrolabe" (1391). The English child was also afflicted, in the 15th and 16th centuries, by many "Books of Courtesy" (such as The Babees Boke, c. 1475), the ancestors of modern, equally ineffective manuals of conduct. Along with these instructional works, there flourished, at least from the very early Renaissance, an unofficial or popular literature. It may not have been meant for children but-no one quite knows how-children managed to recognize it as their own. It included fables, especially those of Aesop; folk legends, such as those in the much read Gesta Romanorum; bestiaries, which, along with Aesop, may be ancestral to that flourishing children's genre, the animal story; romances, often clustering around King Arthur and Robin Hood; fairy tales, of which Jack the Giant Killer was the type; and nursery rhymes, probably largely orally transmitted. Perhaps the most influential underground literature consisted of the chapbooks, low-priced folded sheets containing ballads and romances (Bevis of Southampton, and The Seven Champions of Christendom were favourites), sold by wandering hawkers and peddlers. They fed the imagination of the poor, old and young, from Queen Anne's reign almost through Queen Victoria's. These native products of fancy were, in the early 18th century, reinforced by the first English translations of the classically simple French fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the more self-conscious ones of Madame D'Aulnoy. Against this primitive literature of entertainment stands a primitive literature of didacticism stretching back to the early Middle Ages. This underwent a Puritan mutation after the Restoration. It is typified by that classic for the potentially damned child, A Token for Children (1671), by James Janeway. The Puritan outlook was elevated by Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), which, often in simplified form, was either forced upon children or more probably actually enjoyed by them in lieu of anything better. Mrs. Overtheway (in Juliana Ewing's Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances, 1869), recalling her childhood reading, refers to it as "that book of wondrous fascination." A softened Puritanism also reveals itself in Bunyan's Book for Boys and Girls: or, Country Rhymes for Children (1686), as well as the Divine and Moral Songs for Children by the hymn composer Isaac Watts, whose "How doth the little busy bee" still exhales a faint endearing charm. The entire pre-1744 period is redeemed by two works of genius. Neither Robinson Crusoe nor Gulliver's Travels was meant for children. Immediately abridged and bowdlerized, they were seized upon by the prosperous young. The poorer ones, the great majority, had to wait for the beginning of the cheap reprint era. Both books fathered an immense progeny in the children's field. Defoe engendered a whole school of "Robinsonnades" in most European countries, the most famous example being Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson (1812-13). On the whole, during the millennium separating Alcuin from Newbery, the child's mind was thought of, if at all, as something to be improved; his imagination as something to be shielded; his soul as something to be saved. And on the whole the child's mind, imagination, and soul resisted, persisted, and somehow, whether in a dog-eared penny history of The Babes in the Wood or the matchless chronicle of Gulliver among the Lilliputians, found its own nourishment.