THE CONCEPT OF CHILDHOOD REFLECTED IN BRITISH CHILDREN’S
LITERATURE: 1750-1800

By
Linda Roth

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standards:

_________________________________________________
Tina Block (Ph.D.), Thesis Supervisor, History

_________________________________________________
Elizabeth Reimer (Ph.D.), Reader, English

_______________________________________________
Cindy Piwowar (M.Ed.), Reader, Education

_______________________________________________
Annette Dominik (Ph.D.), Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Studies
Dated this 21st day of April, 2021, in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada

ACKNOWLEDGEMNTS
I would like to sincerely thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Tina Block for her guidance, support,
and encouragement throughout this project. Her expertise was invaluable as I navigated my
way through this research paper! I would also like to thank Dr. Annette Dominik, Interdisciplinary Studies Coordinator, for her direction in working through the processes of formulating
a research topic for this paper, especially during the early stages. I would also like to
acknowledge Dr. Elizabeth Reimer and Ms. Cindy Piwowar for sharing their knowledge within
their specific disciplines and for taking the time to attend my defense. Finally, I would like to
thank my family and friends for their unending encouragement and support.

ii

DEDICATION
I dedicate this to my family and especially my husband, Terry, for his continual encouragement
and support during the years of my university education. I could not have completed this degree
program without him being there for me throughout this process, especially during this final
research project. I thank him for his enthusiasm and all the many great conversations we had
as I navigated through my university courses!

iii

ABSTRACT
During the eighteenth century in England, a dramatic shift occurred in the perception of the
child from that of a miniature adult, inherently errant, to the view of the child as virtuous, closer
than adults to God and to nature, and that childhood is a separate and celebrated stage of life.
This paper explores how and why this shift occurred by engaging children’s literature of the
period as a focus of analysis. My paper situates research on this topic within the historical
context and demonstrates that the shift in perception was in response to philosophical, reli-

gious, scientific, economic, and political markers prior to and during the eighteenth-century in
England. Historical markers, including the Puritan influence, the Enlightenment philosophies,
the Industrial and French Revolutions, and Romanticism, affected and shaped both the perceptions of the child and children’s literature during the eighteenth century. My study attempts to
show that it is through an analysis of children’s literature prominent during the mid to late
1700s within the historical context that we can have a more comprehensive understanding of
how and why the shift in the construction of the child and childhood occurred. I aim to show
how this shift is reflected and shaped in the writings of six influential British authors, widely

read during the mid to late eighteenth-century: James Janeway, John Newbery, Sarah Trimmer,
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Thomas Day, and William Wordsworth.
Thesis Supervisor: Professor Tina Block

iv

METHODOLOGY
Based on the idea that children’s literature both reflected and shaped the conceptualization of
the child within the historical context, my paper analyzes a selection of writings of prominent
authors of the time period. Multiple and often conflicting views of the child appear throughout
the period and are presented in the writings of the influential authors included in this research.
Authors selected clearly reflect various viewpoints of childhood within the historical context
of the time and contributed to changing trends and innovative thoughts and approaches. Employing an interdisciplinary methodology, I draw on research within the discipline of History
to establish the contextual changes that occurred before and during eighteenth-century England, and the discipline of English to investigate the conceptualization of childhood through
the lens of British children’s literature of the period. I argue that an exploration of prominent
children’s literature of the mid to late 1700s within the historical context creates a more comprehensive understanding of how and why the shift in the construction of childhood occurred.
Choosing among the many authors of this period and selecting the primary works to focus on

has inherent limitations. Selections were made by considering the historical shifts in philosophical thought during the eighteenth century and drawing on the works of influential writers who
mirrored the varying ideologies of childhood. Although the authors selected are primarily from
the mid to late 1700s, I have included the work of Puritan minister James Janeway, who wrote
during the late 1600s, because of the longevity and influence of his writings. According to
Matthew O. Grenby, Janeway’s A Token for Children (1672) remained in print throughout the
eighteenth century and is recorded as influential in the rise of Puritan literature of the late
1700s.1 I have also included one work by William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortal-

ity from Recollections of Early Childhood, completed in 1804, for its concise depiction of the
child of the Romantic era. Secondary sources include the historiography of childhood and of
children’s literature as presented in the research of Philippe Aries, Hugh Cunningham, Jackie
C. Horne, Adrienne E. Gavin, M.O. Grenby, and Peter Coveney, among others. Background
historical information is included to establish an introductory foundation for the eighteenth
century and answers questions of how and why certain ideologies were present throughout the
1700s. My analysis of the research shows a transparent connection among prominent historical
movements, philosophical thought, shifting views of childhood, and children’s literature of the

1

M. O. Grenby, The Child Reader 1700-1840, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 86.

v

period. The diverse contributions made by the selected authors had a major influence on the
changing image of the child within the historical context of the eighteenth century.

vi

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMNTS ...................................................................................................... ii
DEDICATION........................................................................................................................ iii
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................iv
METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................. v
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. viii
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 1
OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................. 3
PERCEPTIONS OF CHILDHOOD PRIOR TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY:
PHILIPPE ARIES ................................................................................................................... 6
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AND CHILDHOOD .......... 8
THE ENLIGHTENMENT .................................................................................................... 10
JAMES JANEWAY ............................................................................................................... 14
JOHN NEWBERY ................................................................................................................. 16
SARAH TRIMMER .............................................................................................................. 25
ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD .......................................................................................... 29
THOMAS DAY ...................................................................................................................... 34
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH .............................................................................................. 40
THE MARKET FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE ....................................................... 43
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 45

vii

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. A Pretty Little Pocket-Book……………………………………………………….19
Figure 2. Hornbook…………………………………………………………………………..43
Figure 3. ABC with Colored Figures………………………………………………………...44

viii

INTRODUCTION
In England, the history of childhood is a topic that was not explored to a great extent
prior to the eighteenth century.2 While there are recorded histories of early schools in England,
these contain little information about the social aspects of England’s founding educational institutions.3 By the latter half of the eighteenth century, the world of children and the perception
of childhood had changed significantly from the previous century. This paper explores the shift
in the concept of childhood as reflected in children’s literature in Britain in the last half of the
eighteenth century. I aim to demonstrate the connection between the emergence of childhood
as a separate and significant stage of development and the historical markers in philosophical,
religious, and educational thought in British society. Four primary concepts emerged regarding
children and childhood throughout the eighteenth century in England. The first concept was a
concern for the salvation of the child’s soul. A substantial volume of didactic religious material
was written fashioned within the Christian doctrine of original sin, that children are born inherently sinful. Second, literature emerges during the seventeenth century based on the theories
of John Locke that the child is born as a tabula rasa, or blank slate.4 Locke emphasized the
adult’s role in guiding the child toward the rational adult he or she would become. The child
was considered as a small adult and as a rational being. The nature of the child as a child was
seldom considered.5 Third, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s approach differed from Locke’s in that
Rousseau maintained children were born, as Peter Coveney writes, “with natural tendencies to
virtue from birth.”6 Rousseau recognized children had unique innate talents and abilities that
would emerge naturally. In Emile, Rousseau writes:
Nature would have them children before they are men. If we try to invert this order
we shall produce a forced fruit immature and flavourless, fruit which will be rotten
before it is ripe; we shall have young doctors and old children. Childhood has its own
ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling; nothing is more foolish than to try and substitute
our ways;7

J.H. Plumb, “The New World of Children in Eighteenth-Century England,” Past & Present, no. 67
(May 1975): 64, https://www.jstor.org/stabl/650233.
3
Plumb, “New World,” 64.
4
Peter Coveney, The Image of Childhood: The Individual and Society: a Study of the Theme in
English Literature (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967), 41.
5
Coveney, The Image of Childhood, 40.
6
Ibid., 43.
7
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Barbara Foxley, Emile, Or, On Education, (Waiheke Island: The
Floating Press, 2009): 119, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=313733&site=eds-live&scope=site.
2

1

The fourth concept, appearing near the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth
century during the period of Romanticism, was of the child as virtuous and close to nature, and
childhood was seen as a separate and celebrated stage of life. Naomi Wood relates that “[s]ome
writers [of the Victorian period] figured children idealistically as superior to adults, as angels
on earth sent by heaven to be models of innocence and purity, untouched by the fall into adulthood.”8 These four concepts represent distinct ideologies about the child and childhood, several
of which appeared concurrently, and are reflected in selected children’s literature of the eighteenth century in my research.
The popular and influential literature for children during the eighteenth century by the
selected authors, James Janeway, John Newbery, Sarah Trimmer, Anna Barbauld, Thomas
Day, and William Wordsworth, had multiple printings over many decades. Research shows
several of these authors’ writings were included in circulating libraries in Britain into the second decade of the 1800s, including works by Trimmer, Barbauld, and Day.9 Circulating libraries became popular all over Britain during the 1700s, many in conjunction with publishing
companies. However, few of these libraries had more than a handful of children’s books before

the mid-1800s.10 According to Grenby, proprietors of circulating libraries were conscientious
of the materials they offered to the public. Grenby states:
[I]t is…possible that proprietors would be reluctant to cater to children for fear that
they would be making themselves vulnerable to even more severe criticism than they
were receiving already. It need hardly be said that during the late eighteenth century,
there was a sustained and often vociferous debate over what children ought to read.11
Plumb relates that children’s literature of the mid to late eighteenth century “was designed to
attract adults, to project an image of those virtues which parents wished to inculcate in their
offspring…the new children’s literature was aimed at the young, but only through the refraction of the parental eye.”12 Of the literature included in circulating libraries of the 1700s,
Grenby writes that “the books had to be carefully chosen, and, above all, that the choice of
reading matter had to be supervised.”13 The inclusion of works by Trimmer, Barbauld, and

Naomi Wood, “Angelic, Atavistic, Human: The Child the Victorian Period,” in The Child in British
Literature, ed. Adrienne E. Gavin (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2012), 116.
9
M.O. Grenby, The Child Reader, 165-167.
10
M.O.Grenby, “Adults Only? Children and Children’s Books in British Circulating Libraries, 17481848,” Book History, vol. 5 (2002): 20, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30228184.
11
Grenby, “Adults Only?” 27.
12
Plumb, “The New World,” 81-82
13
M.O. Grenby, The Child Reader, 162.
8

2

Day, during a time of increased scrutiny in the type of reading material offered to children,
attests to the lasting popularity and influence of these authors.
Theories of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau illuminate varied and changing
educational, religious, and philosophical thought throughout the eighteenth century. The influence of these philosophers in society’s interpretation of childhood and in the construction of
children’s literature is monumental. Children’s literature popular during the 1700s both reflects
and is shaped by the varied expressions in religious and educational thought and practice and
includes the doctrine of original sin embraced by the Puritans, the educational tenants of Locke
and Rousseau, and the view of the child of the Romantic period. Roderick McGillis categorizes
concepts of childhood succinctly in “Irony and Performance: The Romantic Child.” McGillis
states:
If we categorize conceptions of ‘the child’ from the seventeenth century, then we might
have the Puritan child as a ‘brand of hell’ (James Janeway), the Enlightenment
child of reason based on the association of the senses (John Locke), the natural child
connected to the world (Jean-Jacques Rousseau), and the Romantic child that we see
in Wordsworth’s ‘Ode’ who represents imagination and innocence.14

The philosophies of Locke and Rousseau on the nature of the child present defining markers
in philosophical thought evident in the children’s literature explored in this thesis. The impact
of these Enlightenment thinkers runs as a thread through the writings of John Newbery, Sarah
Trimmer, Anna Barbauld, Thomas Day, and William Wordsworth. I aim to show that the construction of childhood is better understood through an examination of the interconnection between historical markers, including the philosophies of Locke and Rousseau, and literature for
children published during the eighteenth century. It is through an understanding of these connections that we have better insight into how and why a shift in the construction of childhood

occurred.
OVERVIEW
Trends in religious and educational thought and practice in British society from the late
seventeenth century throughout the eighteenth century shaped social attitudes towards the concept of childhood. A predominant doctrine practiced in many religious circles in England from
the 1600s forward was that of original sin: that all carry the presence of sin from birth. A focus

Roderick McGillis, “Irony and Performance: The Romantic Child” in The Child in British
Literature, ed. Adrienne E. Gavin (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 102.
14

3

on the moral and spiritual condition of the child is reflected in early printed material for children. For example, in Benjamin Harris’s the Primer, a common text used to teach reading in
the 1680s, the entry for the letter A reads, “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All.”15 According to
Demers, the Primer was the forerunner of the immensely popular and widely used The New
England Primer (1683-1830), which had sales of three million copies over the course of its
history.16 Differing views regarding education emerged in the influential writings of John
Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Their innovative approaches led to understanding childhood in a manner previously undefined. J.H. Plumb articulates that Locke’s theories strengthened a “new social attitude towards children.”17 Locke’s Some Thoughts on Education (1693)
presents the child as born neutral, a blank slate, but with the need to be guided and taught by
parents and teachers towards the rational adult he or she would become. According to Plumb,
Locke’s treatise Some Thoughts on Education “exercised immense influence from the moment
it was published. It was reprinted nineteen times before 1761, and during the same period there
were thirteen editions in French and five in Italian.”18 Locke’s approach views the child as a
rational being and stresses the importance of experiential learning rather than rote memoriza-

tion. Rousseau’s view is that the original nature of the child was innocence.19 In Emile, Rousseau states, “Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world but
degenerates once it gets into the hands of man.”20 In Locke’s and Rousseau’s approaches, a
sense of morality is still foremost, not as a religious duty to counter original sin so much, but
more as a social propriety. The views of both Locke and Rousseau are reflected in several
children’s books in the eighteenth century that are examined in this paper.
From the 1600s, to the Age of Enlightenment in the 1700s, and into the Romantic era
in the latter part of the eighteenth century, a dramatic shift occurred in the role of children and

the place of childhood in society. In the agrarian society of England prior to the seventeenth
century all members of the typical peasant family were engaged in agrarian tasks, and children
moved into adult society at a very early age. However, towards the end of eighteenth-century,
with the increase in industrialization, the rise in religious fervour, and the interest in schooling
for children of the labouring class, a new approach to childhood emerged. Along with this
Patricia Demers, From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children’s Literature to 1850 (Don
Mills: Oxford University Press, 2008), 74.
16
Demers, Instruction to Delight, 73.
17
Plumb, “The New World,” 65.
18
Ibid., footnote 23, 69.
19
Coveney, Image of Childhood, 44.
20
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or, Concerning Education (1762) [10],
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165rouss-em.html.
15

4

interest in schooling came an increased demand for printed literature for education and literacy.
A separate literature for children emerged during the mid-1700s in Britain and by the end of
the eighteenth century, children’s literature was a thriving part of the publishing industry.21 In
addition to writings designed to support the child’s religious grounding, other literature for
children emerged which reflected the increased understanding of how children learn as depicted in the writings of Locke and Rousseau. Sarah Trimmer and Anna Laetitia Barbauld were
prolific writers during the Evangelical movement of the late eighteenth century.22 Their published books were used in schools that they helped to establish. Their books, discussed later in
this paper, reflected and shaped new ideas of childhood and of innovative ways of teaching,
which emerged in the last half of the eighteenth century. According to Hugh Cunningham,
historian Philippe Aries had “no doubts that the influence of moralists in spreading the idea
and practice of schooling was fundamental to the emergence of modern ideas of childhood.”23
Towards the end of the 1700s, with expanding middle-class values and the Romantic
ideal of children as closer to nature, the gap between children and adults widened, compared
to early eighteenth century. The gap between the labouring class and the genteel class also

widened.24 By the late 1700s and the era of Romanticism, a heightened sense of the importance
of childhood emerged. Romantic writers such as William Blake and William Wordsworth characterized a different concept of childhood: “a child depicted not within the context of an ordinary emotional family life, but rather as a being apart….[T]he early Romantic poets…drew
upon and expanded Rousseau’s construction of the inherently virtuous child of nature.”25 Children were viewed as being in a separate category from the adults around them and were regarded, as Cunningham expresses, as “messengers of God, and that childhood was therefore
the best time of life.”26 This progression of the construction of childhood throughout the eight-

eenth century developed gradually, often with different and conflicting approaches to childhood occurring concurrently.27
M.O. Grenby, “The Origins of Children’s Literature,” Discovering Literature: Romantics and
Victorians (May 15, 2014), https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-origins-ofchildrens-literature.
22
Carrie Hintz and Eric L. Tribunella, Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction
(Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2019), 96-97.
23
Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (London: Routledge,
2014), 8.
24
Jackie Horne, History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature
(London: Routledge, 2011), 8-9.
25
Horne, History and Construction, 94-95.
26
Cunningham, Children and Childhood, 41.
27
Adrienne Gavin, The Child in British Literature: Literary Constructions of Childhood, Medieval to
Contemporary (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 3.
21

5

PERCEPTIONS OF CHILDHOOD PRIOR TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY:
PHILIPPE ARIES
It is relevant to this research to briefly explore perceptions of childhood prior to the
eighteenth century. Exactly when the concept of childhood emerged is difficult to determine.
Insights into the nature of childhood as perceived during the late 1600s and early 1700s are
based on limited tools of analysis. One of the foundational works in this area is historian
Philippe Aries’s Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life published in 1962.
Historical art is one of the indicators Aries points to in understanding society’s conceptualization of childhood. Aries notes the lack of children as subjects in art before the twelfth century
and concludes:
This undoubtedly means that the men of the tenth and eleventh centuries did not dwell
on the image of childhood, and that that image had neither interest nor even reality for
them. It suggests too that in the realm of real life, and not simply in that of aesthetic
transposition, childhood was a period of transition which passed quickly and which was
just as quickly forgotten.28
Aries maintains that it is “probable that there was no place for childhood in the medieval

world”29 and that, “[i]n medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist.”30
Debates concerning Aries’ conclusions have arisen in recent historiography. For example, Daniel T. Kline challenges the claim that the idea of childhood did not exist in medieval
society. Kline cites references to children in Middle English texts and writes that children had
a “place and function…in the broader society,” joining the family at birth and the extended
social network at baptism, a ceremony which designated important responsibilities of the godparents for the child’s spiritual upbringing and physical protection.31 Kline points to references
which show concern for “parenting, childhood, and affective relations” and attending to the

“spiritual and social needs of a wayward son” in Margery Kempe’s Book (1436-38).32 Kline
relates a reference to rudimentary education in Chaucer’s “The Clerks Tale”33 and to the inclusion of boys and girls in lessons of courtesy and conduct in the later Middle Ages.34 Kline

28

Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage
Books, 1962), 34.
29
Aries, Centuries, 33.
30
Ibid., 128.
31
Daniel T. Kline, “‘That child may doon to fadres reverence’: Children and Childhood in Middle
English Literature,” in The Child in British Literature, ed. Adrienne E. Gavin (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012), 23.
32
Kline, “That child,” 23.
33
Ibid., 22.
34
30.

6

opens the conversation regarding children and childhood in the Middle Ages to include an
“analysis of the social conditions for making children observable.”35 Kline’s insight gives an
added focus of analysis to Aries’s use of images in portraits.
Aries demonstrates how art throughout the thirteenth century portrayed children as
adults miniature in size and scale.36 This concept is seen in the iconographic depictions of the
Infant Jesus in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With the emergence of sentimental realism
in religious art from the fourteenth century forward, designed to evoke an emotional response
in the viewer, anecdotal depictions of mother and child moved toward a more accurate physical
likeness in feature and scale, often fitted in adult-styled attire. Around this period, a view of
the child emerged that was different from earlier centuries. By the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, children, particularly in upper-class society, were portrayed in dress that separated,
rather than equated, them with adults, thus conveying childhood as more of a distinct category.
Aries states, “[a] new concept of childhood had appeared, in which the child, on account of his
sweetness, simplicity and drollery became a source of amusement and relaxation for the
adult.”37 However, in the seventeenth century, a change in focus appeared, ascribed to by reli-

gious moralists and educators concerned with the child’s moral well-being. An emphasis on
manners, direction, and moral discipline was central. Moralists in the seventeenth century
viewed children as “fragile creatures of God who needed to be both safeguarded and reformed.”38 Aries concludes that by mid-eighteenth century, “[n]ot only the child’s future but
his presence and his very existence are of concern: the child has taken a central place in the
family.”39 Although Aries’ conclusions regarding the emergence of the concept of childhood
as a separate stage are both supported and debated by historians, Centuries of Childhood: A
Social History of Family Life, remains one of the earliest and most comprehensive works on

the history of family, childhood, and society in France and England from medieval times into
the mid-1900s.

35

34.
Aries, 33.
37
129.
38
131, 133.
39
133.
36

7

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AND CHILDHOOD
Scholars debate the definition of children’s literature and when it first appeared. Grenby
asserts that “according to most histories, a recognizable modern children’s literature was not
invented until the middle of the eighteenth century.”40 Darton suggests that children’s books
are defined as works “produce ostensibly to give children spontaneous pleasure, and not primarily to teach them, nor solely to make them good.”41 By this narrow definition, Darton excludes schoolbooks, moral and didactic texts, and many primers, and alphabet books, unless

designed to evoke amusement. Another perspective expressed by Daniel T. Kline, in his Medieval Literature for Children, includes instructional texts “because of the prominent didactic
streak that runs through the history of children’s literature, from the Middle Ages to the present.”42 It is within Kline’s broader definition of children’s literature, which I ascribe to in this
paper, that a more complete understanding of the conceptualization of the child and childhood
is achieved.
Aesop’s Fables were first printed in England in 1484 by William Caxton, though they
were not originally meant for children. Frederick Darton explains, “Caxton simply printed good

literature for plain Englishmen to read, as he had seen ordinary people reading on the Continent. He chose fables.” 43 In the later 1500s English school versions of the fables were used for
teaching both English and Latin.44 Schoolmaster John Brinsley translated a version of Aesop’s
in 1624 “for grammar-school use, for scholars of from seven to fifteen. By seven years of age
they were to have learned ‘the Abcie and Primer’ —before going to the grammar school —
and by fifteen they were to be ready for the University.”45 The focus of Brinsley’s Aesop’s as
a school text was to teach the alphabet and to impart moral lessons. Darton further explains
that it was not until the 1800s that illustrated editions of the fables were published as children’s
books.46
Darton maintains that books written for children before the seventeenth century were
aimed towards:

40

Grenby, The Child Reader, 93.
Frederick J. H. Darton, Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1932), 1.
42
Daniel T. Kline, Medieval Literature for Children (Routledge: 2003), 3, cited in Hintz and
Tribunella, 83.
43
Darton, Children’s Books, 10.
44
Ibid., 11.
45
12.
46
10.
41

8

those who could take a suitable place in good society, and those who would in one
way or other serve the Church. Girls had not much future beyond the domestic arts, or
wifehood and motherhood, or a nunnery….A well-born lad could become a squire, a
lowly one a monk or a minor servant outside orders or vows: that is, if they received
any education at all.47
The duration of the period from childhood to that which implies adult characteristics
and responsibilities prior to the seventeenth century was short spanned compared to that of the
eighteenth century. Research on childhood in the German middle ages indicates:
there was indeed a concept of childhood in the middle ages, but that it differed fundamentally from anything we instinctively think. Childhood, in this perspective, was important not in itself but for what observation of childish traits (courage, modesty, and
so on) might tell you about the adult to be….The child was a person lacking in adult at
tributes, marked by her or his deficiencies.48
Books of Courtesy, common during the seventeenth century, dwelt on forming the social
aspects of morals and behaviour in children.
To understand what childhood was like for younger children during the middle ages,
an interesting study of coroner’s records from a number of locations in England was completed

by Barbara Hanawalt. Her research reveals much about the every-day life of young children.
This study also incorporates age as a category of analysis. In an examination of the records,
Hanawalt notes:
[F]rom ages four to seven, children spent more time with their parents [than during
ages two to four], but the accidents they suffered suggest that play was their chief occupation. From ages eight to twelve, children were more likely to be independent
from adults, starting work.49
Hugh Cunningham, referring to childhood from the twelfth century onward, contends “there
was no feeling that the world of childhood should be kept separate from that of adults” unlike
in later centuries.50 Cunningham illustrates that the shift in dominant perceptions of childhood
from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries led to:
a heightened sense of the importance of childhood which manifested itself in a variety
of ways: in a belief in the importance of early education; in a concern for the salvation
of the child’s soul; in a growing interest in the way children learn; and in a sense that
children were messengers of God, and that childhood was therefore the best time of

47

43-44.
J.A. Schultz, The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages, 1100-1350 (Philadelphia,
1995), cited in Cunningham 34.
49
B.A. Hanawalt, “Childrearing among the lower classes of late medieval England,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History VIII (1977-8), 1-22, cited in Cunningham 34-35.
50
Cunningham, 32.
48

9

life. Each of these can be linked to major movements in European and American history, the Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Enlightenment
and Romanticism.51
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
A major shift in philosophical thought during the period of the Enlightenment determined science as an avenue to knowledge. This movement sparked tension between religion
and science and prompted scrutiny of many traditionally accepted premises, including those
endorsed by the Church. This movement opened the door for major changes causally related
to the way society viewed children and childhood. Philosophical thought during the Enlightenment focused on human rationality and the scientific method for determining knowledge.
Within this period, the ideologies introduced by Enlightenment philosophers, including Isaac
Newton, resulted in tension between science and religion. Enlightenment thinkers viewed reason and science as the way to understand the world. This ideology brought increased scrutiny
on the church as the prime authority for the revelation of truths. The power of the Church was
viewed as a block to the furtherance of scientific thought and progress. Anthony Kenny, in An
Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy, maintains that the Enlightenment philosophers
“aimed to establish a science of human affairs which would match the science that Newton had
established for the physical universe.”52 Isaac Newton, in 1686, theorized the law of gravitational pull, which was contrary to Aristotle’s previously established and widely accepted premise. This revelation had profound significance on the validity of science in establishing
knowledge.
Ancient Greek philosophers varied on conjectures about planetary rotation. However,
the ideas of Aristotle, that the planets and the Sun revolve around the Earth, dominated general

thought for centuries. This view became incorporated into Christian theology until 1515 when
Copernicus proposed that the planets circled the Sun.53 Even still, this idea was not generally
accepted until 1610 when Galileo added credibility by observing the night sky through his
telescope. Holli Riebeek relates that, “[i]n 1686, Isaac Newton put the final nail in the coffin
for the Aristotelian geocentric view of the Universe….Newton explained why the planets move
as they did around the Sun and he gave the force that kept them in check a name: gravity.”54
Kenny recounts that, “Newton’s physics…[were] quite different from the competing systems
51

Ibid., 41
Anthony Kenny, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy (Hoboken: Wiley, 2019), 251.
53
Holli Riebeek, “Planetary Motion: The History of an Idea that Launched the Scientific Revolution,”
Nasa Earth Observatory (July 7, 2009), https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OrbitsHistory.
54
Riebeek, “Planetary Motion.”
52

10

it replaced; and for the next two centuries physics simply was Newtonian physics.”55 Newton’s
explanation lent credibility to science and human reason rather than the authority of religion
and the church for determining knowledge. This premise had a profound effect on children’s
literature of the mid-1700s.
An interest emerged in how children learn, fostering a heightened focus on education
for children during the eighteenth century with a focus on scientific matters. This growing
interest is demonstrated in an immensely popular book that had seven editions printed between
1761 and 1787: The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies by John Newberry. By 1810, ten printings and 30,000 editions were in
print.56 In this popular and widely read book, lectures in science are presented by a young boy
named Tom Telescope. The discovery of Uranus by William Herschel in 1781, the first planet
to be discovered by means of a telescope, furthered a curiosity in the advances of science.57
Science had a firm place in revealing knowledge, challenging the position of the Church in
imparting truths. The appetite for a deeper understanding of what science could offer grew, and
Newbery’s book addressed that interest.

The tension between science and religion led to a reexamination of the moral state of
humans at birth. Controversies about the human state at birth are recorded as early as the fourth
and fifth centuries. One concept is humans retained full freedom of the will for the practice of
virtue or vice.58 Another, attributed to Augustine, is “all human beings descended from
[Adam]….inherited sinfulness as well as mortality…Augustine’s influence on Christian
thought is inescapable.”59 Three distinct schools of thought on the nature of the child at birth
emerged from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. One discourse is the Augustinian view,
ascribed to by the Puritans, that the child is born in original sin. England saw a resurgence of

Puritan theology during the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the mid-1600s. A second view, attributed to John Locke, is that the child at birth is a blank slate, morally neutral. The third is
expressed in Rousseau’s view of the child as inherently innocent and virtuous. The Romantic
writers expanded on this third concept of the child as innocent with an inherent connection to

55

Kenny, Brief History, 223.
“John Newbery,” https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/english-literature-15001799-biographies/john-newbery.
57
“Timeline: Britain 1750-1900,” History World (2012), Oxford Reference,
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.103/acref/9780191736254.timeline.0001.
58
Kenny, 112.
59
Ibid., 112-113.
56

11

nature.60 However, it was the Puritan’s contribution that had immense influence on early children’s literature. Horne writes that “[m]any of the most popular early works of literature for
children…were written by Puritans to point children to the path of salvation.”61
THE PURITAN INFLUENCE
Ascribing fervently to Biblical principles, the Puritans were dedicated to literacy, in
order to teach their children to read the Bible. The Protestant Reformation emphasized the
individual’s personal relationship with God directly, rather than through the priest.62 Prior to
the Reformation, early schooling in England was associated with monasteries and cathedrals,
and the predominant language was Latin.63 Teaching at Oxford existed as early as 1096 with
Latin as the core language. During King Henry VIII’s reign, the monasteries and cathedrals
were dissolved in the 1530s. In 1530, Henry VIII forced the University to accept his divorce
from Catherine of Aragon.64 In 1662, British Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity, which
authorized the use of the standard Prayer Book of the Church of England. The full title of the
act is, “An Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers and Administration of Sacraments, and
other Rites and Ceremonies, and for establishing the Form of making, ordaining and conse-

crating Bishops, Priests and Deacons in the Church of England.”65 It was required by law that
all “ministers, lecturers and even schoolteachers…conform to the liturgy of the church of England as it is now by law established.”66 Many Puritans, urging the established church to rid
itself of certain Catholic influences, were among those who had issues with agreeing to what
was required by law in this act and thereby underwent intense persecution. Lee Gatiss, quoting
A.G. Matthews, writes that from 1660-1663, “a total of 1760 ministers (about 20% of the
whole) were thrust out of the Church of England, silenced from preaching or teaching by law

60

Horne, History and Construction, 95.
Horne, 9.
62
Horne, 9.
63
Matthew Adams, Teaching Classics in English Schools 1500-1840 (Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015) 7,
https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db+nlebk&AN=1155152&site=eds-live&scope=site.
64
“Henry VIII: April 1530: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 4, 15241530” British History Online (London: 1875) 2832, https://www.british-history.ac.
uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol4/pp2832-2847.
65
“Act of Uniformity”1662, UK Parliament https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/
transformingsociety/private-lives/religion/collections/common-prayer/act-of-uniformity-1662/)
66
Lee Gatiss, The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans (London: Latimer
Trust: 2007) chap. 1.5, Kindle.
61

12

and thus deprived of livelihood.”67 Almost all were Puritans. In spite of the persecution, many
of those who refused to conform stood firm in their convictions. Many of the non-conformists
were subject to prison terms. For example, John Bunyan was imprisoned for twelve years and
released in March of 1672 when Charles II instituted the Declaration of Indulgence to the Nonconformists.68 In 1678, Bunyan authored the influential work, The Pilgrim’s Progress from
This World, to That Which Is To Come, which continues to be in print. Darton attests that
Bunyan had the widest and longest popularity of authors read in English nurseries.69 Roger
Sharrock describes Pilgrim’s Progress as “the most characteristic expression of the Puritan
religious outlook.”70 Bunyan also wrote another book read to children which was popular
throughout the eighteenth century entitled, Divine Emblems, or Temporal Things Spiritualized.
The earliest known copy of which was the ninth edition issued in 1724.71 According to Darton,
“[b]y far the greater part of the works for or about children which may be for convenience
called ‘Puritan,’ were written…after the Act of Uniformity of 1662.”72 Puritan doctrine was
concerned with the salvation of children as it was believed they were born stained by “the
original sin of the biblical Adam and Eve, easily swayed to do wrong, and susceptible to evil,”

as Hintz and Tribunella relate.73 An example of Puritan admonition is seen in John Bunyan’s
A Book for Boys and Girls; or, Country Rhimes for Children, published in 1686. In this book,
Bunyan encourages young children to focus on heaven more than the material toys of this life
when he writes, “I would them entice to mount their thoughts from what are childish toys, to
heaven, for that’s prepared for girls and boys.”74 Puritan families took much care to teach their
children to read and pointed them toward Biblical principles through lessons. Demers relates:
Puritans were among the first to write specifically for children….In addition to the
lessons of hornbooks, primers, and catechisms, Puritan children in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were familiar with little books of religious
instruction in prose and verse designed specifically for their benefit.75
A.G. Matthews, Calamy Revised: Being a Revision of Edmund Calamy’s Account of the Ministers
and Others Ejected and Silenced, 1660-1662 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), xii-xiii, quoted in L.
Gatiss, The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans (London: Latimer Trust:
2007) chap. 1.5, Kindle.
68
Roger Sharrock, “John Bunyan: English author,” Britannica
https:www.britannica.com/biography/John-Bunyan.
69
Darton, 54.
70
Sharrock, “John Bunyan.”
71
Darton, 65.
72
Ibid., 53.
73
Hintz and Tribunella, 46.
74
John Bunyan, A Book For Boys and Girls; or, Temporal Things Spiritualized (London: N.P., 1686)
A2, https://archive.org/details/bookforboysgirls00buny/page/n37/mode/2up
75
Demers, 55.
67

13

Puritan influence was strong in children’s literature in the seventeenth and into the
eighteenth centuries. Next to John Bunyan, the most popular author read in English nurseries,
according to Darton, was James Janeway,76 a Puritan minister who incorporated the tenants of
the Puritan religion in his writings for children. Janeway’s books continued to be read well into
the eighteenth century. Janeway is the first author whose works I examine in light of the concept of the child and childhood.
JAMES JANEWAY
James Janeway, 1636-1674, was born in what one today would consider a middle-class
family. His father was a member of the clergy. He attended Christ Church, Oxford, from which
he received a B.A degree in 1659. Janeway might have followed in his father’s footsteps, however, Janeway was one of those who refused to conform to the regulations outlined in the Act
of Uniformity. He therefore preached as one of the non-conformist ministers in London. Janeway wrote many books for children during his lifetime. He died at age 38 of tuberculosis.77
Though Janeway lived in the seventeenth century, his works were widely read and influential
throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries.
One of Janeway’s books that greatly influenced writing for children during this period
and which, Darton writes, “was…popular well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries”78
was A Token for Children: being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary
Lives, and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children. To Which is now added, Prayers and
Graces, fitted for use of Little Children, published in 1671 and 1672. The book chronicles the
biographies of several children and illustrates their deep faith leading up to their deaths. Puritan
families realized a great need to instruct their children about the nature of sin and felt it their

responsibility to see to the salvation of their souls. An example in Janeway’s book of a child
who died at age six demonstrates the earnest desire of parents to guide their child in spiritual
matters, and illustrates the exemplary model displayed by the children in A Token for Children:
A certain little child, when he could not speak plain, would be crying out after God,
And was greatly desirous to be taught good things. He could not endure to be put to
bed till after family prayer….[and was] much delighted to hear the word of God either
read or preached. He loved to go to school, that he might learn something of God and
would take great notice of what he had read…and [would] say to his mother, ‘O
mother! I have had a sweet lesson to-day; will you please to give me leave to fetch my

Darton, Children’s Books, 54.
Ibid., 57.
78
75.
76
77

14

book, that you may hear it?’…He quickly learned to read the Scriptures, and with
Great reverence and tenderness, would read till tears and sobs nearly hindered
him….He oftentimes complained of the naughtiness of his heart, and seemed to be
much grieved at the corruption of his nature….When he was left at home alone upon
the Sabbath day, he did not spend any part of the day in idleness and play, but was
busy in praying, reading in the Bible, and learning his catechism.79
Janeway writes that this child grew sick and when asked if he was willing to die, replied,
“‘Now I am willing, for I shall go to Christ’….[Janeway continues], at last cheerfully [he]
committed his spirit unto the Lord, calling upon his name…dying as I remember, when he was
about six years old.”80 Published in a time period of high child mortality, Janeway’s Token
gives us his insight into the experience of childhood in Puritan families, the view of children
as born in original sin, and the diligence of parents to attend to the moral upbringing and salvation concerns of their children. These accounts may seem dour and overtly serious for children of such a tender age, however, Dr. Hannah Newton in The Dying Child in the Seventeenth
Century, gives historical and cultural significance to the practice seen in Janeway’s book:
This early exposure to death might seem morbid, but parents’ intentions were benevolent: by making mortality familiar to children, they hope to take the fear out of the
unknown. It was part of the ‘preparation for death,’ a religious process that was
designed to help the Christian reach a state of peaceful acceptance, and even happiness
about dying.81
The rate of child mortality was high. Peter Razzell and Christine Spence point out,
“[i]nfant and child mortality more than doubled between the sixteenth and the middle of the
eighteenth century in both wealthy and non-wealthy families” peaking in the mid eighteenth
century. Nearly two-thirds of all children died by age five.82 It was common practice for the
Puritans, or Nonconformists as they were known later, to write their biographies and details of

their struggles and conversion with very personal testimonials.83 Horne relates that “Puritan

James Janeway, Janeway’s Token for Children: Being an account of the Conversion, Holy and
Exemplary Lives and Joyful deaths of Several Young Children (Oxford: The Religious Tract Society),
15-20, https://books.google.ca/books?id=W3b45PNDnRQC&pg=PA6&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y
80
Janeway, Token, 20.
81
Hannah Newton, “The Dying Child in Seventeenth-Century England,” Pediatrics 136, no. 2
(August 2015): 218-222, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4568305/.
82
Peter Razzell and Christine Spence, “The History of Infant, Child and Adult Mortality in London,
1550-1850” The London Journal: A Review of Metropolitan Society Past and Present 32, no. 3
(2007): 271-292 published online 18 Jul 2013 https://doi.org/10.1179/174963207x227578)
83
Dr. Penelope Christiansen, “England Nonconformist Records” English: Non-Anglican Church Records, The National Institute for Genealogical Studies Family Search (June 2012) excerpt from their
course https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/England_Nonconformist.Records_
(National_Institute).
79

15

families in particular felt a deep urgency to teach their children about sin and the necessity of
faith, instruction that took place in part through reading the Bible.”84 Teaching the child to read
became paramount and learning the ABCs were foundational stepping stones toward reading.
Darton relates that, “[t]he first English alphabet printed in book form — Petyt’s, of 1538 —
contained not only the ABC, but ‘devout prayers’ and the Ten Commandments: the Decalogue,
significantly, was versified for little readers.”85 Many of the books written for children or about
children in the late seventeenth century were didactic and religious in nature. These early books
were geared to train a child to become a good boy or girl in order to ensure salvation…to be
freed from original sin. According to Demers, “until the end of the seventeenth century…the
predominant impulse was didactic. It was literature of improvement, aimed at explaining doctrine, laying own rules for behaviour, and dispensing information.”86 Children’s literature popular during the 1600s reflected the mindset of many parents and shaped a common genre of
literature for children for well over a century. James Janeway was one of the most influential
authors during this period. Although Janeway wrote in the late 1600s, his Token was, as Darton
relates, “read with appreciation as late as 1847.”87 Horne writes that Janeway is credited with

beginning the religious exemplary biography, which continued “well into the Victorian period,
in both religious and secular forms.”88 The writing of Janeway is an example of one view of
the child and childhood that continued through the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth
century concurrently with other concepts as illustrated in the following authors in this paper.
JOHN NEWBERY
Concurrent with the Puritan influence of the seventeenth century forward, was a growing interest in scientific advancements in the eighteenth century. The philosophical and

intellectual period of the Enlightenment challenged traditional ideas of how knowledge is
gained and emphasized the importance of science and human reason. There was also a growing
interest in how children learn, reflecting Locke’s views of rejecting corporal punishment in
favour of praise and disgrace, and that children learn best through experience.89 Children’s

84

Horne, History and Construction, 9.
Darton, Children’s Books, 48.
86
Demers, 7.
87
Darton, Children’s Books, 56.
88
Horne, 152.
89
Gavin, 6-7.
85

16

books began to be shaped by a broader genre of writing that introduced amusement with instruction. One of the earliest examples of this type of literature is by the author and publisher
John Newbery.
John Newbery, 1713-1767, author, bookseller, and publisher in London, is credited
with being the inventor of children’s literature.90 By the mid-1700s, the market for children’s
books was growing, and Newbery wrote and published many titles which were popular
throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries. In 1744, Newbery published his
first children’s book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book: Intended for the Instruction and Amusement
of Little Master TOMMY, and PRETTY Miss Polly. The subtitle adds, “A New Attempt to teach
Children the Use of the English Alphabet, by Way of Diversion.”91 Children became more of
a focus for families in England during the mid to late eighteenth century, particularly in middle
and upper-class families, and this change in approach increased the market for children’s
books. Book designs were becoming more enticing to the young eye and at the same time,
virtuous qualities were portrayed in the stories. Compared to the late seventeenth century, the
attitude towards children had changed dramatically, in the middle and upper classes. This “gen-

tler and more sensitive approach to children was but a part of a wider change in social attitudes.”92 This new kind of children’s literature was one with a regard for the amusements and
pleasures of children.93 M. O. Grenby writes of the Newbery publishing company:
By 1761, Newberry was advertising twenty ‘Books published for the Instruction and
Amusement of Children’ and a further sixteen (generally more didactic) for ‘young
Gentlemen and Ladies’. Such advertisements are an indication of the success of Newbery’s venture, but they must also have done much to create children’s literature as a
new taxonomic category in the public consciousness.94
Newbery ascribed to John Locke’s philosophy, rejecting, as Gavin writes, the “efficacy

of corporal punishment for children.”95 Newbery also believed, with Locke, that children learn
through experience, and that parents are the child’s early guides “towards virtue, rationality,
and reason, effectively [moving them towards] becoming adults as soon as possible.”96 The
introduction to A Little Pretty Pocket-Book reflects Locke’s influence on Newbery:

90

Hintz and Tribunella, 86-87.
John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (Newberry, 1744), Library of Congress, image 11,
https://www.loc.gov/item/22005880/
92
Plumb, 70.
93
Ibid., 70.
94
Grenby, 4.
95
Gavin, 7.
96
Ibid.
91

17

The grand Design in the Nurture of Children, is to make them Strong, Hardy,
Healthy, Virtuous, Wise, and Happy; and these good Purposes are not to be obtained
without Some Care and Management in their Infancy….The whole Matter subsists in
the Mind, and the Constitution: Subdue therefore your Children’s Passions; curb their
Tempers, and make them subservient to the Rules of Reason. And this is not to be
done by chiding, whipping, or severe Treatment, but by Reasoning and mild
Discipline.97
The book is prefaced with a lengthy message on parenting, outlining how to achieve
these virtues in a child, and illustrates the growing interest and focus on children and how they

learn:
Would you have a Hardy Child, give him common Diet only, clothe him thin, let him
have good Exercise, and be as much exposed to Hardships as his natural Constitution
will admit. The Face of a Child, when it comes into the world (says the great Mr.
Locke) is as tender and susceptible of Injuries as any other part of the Body;…Would
You have a Wise Son, teach him to reason early. Let him read, and make him Understand what he reads. No sentence should be passed over without a strict Examination
of the Truth of it.98
Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket-Book projects qualities that parents wished to instill
in their children. The alphabet, both upper and lower cases, is incorporated within rhymes that
have a moral message or a rule of life. For example, the entry for q on page 55 reads:
In Quest of his Game,
The Sportsman rides on,
But falls off his Horse
Before he has done.
MORAL.
Thus Youth without Thought,
Their Amours pursue,
Though an Age of Pain
Does often accrue. 99
Demers remarks that A Little Pretty Pocket-Book “was intended for middle-class children who said their prayers, sought their parents’ blessing, learned their lessons, and bestowed
charity.”100 Newbery’s book promotes discipline through instruction and praise. In turn, the
message throughout the book places approval of others, from God to the world, as uppermost
to seek. For example, in A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, page 101 reads, “ALL good Boys and
Girls say their Prayers at Night, and in the Morning, which makes God Almighty love and bless

97

Newbery, Pocket-Book, 7, 11-12.
Ibid., 8, 10.
99
55.
100
Demers, 135.
98

18

them.”101 Another entry reads: “All good Boys and Girls kneel down every Morning and Evening and ask their Parents Blessing in these Words, ‘Pray Papa and Mamma, pray to God to
bless me, and make me his true and faithful Servant.’ Which makes their Friends love them.”102
And, “All good Boys and Girls, when they see a poor Man, or Woman, or a Child in Want,
will give them either Money or such Meat and Drink as they have to spare; which makes the
whole World love them.”103 The quality of moral instruction remains predominant in literature,
but with the woodcut illustrations, playful rhymes, and interactive toys, the message has a more
child-friendly and receptive delivery.
With the purchase of A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, one could buy interactive components for an additional twopence: a ball for a boy or a pincushion for a girl.104 Newbery anticipated the huge market for children’s literature that was to follow from the 1740s on. At the
same time, he entered the growing market of toys and games produced for children. Both the
ball and the pincushion were black and red and in both, pins could be placed, whether the
behaviour of the child was good or bad.

Figure 1. A Pretty Little Pocket-Book https://www.themorgan.org/printed-books/249084
The above image is of the book, a ball, and a pincushion, which are located in The
Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. According to the morgan.org website, they
are thought to be “the only copy to have an original or early version of the combination ball
and pincushion, an accessory a guardian could use to keep a running tally of good and bad

101

Ibid., 76.
77.
103
79.
104
Plumb, 84.
102

19

behaviour. Ten pins on one side brought a penny reward; ten on the other could mean ten
strokes of the rod.”105 With these added features, innovative in the field of writing for children,
it is not surprising that A Little Pretty Pocket-Book “stands today as a landmark in children’s
literature.”106
John Newbery published a series of books of science lectures given by the enterprising
and imaginary Tom Telescope. The full title of the most famous of these is The Newtonian
System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies, and familiarized and made entertaining by Objects with which they are intimately acquainted.107 The
book consists of a series of lectures on the natural sciences of matter, motion, the Universe, air,
atmosphere, mountains, minerals, vegetables, animals, and the five senses.108 The activities
incorporate objects familiar to children, for example, “a candle, a cricket ball, and a fives ball
[are used to] illustrate the workings of an eclipse.”109 James A. Secord, in Newton in the
Nursery: Tom Telescope and the Philosophy of Tops and Balls, 1761-1838, writes that The
Newtonian System shows that “by the middle of the eighteenth century an interest in natural
philosophy had entered the home itself and had become an activity for the entire family.”110

This very successful book was translated into several languages and had at least nine editions,
or around 30,000 books in England alone by 1800.111 Sarah Trimmer, in her publication Guardian of Education (1802), states of the 1798 edition of Newtonian System forty years after its
first publication, that “it still retains a preeminence over compilations of this kind for young
people, which gives it a claim to particular recommendation in this age of premature science.”112
According to Secord:
[Tom’s] discourses survey the entire range of eighteenth century natural philosophy,
from the solar system to the five senses of man. Tom’s lectures provide not only one
105

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, http://corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsinfo?bibld=249084.
Demers, 134.
107
John Newbery, The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of young Gentlemen and Ladies, and familiarized and made entertaining by Objects with which they are intimately
acquainted (London: 1761) “The Newton Project,” www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/record/OTHE00114.
108
Newberry, Newtonian System.
109
James A. Secord, “Newton in the Nursery: Tom Telescope and the Philosophy of Tops and Balls,
1761-1838,” History of Science 23, no. 2 (June 01, 1985): 133,
https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/scholarly-journals/newtonnursery-tom-telescope-philosophy-tops/docview/1298061446/se-2?accountid=14314.
110
Secord, “Newton” 133.
111
Ibid, 139.
112
Sarah Trimmer, “Notice of the Newtonian system,” (1798 edn), Guardian of education, i(1802),
441-2 cited in Secord, “Newton” 141.
106

20

of the most convenient surveys of Enlightenment science, but also illustrate the ways
in which natural philosophy had become securely established as a pillar in the established order of Georgian England.113
Its popularity is due, in part, to the increased interest in science throughout the
Enlightenment period, The Newtonian’s System’s blend of scientific knowledge, moral virtue,
and a focus on God as the Creator.114 For example, Lecture IV of Mountains, Springs, Rivers,
and the Sea begins:
We come now, says the Philosopher, to the consideration of things with which we are
more intimately acquainted, but which are not, on that account, the less wonderful.
How was that Mountain lifted up to the sky? How came this crystal Spring to bubble
on its lofty brow, or that large River to flow from its massy side? But above all, how
came this mighty body of water, the Sea, so collected together; and why and how was
it impregnated with salt, seeing the fish and other animals taken out of it are perfectly
fresh? These are questions not to be answered even by the Sages in science. Here the
Philosopher, at the end of his judgment, and lost in admiration, can only say with the
Psalmist, They that go down into the Sea, and occupy their business in the great waters,
these men see the greatness of God, and his wonders in the deep. Wonderful are thy
works, O Lord, in judgment hast thou made them all!115

This lecture goes on to explain that at one time, the earth was thought as perfectly level
and that an Abbot was punished for stating that the earth was round. The lecture reasons that if
the earth were flat, because of the amount of water on the earth, it would be forever flooded
with water! Newbery promoted Locke’s approach to children as rational beings, as reflected in
this lecture on the orb of earth. The Newtonian Lectures also point to Locke’s “tradition of
educational theory…concerning itself with the swift creation, through controlled environment
of the rational adult man.”116 The goal was to educate the child toward the moral and rational
adult he was to become.

Regarding benevolence, in Lecture VI, Tom says to Lady Caroline, a character featured
in the lectures, that benevolence “should be universal, for it is an emanation of the Supreme
Being, whose mercy and goodness are extended to all his creatures; as ours also should be, for
they are fellow tenants with us of the globe we inhabit.”117 It is interesting to note that in this
lecture, Tom refers to a Sir William who “is largely concerned in the slave trade (which, I
think, is carried on…to the dishonour of our celestial Master).”118 It was during the Industrial

113

Secord, 127.
Ibid.,136.
115
John Newbery, The Newtonian System, 62.
116
Coveney, 40.
117
Newbery, Newtonian System, 122.
118
Newbery, 121.
114

21

Revolution that Britain prospered due to the slave trade and production of textiles from cotton
obtained from the plantations in the southern United States, worked by slaves. It was also during this time that the slavery abolitionist movement was gaining momentum in England. When
one considers the references in Lecture VI to the slave trade, it is likely that Newbery was
influenced by the abolitionist movement, and in turn presented this point of view to the many
readers of the Tom Telescope lectures.
John Newbery stands out as one who did more to promote and encourage the publication of children’s books than any other single publisher of his day.119 By the end of the 1750s,
Grenby writes that children’s literature was “a permanent and profitable market….[designated]
as a class of book to be taken seriously as a recognised and important branch of the book
trade.”120 The children’s literature Newbery published illustrates the changing approaches to
childhood and parenting, reflects Locke’s education theories, and demonstrates the continued
and growing interest in science, reason, discovery, and social concerns during the latter 1700s.

THE INDUSTRIAL AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS

In Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700, Bonnie G. Smith describes
the life of the typical eighteenth-century European family, working together in an agrarian
society, each one contributing to the family’s subsistence. Smith describes the household as
“self-sufficient, a self-contained unit of production and consumption.”121 The members of the
household worked together to benefit the family economically. For the most part, members of
the family accomplished different tasks, the men and boys tended the livestock and fields further from the house, and the women and girls gardened and tended the smaller animals close
to the house. Preparing raw cotton fibre, washing, picking, combing, and weaving were tasks

shared by family members.122 Children, from a young age, worked alongside their parents.
Each member of the family was in close proximity with one another, worked as a unit, and
contributed to the needs of each other. Survival was dependent upon this familial structure. For
most families, young children were taught at home, with a focus on the basics of literacy.

119

Demers, 136.
Grenby, 5.
121
Bonnie G. Smith, Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (Toronto, D.C. Heath
and Co.,1989), 45-6.
122
Smith, Changing Lives, 10.
120

22

Although agriculture was still the single-largest occupation in England into the
nineteenth century,123 the Industrial Revolution, which began in the mid-1700s, saw an increase
in the number of families moving from rural settings into the cities to obtain work in the newly
developed factories and mines.124 Peasants who worked the land, but did not own the land,
were drawn to the cities in search of employment. The emerging gentry class, who owned much
of the land, increased in wealth and began to infringe on the highest classes in British society.
An increase in population demanded increased agricultural productivity which created more
need for manufactured goods that demanded industry for production.125 Inventions including
the spinning jenny, the cotton mule, and the power loom in the late 1700s decreased the demand
for cottage industries and increased production in the textile industry. The need for workers in
the factories and coal mines grew. With industrialization, as Bonnie Smith writes, “Instead of
achieving its own subsistence within the matrix of community life, the family became workers
for wages.”126 Increased urban population led to overcrowding, poverty, and crime. Child labourers were commonplace in the factories, coal mines, and worked as chimney sweeps, with
long hours under hazardous conditions. Douglas Galbi relates, “In a survey in 1788, ‘children’

made up two-thirds of the workforce on powered equipment in 143 water mills in England and
Scotland.”127 The nature of children’s work and of childhood had changed.
Industrialization proved a threat to the nuclear family model, as Gavin relates, of the
“home as a protective sphere governed by the mother and innately suited to the safe, moral
upbringing of young children.”128 The family structure was altered dramatically from previous
centuries. Working-class children were vulnerable to exploitation and injury during long hours
in textile factories and coal mines and were subject to the social ills of overcrowded cities.
Government legislation for the welfare of child industrial workers was still years away as was

public education. Even regulations eventually instituted were far from protecting the health
and safety of children. For example, the Factories Regulation Act, not in effect until 1819, “set

123

Clark Nardinelli, Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990), 45.
124
Ellias Brck, “Child Labor in the Industrial Revolution,” History Crunch (last modified October 12,
2020), https://www.historycrunch.com/child-labor-in-the-industrial-revolution.html#/.
125
John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), 515.
126
Smith, 45, 47.
127
P. Colquon, Memorandum on Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, Manuscript E-46, Kress
Library, Harvard, qtd p, 358 in Galbi, Douglas A. (1997) “Child Labour and the Division of La-

bour in the Early English Cotton Mills,” Journal of Popular Economics, 10 no.4 (Oct. 1997):
357-375.
128

Gavin, 95.

23

the minimum working age at 9 and the maximum working hours at 12.”129 The Factory Act of
1833 stated, “Children between the ages of nine and thirteen could only be employed provided
they also had two hours of education per day.”130 The Ten Hours Bill, limiting working hours
for children and women to ten a day, was not passed until 1847.131 Smith states, “Industrialization and urban growth brought plenty to few but misery to many.”132 Children in working
class families were not afforded the luxury of going to school. With children starting work as
young as seven or eight and with eleven to twelve hour working days, there was no time for
school.133 The political and economic climate in Britain in the 1790s was taking a toll on families. England was involved in wars against France which put a strain on the British economy.
Writing of the Napoleonic wars, Patrick O’Brien contends, “it becomes apparent that these
wars against Revolutionary France burdened the population and absorbed resources to a far
greater degree than all previous conflicts from William of Orange to William Pitt.”134 Taxes
and food prices were high, unemployment resulted in trade restrictions, and labour-saving inventions put people out of a job.135 Many men in Britain enlisted in the military, which left the
women and children relying on their own income to support their families.136 Many women

and young children had little option but to work long hours in hazardous conditions in factories
and in mines. These conditions drew the attention of social reformers, moralists, and those
among the rising Evangelical movement. It was during the late 1700s that concern for the welfare of children, morally, physically, and intellectually, and concern for society, became a focus.
A religious revival began to appear in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.137 In addition to the Church of England there were several independent Protestant churches
in England termed Non-Conformists. During this period and into the early nineteenth century,
Carolyn Tuttle, “Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution,” Economic History
Association, https://eh.net/encyclopedia/child-labor-during-the-british-industrial-revoluton/.
130
“Factory Ads in the Industrial Revolution,” History Crunch (October 2016)
https://www.historycrunch.com/factory-acts-in-the-industrial-revoluton.html#/.
131
Tuttle, “Child Labor.”
132
Smith, 214.
133
Tuttle, 79.
134
Patrick Karl O’Brien, "The Impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815, on the
Long-Run Growth of the British Economy,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 12, no. 3 (1989): 342,
Accessed March 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40241130.
129

Ruth Mather, “The impact of the Napoleonic Wars in Britain,” Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians (May 15, 2015), https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the135

impact-of-the-napoleonic-wars-in-britain.
136
Jane Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 46-47.
137
Smith, 210.

24

a “reassertion of the Augustinian construction of the child as born in original sin” reappeared
in both the Church of England and in dissenting churches.138 At the same time, the writers of
the early Romantic period “drew upon and expanded Rousseau’s construction of the inherently
virtuous child of nature.”139 These two viewpoints opened the door for the prolific publication
of two very different types of literature for children: moral didactic primers and tracts, and
writings that depicted the innocence, virtue, and the connection to nature of the Romantic child.
Both discourses played a role in the construction of childhood and in the literature published
during this time. We see differing constructs of childhood appearing within the same periods,
which supports the assertion that often multiple and sometimes conflicting views of childhood
exist side-by-side. As Kimberly Reynolds observes, “Just as there are many real childhoods at
any given time, so multiple ideas or constructions of childhood co-exist in writing for children.”140
SARAH TRIMMER
Along with the emergence of the image of the child of the Romantic movement came
an awareness of the plight of the children in poor working-class families. Literature played a

significant role in reflecting the harsh conditions of the child labour force. Cunningham relates
that attention was drawn to the treatment of children through the writing of Jonas Hanway. In
Hanway’s 1785 A Sentimental History of Chimney Sweepers, he describes the harsh treatment
and the physical toll on young children employed in chimney sweeping. Cunningham relates
that Hanway appealed to “humanity, to Christianity, to pity, to compassion, to reason, to passion, and to national honour and traditions.”141 It was during this time of increased child labour
that the Sunday school movement began.142
Sarah Trimmer, 1741-1810, author of the influential The Economy of Charity and the

popular children’s book, Fabulous Histories, Designed for the Instruction of Children, Respecting Their Treatment of Animals, started the first English Sunday school for poor children
in 1782143 along with several charity schools for poor girls and boys.144 Her first book, An easy

138

Horne, 94.
Ibid., 95.
140
Kimberly Reynolds, “Perceptions of childhood,” Discovering Literature: Romantics and
Victorians (May 15, 2014),
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/perceptions-of-childhood.
141
Cunningham, 141.
142
Humphries, 321.
143
Smith, 128.
144
Demers, 239.
139

25

introduction to the knowledge of nature, and reading the holy scriptures, adapted to the capacities of children published in 1780, edited to two volumes in 1793, sold more than 750,000
copies during the following seventy-seven years.145 This book, similar to Fabulous Histories,
follows a mother and her two children as she explains to them the wonders of the creation
while walking in nature. Its success reflects the view of the connection of children to nature
prevalent during the Romantic period. She established The Guardian of Education (18021806), which Hintz writes, “became one of the first periodicals to regularly review children’s
books and to establish a canon of its best exemplars.”146 She worked extensively with children
of the labouring class and established Sunday schools, Industrial schools, and Charity schools
directed toward the education of poor and working children. It is from these schools for the
poor in Britain “that the modern concept of primary and secondary education has grown.”147
In “Adults Only? Children and Children’s Books in British Circulating Libraries, 17481848,” M. O. Grenby states, “[o]f the more than fifty catalogues of separate circulating libraries, dating from 1748-1848, that were consulted, only a very few include more than a handful
of children’s books…. Trimmer’s various works [were featured] in ten, her Fabulous Histo-

ries…being the most popular.”148 The book remained in print for over a century.
Fabulous Histories features a mother gently teaching her two young children moral
lessons about life and kindness toward animals in nature through observing a family of robins
in a nest. In Fabulous Histories, Trimmer, reflecting Locke’s theories, encourages parental
instruction as uppermost in their children’s education. This approach is reflected in the following account:
[The mother] indulged [the children] with walking in the fields and gardens, [and]
taught them to take particular notice of every object that presented itself to their
view…[t]he consequence of this was, that they contracted a great fondness for
animals.…[Fabulous Histories conveys] sentiments and affections of a good father

Donelle Ruwe, “Guarding the British Bible from Rousseau: Sarah Trimmer, William Godwin, and
the Pedagogical Periodical,” Children’s Literature 29 (2001): 11, https://resolver-ebscohostcom.ezproxy.tru.ca/openurl?sid=EBSCO:edb&genre=article&issn=00928208&ISBN=&volume=29&issue=1&date=20010101&spage=1&pages=1-17&title=Children%27s%20Literature&atitle=Guarding%20the%20British%20Bible%20from%20Rousseau%3A%20Sarah%20Trimmer%2C%20William%20Godwin%2C%20and%20the%20Pedagogical%20Periodical.&aulast=Ruwe%2C%20Donelle&id=DOI:10.1353/chl.0.0788.
146
Hintz and Tribunella, 93.
147
“Schooling before the 19th Century,” UK Parliament,
https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/before19thcentury/).
148
Matthew Grenby, “Adults Only?,” 20, 22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30228184.
145

26

and mother, and a family of children, through the observations of the family of
robins.149
Fabulous Histories is an example of a parent taking time to teach the children within
the context of real-life experiences rather than by rote learning. Her emphasis on parental involvement in the child’s training in her book reflects the heightened interest in childhood, and
the increased focus on children learning experientially. Trimmer projected a realistic approach
to her literature, explaining in the introduction of Fabulous Histories to her young readers that
animals do not actually talk; the conversations were not real. The concept of talking animals in
literature was quite new, and Trimmer influenced many authors that followed into the nineteenth century who included this concept in their books. Trimmer’s approach to a hierarchical
structure in her book affirms the traditional class structure of British society in the late eighteenth century. For example, the Benson family has a servant, the parents are above the children,
and humans are superior to the animals. In chapter XXV, in a discussion about the proper
treatment of animals, Mrs. Benson tells the children:
I consider that the same almighty and good God, who created mankind, made all other
living creatures likewise; and appointed them their different ranks in the creation, that
they might form together a community, receiving and conferring reciprocal benefits.
There is no doubt but that the Almighty designed all beings for happiness, proportion
able to the faculties he has endued them with.150
Mother of twelve, Trimmer was a prolific writer of instructional and religious literature.
She produced a selection of graduated readers entitled, Charity School Spelling Books, Containing the Alphabet, Spelling Lessons, and Short Stories of Good and Bad Boys and Girls in
Words of One Syllable only in 1798, which she used in her schools, along with several other
educational texts she wrote.151 The focus of the Sunday schools was to give Christian instruc-

tion and to teach literacy. According to Deborah Wills, by 1799, English Sunday school attendees had grown in numbers to two hundred thousand.152 In class-conscious British society,
the move to educate children of the labouring class was not without obstacles. Social constructions of childhood were evolving influenced by the Romantic ideal, but at the same time, children were seen, as Wills states, as “a crucial national resource.”153 Deborah Wills cites Hon.
149

Sarah Trimmer, Fabulous Histories, Designed for the Instruction of Children, Respecting their
Treatment of Animals, (London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1838) 1.
150
Trimmer, Fabulous Histories, 157.
151
Ibid., 243.
152
Deborah Wills, “Sarah Trimmer’s Oeconomy of Charity: Politics and Morality in the Sunday
School State, Lumin 12, 157, https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/lumen/1900-v1-n1-lumen0300/1012588ar.pdf.
153
Wills, “Sarah Trimmer,” 157.

27

John Byng’s concerns that a literate working class would “render them unfit for ‘the laborious
employment to which their rank in society had destined them.’”154 Trimmer entered the debate,
and in her The Economy of Charity maintained that Sunday schools can serve “as a means of
instituting social control and intensifying hierarchy.”155 This debate is relevant in light of developments emerging in Revolutionary France enacting equality and liberty for citizens, especially during a time period when many countries in Europe were ruled by absolute monarchies.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens,156 published in August 1798, was
groundbreaking in shaping the rights and liberties of citizens of France and impacted European
political culture. Not all were supportive of this newly proposed declaration. Trimmer denounced the revolutionaries of France and was “afraid of Jacobitical tendencies; she believed
a vast French conspiracy existed to destroy Christianity in England.”157 As a devoted Anglican,
Trimmer’s written works emphasized the values and practices of the Christian faith. Trimmer
focused on the moral and intellectual needs of the children of the labouring class: children who
also worked long hours in factories or mines. Humphries relates, “by far the most important
manoeuvre to secure some education without losing out on children’s earnings involved send-

ing them to a type of school that complemented rather than crowded out work, most commonly
Sunday schools.”158 Sarah Trimmer was influential in establishing Sunday schools as well as
weekday industrial schools, which directed children towards employment: In The Economy of
Charity, Trimmer’s schools trained working-class girls in domestic skills, and boys were taken
in to be trained for employment in the navy, which she notes “would be very beneficial to the
nation…to serve their king and country from principle.”159 She encouraged other Anglican
middle-class women in The Economy of Charity to set up similar schools. Trimmer’s wishes,
as stated in her book, were “to see established in every parish, Schools of Industry for poor

girls.”160 Queen Charlotte’s interest in Trimmer’s work led to a consultation meeting about

154

S.C. Carpenter, Eighteenth-Century Church and People (London: John Murray, 1959) 102 cited in
Deborah Wills, “Sarah Trimmer’s Economy of Charity: Politics and Morality in the Sunday school
State,” Lumin 12 (1993): 160.
155
Wills, 158.
156
James Brophy et.al., Perspectives from the Past (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2016), 294-297.
157
“The Period of the French Revolution: XVI Children’s Books, 13. Sarah Trimmer” The Cambridge
History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes 1907-21 Vol XI
https://www.64.202.287.143/CHEL/XI/1613.html).
158
Humphries, 320.
159
Sarah Trimmer, The Economy of Charity; or, an address to ladies concerning Sunday-schools
(London, 1787), 70-83, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-conomy-of-charity.
160
Trimmer, The Economy. 69.

28

Sunday schools at Windsor in 1786, the same year Trimmer published The Economy of Charity and her book, Fabulous Histories, Designed for the Instruction of Children, Respecting
Their Treatment of Animals.161
Sarah Trimmer’s educational literature for children was instrumental in advocating for
better skills for the children of the lower classes at a time of an increase in child labour. Trimmer was foundational in the Sunday school movement in the late 1700s and in revising the
curriculum of charity schools through her educational books. Her Fabulous Histories reflected
current ideas of children learning through experience and reaffirmed the parent’s prime role,
specifically the mother as opposed to the father, a tutor, or the clergy, as teacher to her children.
Trimmer’s writings reflect both the renewed interest in religion in the latter eighteenth century,
as well as the movement into the Romantic period by incorporating moral and didactic religious
instruction with reflection on the importance of nature. Trimmer’s talking animals in Fabulous
Histories, Dicksy, Pecksy, Flapsy and Robin, inspired this innovative feature in children’s literature. Her book also affirms her position supporting the debate for a traditional hierarchical
society, significant considering the revolutionary ideas coming out of France. Trimmer was a

vocal advocate for educating the lower classes, shaping, and revitalizing the market for didactic
literature. Sarah Trimmer accomplished much in her lifetime. Peter Coveney refers to a quote
from Charlotte Yonge, who calls Sarah Trimmer “the ‘mother’ of children’s literature.”162 In
addition to Sarah Trimmer, Anna Laetitia Barbauld was also a prolific writer during the time
of industrial progress and increased social concerns regarding children. Barbauld identified
with the dissenting religious movement and co-founded the Palgrave educational academy,
however, unlike Trimmer’s writings, Barbauld’s literature is directed more towards the rising
middle class and omits references to religion.
ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 1743-1825, was a poet, editor, teacher, and innovative author
of children’s literature. Her father was a Unitarian school master and Doctor of Divinity who
was educated at the Dissenting Academy, Warrington, where he later became prime tutor.
Anna, an inquisitive child, received both a classical and modern education from her father,163
at a time when educational opportunities for girls were very limited. She married a Dissenting
161

Darton, 160.
Coveney, 50.
163
Ruth Watts, “A gendered journey: travel of ideas in England c. 1750-1800,” History of Education
37 no. 4 (July 2008): 529, https://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=7c7dc50a-ceb5495e-ad09-87e254aee85b%40sessionmgr4008.
162

29

minister, Rochemont Barbauld, in 1774, and together they established a famous school for boys
at Palgrave in Suffolk, England.164 Barbauld influenced the development of literature by writing an innovative series of large-print graduated readers, which focus on clear age and
developmental stages, entitled Lessons for Children. Unlike Sarah Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories, Barbauld’s moral lessons in Lessons for Children are not framed in the context of God or
religion, as McCarthy illustrates:
Lessons is utterly free of any church doctrine: it is entirely secular, with no suggestion
whatsoever of any power transcending the empirically-known natural world. The do’s
and dont’s of human ethics are enforced, then by human means: Mother’s approval or
disapproval, [and] promises of rewards.165
Another difference between Barbauld’s and Trimmer’s writings lies in the audience to
which their literature was directed. While Trimmer’s focus was on writing for the poor and
children of the working class, Barbauld’s literature appeals to an emerging middle-class audience,166 which is estimated to have been 25% of the population in England by the 1780s.167
Lessons for Children, written in 1778-1779 for children ages 2-6, begins with Volume I for
ages 2-3. This series of graduated readers consisted of four volumes small enough to fit in a

child’s hand, with large print on each page. Other publishers had produced child-sized books,
but “Barbauld may have been the originator, and was almost certainly the popularizer, of the
modern practice of printing children’s books in larger-than-ordinary type.168” The hierarchical,
developmentally graded, progressive structure of the volumes of Lessons was innovative and
influential in the field of children’s literature of that period.169 Barbauld reflected the interest
in children’s education during the period and shaped notions of the image of the Romantic
child as closer to nature, both features of children’s literature that followed in nineteenth-century writings. Another innovative aspect of Lessons is the gentle dialogue narrative between
the adult and child, which influenced future writings of this nature, including Sarah Trimmer’s
popular Fabulous Histories. The conversational style, and the large print considers the child’s
needs as an emergent reader and as an active participant in learning, a contrast to the form of

Darton, Children’s Books, 154.
William McCarthy, “Mother of All Discourses: Anna Barbauld’s Lessons for Children,” The
Princeton University Library Chronicle 60, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 210, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.25290/prinunivlibrchro.60.2.0196pdf.
166
McCarthy, 196.
167
Watts, “A gendered journey,” 514.
168
William McCarthy, “Mother,” 201.
169
McCarthy, 206.
164
165

30

rote learning previously practiced. Based on the theories of Locke, Barbauld’s Lessons emphasizes experiential learning through the senses as a mother and child discover the natural world.
The book is thought to be based on the conversations and shared experiences between Barbauld
and her adopted son, Charles, the child of her brother. The narrative is constructed in a backand-forth, question/answer format. For example, in Part I:
There is a pretty butterfly. Come shall we catch it? Butterfly, where are you going? It
has flown over the hedge. He will not let us catch him. There is a bee sucking the
flowers. Will the bee sting Charles? No, it will not sting you if you let it alone. Bees
make wax and honey. Honey is very sweet. Charles shall have some honey and bread
for supper.170
Another narrative in Lessons, Part IV, presents a conversation about geography:
Now we are at the land. Get out of the ship. Pray, what country is this? This is France.
France! Why France is in the map too. And pray what is the name of the country we
came from, where we live, and where Papa lives? It is England. And the deep sea is
between France and England? Yes, you know it is so in the map. O France is a pretty
place! It is warmer than our country: and here are pretty flowers, and fine fruit, and
large grapes….What do you say? We do not know what Serviteur, Monsier, is. It is
French. But we do not understand French. I cannot help that, you must go home and
learn. Did not you know that everybody speaks French in France?…What shall we do
little boy?…We will go home again. Farewell France! We will not go to France again,
till Papa has taught us to talk French….Pray, papa, teach the little boy French, before
he goes a great way abroad again .171
Horne suggests that Lessons is an example of the “differentiation between different
ages of children…linked to the emergence during the mid-eighteenth century of clear distinctions between children’s developmental stages, suggested by Rousseau.”172 Barbauld’s Lessons
was extremely popular into the nineteenth century. Jessica Wen Hui Lim in “Barbauld’s Lessons: The Conversational Primer in Late Eighteenth-Century British Children’s Literature”
terms it a “watershed moment in British children’s literary history. Nearly a century later, in
1869, Charlotte Yonge claimed that ‘three-fourths of the gentry of the last three generations
have learnt to read by [little Charles’s] assistance in [Lessons for Children].”173 Lim continues
that the parent-teacher persona “reshaped history of British middle-class children’s culture,

170

Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Lessons for Children (London: Longman and Co., 1867) 10.
Barbauld, Lessons, 144-145.
172
Horne, 37.
173
Charlotte Yonge, “Children’s Literature of the Last Century,” Macmillan’s Magazine
(July-September 1869) Part I, 234, cited in Jessica Wen Hui Lim “Barbauld’s Lessons: The
Conversational Primer in Late Eighteenth-Century British Children’s Literature,” 43, no. 1 (August
15, 2019): 101-120, https://doi-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/10.1111/1754-0208.12648
171

31

transforming the mother-teacher into a marketable literary trope and portraying domestic
spaces as accessible and immersive sites of child education.”174
In the first primer, the mother begins by inviting young Charles into an intimate connection with her when she calls him to her lap. “Come hither, Charles. Come to mamma’s lap.
Now read your book.”175 It is in this endearing posture, illustrated further in art of Romanticism, that the mother assumes the role of teacher, nurturer, guide, and instructor in moral virtues and rational scientific knowledge, but one who also expresses emotional responses. For
example, while observing the spring birds, trees, flowers, butterflies and sun, mother points to
a rainbow and exclaims, “There is a rainbow. O what fine colours! Pretty bright rainbow!”176
Barbauld influenced children’s literature with the conversational style of writing for children,
which became common for decades following the publication of Lessons.177 The book combines Locke’s concepts of guiding a child into the rational and knowledgeable adult he or she
is to become, with Rousseau’s thoughts on the child discovering the wonders of the natural
world experientially.
A clear departure from rote learning, where the child memorizes letters and sounds, in

Lessons, the child’s understanding of the natural world, of which he or she is a part of, is
supported through direct connection with objects and concepts familiar to the child. Lessons is
directed toward the emerging middle-class families.178 Sarah Robbins asserts that the mother
in Lessons shapes her son’s consciousness and behaviour and “exemplifies a middle-class
woman’s indirect route to cultural power” through the guiding female voice.179 Barbauld’s
Lessons clearly reflects the latter eighteenth-century trend towards a blend of science and education within the concept of the mother’s central role in educating the children within the family circle.

According to Roderick McGillis in “Irony and Performance: The Romantic Child,”
Barbauld’s book reflects the child depicted in literature during the Romantic period: one who
“must learn to deal with the vagaries of this world…young people who confront life as it is.

Jessica Wen Hui Lim, “Barbauld’s Lessons,” Abstract.
Barbauld, Lessons, Lesson I, p. 1.
176
Barbauld, 32.
177
McCarthy, 201.
178
Ibid., 206.
179
Sarah Robbins, “Lessons for Children and Teaching Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld’s Primer for the
Textual Construction of Middle-Class Domestic Pedagogy,” The Lion and the Unicorn 17 no. 2
(December 1993): 140, doi:10.1353/uni.0.0058.
174
175

32

The focus of the books that present this child is often the education of children.”180 For example, Barbauld illustrates a moral story of two young boys who come upon a blind man. One
child asks his mother for some coins to give to the man. His mother hands him coins, but
instead of putting them in the blind man’s hat, he tosses them into the bushes, which of course
the blind man cannot see or reach. The other child, in his empathy for the blind man, carefully
and diligently searches for all the coins in the hedge to pass on to the blind beggar.181 The
lesson in the story contrasts cruelties in the world with the compassion of the virtuous child.
Barbauld’s Lessons for Children and her book, Hymns in Prose for Children, reprinted
throughout the nineteenth century in England and the United States, were enjoyed by many
middle-class people who learned to read from them, including William Blake and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning.182 Anna Barbauld and Sarah Trimmer wrote during a time of industrial progress and a growing middle class, yet a time of increased social concerns surrounding child
labour in factories and mills; a time of revolutionary ideals, yet conflicts and debates about
tradition, hierarchy and individual rights; a time of shifting ideas about education and the emergence of Sunday schools, charity schools and dissenting academies amidst the rising middle-

class. Both Trimmer and Barbauld present the model of mothers as integral in the task of teaching their children. Barbauld’s and Trimmer’s contributions both reflected and shaped the
changing construction of childhood and influenced the literature of the following century.
Childhood was changing, moving to include a deeper connection with science and nature.
The emerging literature for children of the period reflected this change. According to Hintz
and Tribunella, “[b]ecause writers such as Barbauld, Trimmer, and [Mary Martha] Sherwood
worked amid the emergence of Romanticism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, their religious children’s literature reflects many of the qualities of more secular, didactic,

and Romantic writing for children.”183 It is through the contributions of writers such as Sarah
Trimmer and Anna Letitia Barbauld that we can have a better understanding of how women
influenced and shaped emerging cultural and educational values and attitudes toward children
in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century England. Plumb explains:
Not only did this new attitude towards children begin to emerge among educationalists
in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, but we can deduce also from the success of small private academies, from the development of a new kind of children’s literature, and from the aptly increased expenditure on the amusements and plea-

Roderick McGillis, “Irony and Performance,” 111.
Barbauld, 145-148.
182
McCarthy, 196.
183
Hintz and Tribunella, 97.
180
181

33

sures of children, that parents, too, were no longer regarding their children as sprigs of
old Adam whose wills had to be broken.184
THOMAS DAY
This new perspective of the child and childhood is further portrayed by author Thomas
Day, 1748-1789, who supported Rousseau’s philosophy of childhood as a celebrated stage of
life. Day illustrates Rousseau’s approach that children learn best experientially through nature,
through others, and through their surroundings. Day’s book, The History of Sanford and Merton, reflects the childhood days of two young boys, set in the natural backdrop of agrarian life.
Thomas Day was an author, philanthropist, poet, political essayist, and abolitionist.
John Blackman describes Day as a man whose “daily actions were in harmony with divine law,
with the genuine spirit of Christianity.”185 While a student at Oxford, Day became influenced
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his educational theories. Day is described as an eccentric, a
reformer, a scholar, and a friend of the needy. Blackman writes:
[T]he Southern slave and the unlettered English peasant attracted alike his genius and
benevolence; he retired from the bustle of the great city [London] into the bosom of
Nature…he believed a loftier and more unselfish condition of existence is possible,
and that God created man to be happy.186
In 1780, Day left his London residence and moved to his country estate in Surrey where
he wrote his most famous book, The History of Sandford and Merton.187 Day’s retreat into
nature and the simplicity of country life reflect the common themes of Romanticism that
emerged amid a period of massive industrialization, urbanization, and revolutionary conflicts.
Day, in Sandford and Merton, ascribes to the genre of children’s literature that exemplifies the
model behaviour parents seek in their children. Demers, in her chapter entitled, “Moral Rationalists,” includes Thomas Day within a group of writers who “were keen believers in the power

of carefully designed narratives and of positive as well as negative examples to shape children’s
understanding.”188 Sandford and Merton was published in three parts from 1783, 1786 and
1789, and had nine editions before 1812. Coveney elaborates on the span of influence of Day’s
book:

184

Plumb, 70.
John Blackman, A Memoir of the Life and Writings of Thomas Day: Author of “Sandford and
Merton,” (1862): 12, https://books.google.com.jm/books/about/A_Memoir_of_the_Life_and_
Writings_of_Tho.html?id=IZqnOQAACAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareA.
186
Blackman, A Memoir, 11.
187
Brycchan Carey, “Thomas Day (1748-1789),” British Abolitionists (Brycchan Carey, 2001-2015),
brycchancarey.com/abolition/day.htm.
188
Demers, 156.
185

34

There are indeed forty-three editions of the work in the British Museum published
before 1883. Influenced by Mrs Barbauld’s Early Lessons…Day achieved one of the
most famous of Victorian children’s classics. Thousands of children in the nineteenth
century were nurtured on the tale of [Harry Sandford, the poor farmer’s son and
Tommy Merton], the spoiled son of a West Indian merchant.189
Day’s writings combined a rational approach with moral judgment, as Demers relates,
“along the general lines of Locke and Rousseau.”190 Darton states, “Sandford and Merton…was [Day’s] vivacious attempt to present [Rousseau’s] Emile in the guise of fiction for

English boys.”191 Indeed, there is much in Day’s book that reflects Rousseau’s philosophy of
education and conception of childhood.
The simple themes of Sandford and Merton are: one child restored by another, the value
of labour, honesty will be rewarded, regard for the poor, and respect for their honesty. Day
contrasts the wealthy, yet restless, Tommy with the poor, but honest, industrious, and content
Harry Sandford. Day stresses that virtue and contentment are valued above wealth. Coveney
relates, “the cult of poverty echoes throughout the pages of the children’s literature of the
time….[i]ntended most especially for the sons and daughters of the middle class.”192 The theme

of poverty appears throughout Sandford and Merton. The main characters are Tommy Merton,
a rather spoiled, illiterate, pretentious only child of a wealthy family who has just moved to
England from Jamaica, and Harry Sandford, the virtuous, honest, self-reliant, likeable, and
sensible son of a poor farmer. Both boys are six years old when they first meet. The characters
of Harry and Tommy, and their interactions with each other and the world around them, are
endearing to young readers. The stories are captivating and combine the delightful adventures
a child can experience in nature, with the sage tutelage of a clergyman named Mr. Barlow. The
setting is rural and harkens back to a time before industry and manufacturing, to a time when
families experienced an agrarian life of industrious hard work and subsistence farming close
to nature. The stories capture teachable occasions about the animals and plants and about virtue
and moral social interactions with others.

189

Coveney, 49.
Demers, 156.
191
Darton, 146.
192
Coveney, 49-50.
190

35

In the opening chapter, the two boys meet in a garden when a snake wraps itself around
a horrified Tommy. Nearby, Harry hears Tommy’s cries, rushes over, grabs the snake and removes it from Tommy’s leg. This begins a fast friendship between the two.193 The contrast of
the boys’ personalities is clear. Harry is affable, generous, humble, and loved by everyone.
Tommy is spoiled, indulged, proud, and mischievous. However, in time, Tommy proves himself open to the moral lessons he learns through interactions with Harry and under the guidance
of Mr. Barlow. Day’s stories extol the virtues of industriousness and incorporate political and
social ideas and tensions during the time of the industrial and French revolutions. These concepts are illustrated in short anecdotal accounts. For example, one day Tommy, accustomed to
being waited on by servants, enters the home of Harry, sits down at the table, and expects to
be served a meal. Mr. Barlow points out that Harry is enjoying the benefits of his labour on the
farm in the delicious meal served by his mother. Mr. Barlow questions why it is considered
reasonable that the industrious should work for the idle. Mr. Barlow remarks, “Though gentlemen are above working for themselves, they will eat the bread that others earn by the sweat of
their brow.”194 It is possible that this account in Sandford and Merton reflects opposition to

oppressive measures placed on the people by the aristocracy, in favour of the ideals of equality
and liberty proposed by the revolutionary movement in France. Tommy considers Mr. Barlow’s response. A short time later, Tommy wants to work alongside Harry and Mr. Barlow in
the garden and is given a tool to use. Mr. Barlow concludes that, “in short time he became a
good workman and pursued his labour with pleasure.”195 Throughout Sandford and Merton,
Day extols the personal rewards that come with industriousness and hard work.
In “Stories Before 1850. 0092: Thomas Day, The History of Sandford and Merton,”
reference is made to Day’s position on the vices of wealth within the political context of the

French Revolution. During this period, debates and tensions arose between republicans and
monarchists concerning the rights and privileges of the clergy, nobles, and aristocracy, and the
burdens placed on the peasants and artisans who worked the land and produced the goods for
a nation. Day admired Rousseau, a figure who had, in light of revolutionary France, become
“an enemy of the state, in the eyes of the conservative majority….Harry is the personification
of Rousseau’s ideas. He abjures the decadence of modern life as the reader sees when he is first

193

Thomas Day, The History of Sandford and Merton, UF George A. Smathers Libraries, University
of Florida Digital Collections (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1872), 12-13,
https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00027950/00001/48j.
194
Thomas Day, The History of Sandford and Merton,(London: Darton, Harvey, and Darton, Gracechurch-Street, 1813),11-12, The Hockcliffe Project, http://hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/0092.html.
195
Day, 12.

36

taken to the Merton home.”196 In this account, Mrs. Merton asks Harry if he wishes he were
rich. To which he replies that he only knows one rich man and that person is destructive, unkind
to animals, and “abuses the poor; and they say, he does this because he’s rich; but everybody
hates him, though they dare not tell him so to his face:—and I would not be hated for anything
in the world.”197 In time, Tommy embraces the land, and with Harry and Mr. Barlow by his
side, learns to work in the garden, enjoying the benefits of his own labour.
Throughout the text, Day contrasts the helpful and humble Harry with the pretentious
and boastful Tommy. For example, in one account, Tommy asks Mr. Barlow to read him a
story. He is disappointed after Mr. Barlow tells him he is too busy. This is the case for several
days, and Tommy grows impatient. Tommy asks Harry where he learned to read, reasoning
that if he could also read, he could enjoy stories himself. Harry replies that Mr. Barlow taught
him his letters, then spelling, then by putting syllables together, he learned to read. Tommy
asked Harry if he would teach him to read, and Harry willingly agrees. Harry assists him diligently for two months, after which Tommy can read a whole story. He decides to surprise Mr.
Barlow and one day reads a whole story to him. After the story, Mr. Barlow happily remarks,

“all that has ever been written in our own language will be from this time in his power…and I
do not despair of one day seeing him a very sensible man, capable of teaching and instructing
others.”198 Tommy boasts that he is now as “‘clever as anybody; and I don’t doubt, though I
am such a little fellow that I know more already than many grown-up people; and I am sure,
though there are no less than six blacks in our house, that there is not one of them who can read
a story like me.’”199 The wise Mr. Barlow asks Tommy who has attempted to teach them? To
which Tommy replies, “Nobody, I believe.” Mr. Barlow replies, “Where is the great wonder
then if they are ignorant? [Y]ou would probably have never known anything had you not been

assisted; and even now, you know very little. In this manner did Mr. Barlow begin the education of Tommy Merton.”200
Mr. Barlow then begins instructing Tommy, who he says, “had naturally very good
dispositions, although he had been suffered to acquire many bad habits, which sometimes prevented them from appearing.”201 He points out to Tommy that he can read because Harry took
196

Thomas Day, The History, Introductory Essay.
Thomas Day, 16, The History of Sandford and Merton: A Book for the Young (London: T. Nelson
and Sons:1872) UF George A. Smathers Libraries UF Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s
Literature University of Florida Digital Collections https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00027950/00001/48j.
198
Day, The History of Sandford, 40-47.
199
Ibid., 47.
200
Ibid.
201
Ibid.
197

37

the time and effort to teach him. Mr. Barlow explains that not everyone in society has such an
opportunity.
Two concepts emerge from this story of Tommy. First, is Rousseau’s idea of education as expressed in Emile:
All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of
education. This education comes to us from nature, from men, or from things. The inner
growth of our organs and faculties is the education of nature, the use we learn to
make of this growth is the education of men, what we gain by our experience of our
surroundings is the education of things.202
The gentle guidance by Mr. Barlow attests to the effectiveness of a positive approach
to teaching. Physical punishment is downplayed. In Book Two of Emile, Rousseau states,
“Never punish him, for he does not know what it is to do wrong.”203 Rousseau’s approach,
reflected in Sandford and Merton, was quite different from the practice of physical punishment
common in English schools. According to Aries, “In its educational records, the eighteenth
century in England appears as a period of violence and brutality. ‘Flogging’ became increasingly common….It is said that Keates, the headmaster of Eton at the beginning of the nine-

teenth century…whipped the boys who turned up for Holy Communion.”204 The History of
Sandford and Merton is an example of the gentle guidance, instruction, and discipline that Day
characterizes in Mr. Barlow. This approach to child guidance coincided with a heightened interest in children during this period and in a developing new attitude to childhood that emerged
in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.205 The second concept in the story of Tommy
learning to read is Rousseau’s view that the original nature of the child was innocence.206 This
concept contrasts with the idea that children are born inherently corrupt. Mr. Barlow sees
Tommy as having naturally very good dispositions but that he “had been suffered to acquire

many bad habits.”207 According to Coveney, Rousseau denied the idea of the ‘fallen state’ and
attributed “deviations from virtue” to the environment or to less than ideal teachers.208 Both
Mr. Barlow and Harry are benevolent tutors who guide Tommy towards paths of virtue and

202

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Barbara Foxley, Emile, Or, On Education, (Waiheke Island: The
Floating Press, 2009): 11, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=313733&site=eds-live&scope=site.
203
Rousseau, Emile, 123.
204
Aries, 264-265.
205
Ibid., 266-267.
206
Coveney, 44.
207
Day, 47.
208
Coveney, 44.

38

moral sensibilities. Through the characters in Day’s Sandford and Merton, Rousseau’s philosophy of education, as outlined in Emile, is illustrated, and validated to a middle-class audience.
Referring to Rousseau’s Emile, Coveney relays:
The vital genius of the book inspired the whole progressive school of educational
thought in the nineteenth century. If original sin had informed the Christian centuries
in their attitude to childhood, it is Rousseau’s Emile that dominates the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries until Freud.209
Day’s contribution to a new progressive approach to education, and to children’s liter-

ature at the cusp of romanticism, is illustrated in the widely read Sandford and Merton. Matthew Grenby, in “Adults Only? Children and Children’s Books in British Circulating. Libraries, 1748-1848,” writes that by the end of the eighteenth century, “a new tradition of respectable
children’s literature was beginning to be established.”210 Grenby includes Thomas Day in this
canon; “[O]f the fifty catalogues of separate circulating libraries, dating from 1748-1848, that
were consulted….Day’s Sandford and Merton were found in fifteen.”211 Grenby attributes this
to the high regard of Sandford and Merton, along with the book Adelaide and Theodore, as
“important accompaniments to the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”212

The stories engage young children with relatable and occasionally humorous examples
of positive and negative behaviour. Blackman, in A Memoir of the Life and Writings of Thomas
Day, written in 1862, states, “[F]ew books have had a larger share of public favour, during
such a number of years. ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ and ‘Sandford and Merton,’ have had an unparalleled number of young friends, and will long continue to illuminate the sunny paths of childhood.”213 The novel, Carey writes, “is one of the first substantial works for older children, and
it remained popular for over a century.”214
The stories truly depict the simple and joyous life of Harry Sandford that Tommy also
comes to embrace. Day’s writing contributed to a style of literature that would continue into
the nineteenth century: a style that both elevates moral exemplar and illustrates everyday occurrences in which children would delight. The childhood experiences in Sandford and Merton
reflect Rousseau’s philosophy in Emile: “Love childhood; indulge its sports, its pleasures, its
delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the

209

Ibid., 46.
Grenby, 22.
211
Ibid, 20, 22.
212
Ibid., 22.
213
Blackman, 119.
214
Carey.
210

39

lips,

and

when

the

heart

was

ever

at

peace?”215

The childhood experience depicted in Sandford and Merton is perhaps somewhat idealized, and certainly one that not all children in the latter eighteenth century enjoyed. Nonetheless, it is a view that illustrates a trend in children’s literature characteristic of late eighteenth
and early nineteenth-century thought: of nostalgia, a return to nature, and the conception of the
innocent and virtuous child of Romanticism. Coveney’s assessment of the shift in the approach
of children’s literature from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century focuses on the concepts
and ideas of one era followed by a reaction:
The Romantic reaction against moralizing, utilitarian literature for children was part
of its whole reaction against the child of the associationist eighteenth century; which
in turn was part of its whole reaction against the central intellectual traditions of the
Enlightenment. The literary tide was full set towards the shores of Feeling, and bore
with it the fragile craft of the Romantic child….It was [William] Blake who declared
the ‘vast majority’ of children to be on the ‘side of Imagination or Spiritual
Sensation’. With Blake we have the first coordinated utterance of the Romantic
Imaginative and spiritually sensitive child.216
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Authors of the Romantic period include William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, and William
Wordsworth. The poetry of William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, illustrates the concept of the
child as viewed through the lens of Romanticism. Wordsworth was one of the first to articulate
the central message of Romanticism 217 beginning in the late 1700s. Linda Austin credits the
child of English romanticism, in part, to the early poems of Wordsworth.218 Wordsworth was
born into a well-established prosperous family. His father was an attorney-at-law whose clients
included wealthy landowners.219 During his early childhood, Wordsworth lived with his family

in a remodeled 1745 grand home, which John Worthen writes, had “seventeen windows in its
facade,”220 terraced formal gardens, and was in close proximity to the ruins of the Cockermouth
Castle, which Worthen indicates would have been an ideal playground.221 Indeed, in Wordsworth’s poem, “Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle,” he speaks of, “chasing the
215

Rousseau, 94.
Coveney, 51.
217
Cunningham, 68.
218
Linda M. Austin, “Children of Childhood: Nostalgia and the Romantic Legacy,” Studies in
Romanticism 42, no. 1 (Spring, 2003), 76, Accessed March 28, 2021. doi:10.2307/25601604.
219
John Worthen, The Life of William Wordsworth: a Critical Biography (Malden: John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.,: ProQuest Ebook Central, 2014): 4, https://ebookcentral-proquestcom.ezproxy.tru.ca/lib/trulibrary-ebooks/reader.action?docID=1603102.
220
Worthen, The Life, 5.
221
Ibid.
216

40

winged butterfly through my green courts; or climbing, a bold suitor, up to the flowers whose
golden progeny still round my shattered brow in beauty wave.”222 The poetry of the Romantic
period often characterized childhood as a time to look back on, as an experience once lived as
opposed to a particular duration of time.223 For example, in Ode on Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood, Wordsworth writes:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.224
Wordsworth articulates the nostalgia for a childhood that has past, and the connection
with nature which characterized the literature of romanticism. A stark contrast in style to the
more didactic religious-focused materials, literature of the Romantic era depicted the child as
having, as Cunningham writes, “keener perceptions of beauty and of truth than adults.”225
Childhood, once seen as a state of profound immaturity, was now perceived as innocent and
insightful; and childhood is seen as “the best part of life.”226
Wordsworth agreed with Locke that children are born as tabula rasa. For example, in
Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, Wordsworth writes
of an infant at birth, innocent and bestowed with blessings from God, as “…cometh from afar;

William Wordsworth, “Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle: William Wordsworth
(1770-1850),” bartleby.com: Great Books Online, https://www.bartleby.com/270/1/98.html.
223
Erin Blakemore, “Wordsworth and the Invention of Childhood,” JSTOR Daily: Arts & Culture
(September 28, 2015), https://daily.jstor.org/wordsworth-and-the-invention-of-childhood.
224
William Wordsworth, Ode Intimations of Immortality: from Recollections of Early Childhood
(Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, 1884): 15, 16, https://books.google.ca/books/about/William_Wordsworth_Ode_Intimations_of_Im.html?id=i3EKDQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y.
225
Cunningham, 68.
226
Ibid, 69.
222

41

not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”227 But unlike Locke, who
urged the child on to become a rational adult, Wordsworth considered that the mind of the child
should be “wide open to feelings and sensations, above all those from nature.”228 Cunningham
writes of the focus of the romantic poets on childhood:
The romantics…set out an ideal of childhood in which it was transformed from being
a preparatory phase in the making of an adult to being the spring which should
nourish the whole life. If adults do not keep the child in them alive, they will become
dried up and embittered Scrooges.229
Wordsworth’s poem, “An Evening Walk,” published in 1793, depicts a carefree childhood: a time to absorb and appreciate the sensorial experiences that nature has to offer:
When, in the south, the wan noon, brooding still,
Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill,
And shades of deep-embattled clouds were seen,
Spotting the northern cliffs with lights between;
When crowding cattle, checked by rails that make
A fence far stretched into the shallow lake,
Lashed the cool water with their restless tails,
Or from high points of rock looked out for fanning gales:
When school-boys stretched their length upon the green;
And round the broad-spread oak, a glimmering scene.230
The heightened sense of sights and sounds depicted in Wordsworth’s writing, illustrates
the connection to nature depicted in romantic literature. William Wordsworth was one of the
key figures in the writing of literature of romanticism. He expresses the essence of the Romantic period in his poetry and ballads: the innocence of children, a child’s purity and close connection with nature, childhood as a cherished and passing stage of life, and a nostalgia for that
past experience as reflected through the eyes of adulthood.

Gilbert R. Davis, “45. Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood,” The Explicator 13, no. 7, (1955): 108-110,
DOI: 10.1080/00144940.1955.11481810, stanzas 62-67.
228
Cunningham, 68.
229
Ibid.
230
William Wordsworth, “An Evening Walk,” All Poetry, https://allpoetry.com/An-Evening-Walk.
227

42

THE MARKET FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
The market for children’s literature expanded in the mid to late 1700s in England. As
well, the scope and style of literature available for children changed, reflecting varying concepts of childhood. Plumb writes, “By 1780 there was no subject, scientific or literary, that had
not its specialized literature designed for children - often beautifully and realistically illustrated.”231 The evolution of children’s literature through the eighteenth century is seen in the
comparison of a hornbook primer used by children for several centuries from the mid-1400s,

and a beautifully coloured illustration alphabet book of 1800. The hornbook consisted of a
wooden paddle with the lessons tacked on, covered by a thin piece of transparent oxen or sheep
horn. The lesson consisted of the alphabet, vowel and consonant combinations, the Lord’s
Prayer and the Trinity. Lessons were learned by rote memorization. The text was simple and
combined the letters of the alphabet with Bible passages. Education and religion were intricately linked as seen in the image of a hornbook below.

Figure 2. https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2757B/lots/157
The image below is of an alphabet book published around 1800. The publisher and

author are unknown, and the book appears to be for a girl named Louisa Prevot. The full-colour

231

Plumb, 84.

43

illustrations engage the reader with objects, not only letters and words. The pictures are secular
in nature with the only exception of the Angel for A. In this book we note the absence of
religious iconography, unlike earlier reading primers. The text also includes, as noted in the
UCLA website, “high culture images and words such as yacht, zebu, Xenophon, vizier, ostler,
crown, and baron.”232 Most likely this book was the possession of a child in a wealthy family
and reflects cultural norms of the upper class. The images are of objects from the real world:
the baron, the king, and the farmer. According to the UCLA website, “The only child that is
seen in this book is a small girl dancing with a musician, which hints that the author believed
childhood was not merely for education and training, but fun as well. The romanticism of [this
book] reflects the ideal of childhood as a cherished time for adventure and play.”233

Figure 3. ABC with Colored Figures
https://hob.gseis.ucla.edu/HoB_ABCs_Exhibit/HoB_ABCs_ABC_with_Colored_Figures.html

With romanticism came, as Cunningham relates, “a belief that childhood should be
happy, and a hope that the qualities of childhood, if they could be presented in adulthood, might
help redeem the adult world.”234 The door had opened for new genres of children’s literature
to emerge in the nineteenth century and a new generation of authors. Contributions to British

ABCS of the CBC: Alphabet books in the Children’s book Collection. History of the Book and
Literacy Technologies, https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/drucker/HoB_Site/HoB_ABCs_Exhibit/HoB_ABCs_ABC_with_Colored_Figures.html
233
ABCS of the CBC: Alphabet books.
234
Cunningham, 72.
232

44

children’s literature that followed included the adventure stories of Frederick Marryat, Robert
Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling, the fantasy stories of George MacDonald and Lewis
Carroll, stories of exploration by R. M. Ballantyne, tales of interesting and complex characters
and depictions of childhood by Charles Dickens, and the nonsense stories of Edward Lear, to
name a few.
CONCLUSION
Research points to the interrelationship between historical events and literary publications to address the questions of how and why changes in the perception of childhood occurred
over the course of the eighteenth century. The shift in the construction of the child did not
follow a smooth or linear path. Often varying and at times conflicting viewpoints existed concurrently. Opposing factors propelled by religious persuasion and Enlightenment philosophies
defined belief systems about the nature of the child at birth and presented varying constructs
of the child. The Puritan influence of children as born innately errant produced many of the
first texts for children that focused on literacy skills, Bible reading, and moral and religious
instruction in the writings of authors such as James Janeway. He introduced the form of the
religious exemplary biography, which continued into the nineteenth century. Scientific discoveries, which led to new ways of acquiring knowledge through empiricism and human reason,
challenged the authority of the church. The theory of Locke presented the child born as a blank
slate, while Rousseau portrayed the child as innately virtuous. The influence of Locke and
Rousseau was widespread during the eighteenth century. The economic prosperity of the Industrial Revolution brought the emergence of a middle-class with its values and, at the same
time, highlighted the plight of child labour in factories and mines. This led to addressing the

physical, moral, and intellectual needs of the children of the labouring class and with this, the
emergence of Sunday schools, industrial schools, and academic academies. The increased
awareness of the importance of literacy and schooling opened the door for female educators to
develop curriculum and texts with which to teach children literacy skills and the basic moral
expectations of the period. Sarah Trimmer and Anna Barbauld produced literature that supported that need, and they underlined the idea that the mother is instrumental and capable in
teaching her children. Anna Barbauld contributed to the increased understanding of the child
as an experiential learner and developed the conversational style of literature through her Les-

sons, depicting a mother gently guiding her child in discovering the wonders of nature. Political
upheavals on the continent presented statements about liberty and equality and added to the
discussion about the welfare and rights of children and women. A renewed focus on childhood
45

as a celebrated stage of life was highlighted in the writings of Thomas Day and William Wordsworth, author of the Romantic period. The rise of the middle-class and the economic prosperity
of the late 1700s opened the print market and with it an increased demand for merchandising
in the form of children’s books and accessories. John Newbery contributed to the advancement
of the view that children learn best through active participation and positive rewards rather than
rote memorization and harsh punishments.
The dramatic shift in the perception of the child throughout the eighteenth century was
shaped by cultural attitudes, philosophies, and practices, and was reflected in the children’s
literature of the time. Triumphs and tensions, and appraisals and anxieties are expressed
through the literary pens of influential writers, who appealed to the reader as they interpreted,
articulated, reflected, and shaped the social constructions of childhood. How this shift occurred
is understood through the interrelationship between historical events and the emerging philosophical theories. Prominent and influential authors played a major role in spearheading beliefs
and philosophies and through their innovative approaches enacted change. It follows that it is
the analysis of influential children’s literature of the latter half of the eighteenth century within

the philosophical, religious, cultural, political, and economic historical context that a more
comprehensive understanding of how and why the shifts in the construction of the child and
childhood emerges.

46

LITERATURE CITED
“ABCS of the CBC: Alphabet books in the Children’s book Collection.” History of the Book
and Literacy Technologies. https://pages.gseis,ucla.edu/faculty/drucker/HoB_Site/
HoB_ABCs_Exhibit/HoB_ABCs_ABC_with_Colored_figures.html.
“‘Act of Uniformity’1662.’’UK Parliament.
https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/re
ligion/collections/common-prayer/act-of-uniformity-1662/.
Adams, Matthew. Teaching Classics in English Schools 1500-1840. Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. https://search-ebscohostcom.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db+nlebk&AN=1155152&site=edslive&scope=site.
A Little Pretty Pocket-Book.
http://corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsinfo?bibld=249084.
Aries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Vintage
Books, 1962.
Austin, Linda M. "Children of Childhood: Nostalgia and the Romantic Legacy." Studies in
Romanticism 42, no. 1 (2003): 75-98. Accessed March 28, 2021. doi:
10.2307/25601604.
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. Lessons for Children. London: Longman and Co., 1867.
Blackman, John. A Memoir of the Life and Writings of Thomas Day: Author of “Sandford
and Merton,” 1862. https://books.google.ca/books/about/A_Memoir_of_the_Life_and
_and_Writings_of_Tho.html?id=mLtcAAAAcAAJ&redir_esc=y
Blakemore, Erin. “Wordsworth and the Invention of Childhood.” JSTOR Daily: Arts &
Culture. September 28, 2015. https://daily.jstor.org/wordsworth-and-the-inventionof-childhood.
Brck, Elias “Child Labor in the Industrial Revolution.” History Crunch. Last modified
October 12, 2020.
https://www.historycrunch.com/child-labor-in-the-industrial-revolution.html#/.
Brophy, James, Joshua Cole, John Robertson, Thomas Max Safley, and Carol Symes.
Perspectives from the Past. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2016. 294-297.
Bunyan, John. A Book For Boys and Girls; or, Temporal Things Spiritualized. London: N.P.,
1686 A2. https://archive.org/details/bookforboysgirls00buny/page/n37/mode/2up.
Carey, Brycchan. “Thomas Day (1748-1789).” British Abolitionists. Brycchan Carey:
2001-2015. https://brycchancarey.com/abolition/index.htm.
Carpenter, S.C. Eighteenth-Century Church and People. London: John Murray, 1959. Quoted
in D. Wills, “Sarah Trimmer’s Economy of Charity: Politics and Morality in the
47

Sunday School State.” Lumin 12, (1993) 157. https://erudit.org/en/journals/lumen/
1900-v1-n1-lumen0300/1012588ar.pdf.
Christiansen, Dr. Penelope. “England Nonconformist Records.” English: Non-Anglican
Church Records. The National Institute for Genealogical Studies Family
Search. June 2012 excerpt from their course.
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/England_Nonconformist.Records_
(National_Institute).
Colquon, P. Memorandum on Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. Manuscript E-46, Kress
Library, Harvard. Quoted in D. Galbi. “Child Labour and the Division of Labour in
the Early English Cotton Mills,” Journal of Popular Economics, 10 no. 4 (Oct. 1997):
358.
Coveney, Peter. The Image of Childhood: The Individual and Society: a Study of the Theme
in English Literature. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967.
Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. London:
Routledge, 2014.
Darton, Frederick J. H.. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932.

Davis, Gilbert R.“45. Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
Early Childhood,” The Explicator 13, no. 7, (1955): 108-110,
DOI: 10.1080/00144940.1955.11481810, stanzas 62-67.
Day, Thomas. “The History of Sandford and Merton: A Book for the Young.” T. Nelson and
Sons: London, 1872. UF George A. Smathers Libraries UF Baldwin Library of
Historical Children’s Literature University of Florida Digital Collections,
https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00027950/00001/48j
Day, Thomas. The History of Sandford and Merton. London: Darton, Harvey, and Darton,
Gracechurch-Street, 1813. The Hockcliffe Project, http://hocklifffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/
0092.html.
Demers, Patricia. From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children’s Literature to
1850. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2008.
“Factory Acts in the Industrial Revolution.” History Crunch (October 2016).
https://www.historycrunch.com/factory-acts-in-the-industrial-revoluton.html#/.
Galbi, Douglas A. 1997 “Child Labour and the Division of Labour in the Early English
Cotton Mills,” Journal of Popular Economics 10, no.4 (Oct. 1997): 357-375.
Gatiss, Lee. The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans. London:
Latimer Trust: 2007. chap. 1.5, Kindle.
Gavin, Adrienne. The Child in British Literature: Literary Constructions of
Childhood, Medieval to Contemporary. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
48

Grenby, M.O. “Adults Only? Children and Children’s Books in British Circulating Libraries,
1748-1848.” Book History, vol. 5 (2002): 19-38.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30228184.
Grenby, M.O. The Child Reader 1700-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Grenby, M.O. “The Origins of Children’s Literature.” Discovering Literature: Romantics and
Victorians, (May 15, 2014). https://bl.uk.romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-originsof-childrens-literature.
.
Hanawalt, B.A. “Childrearing among the lower classes of late medieval England.”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VIII (1977-8) 1-22. Quoted in H. Cunningham.
Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. London: Routledge, 2014,
34-35.
Hintz, Carrie and Eric L. Tribunella. Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction.
Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2019.
Hornbbook. https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2757B/lots/157
Horne, Jackie. History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s
Literature. London: Routledge, 2011.
“Henry VIII: April 1530: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 4,
1524-1530” British History Online (London: 1875).
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8?vol4/pp 2832-2847.
Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Janeway, James. Janeway’s Token for Children: Being an account of the Conversion, Holy
and Exemplary Lives and Joyful deaths of Several Young Children. Oxford: The
Religious Tract Society. https://books.google.ca/books?id=W3b45PND
nRQC&pg=PA6&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y
“John Newbery,”
https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/english-literature-15001799-biographies/john-newbery.
Kenny, Anthony. An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy. Hoboken: Wiley, 2019.
Kline, Daniel T. Medieval Literature for Children. Routledge: 2003. Quoted in C. Hintz
and E. Tribunella. Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction.
Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2019, 83.
Kline, Daniel T. “‘That child may soon to padres reverence’: Children and Childhood in
Middle English Literature.” In The Child in British Literature, edited by Adrienne E.
Gavin, 21-37. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

49

Leser, Simon. “Jane Austen is Far From England’s First Great Woman Novelist: There Were
Plenty of Others Before Her.” Culture Trip (July 28, 2017).
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/england/articles/jane-austen-is-farfrom-englands-first-great-woman-novelist/
Lim, Jessica Wen Hui. “Barbauld’s Lessons: The Conversational Primer in Late EighteenthCentury British Children’s Literature.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 43,
no. 1 (March 2020): 101-120. Doi:1:10.1111/1754-0208.12648.
Mather, Ruth. “The impact of the Napoleonic Wars in Britain,” Discovering Literature:
Romantics and Victorians (May 15, 2015).
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-impact-of-the-napoleonicwars-in-britain
Matthews, A.G.. Calamy Revised: Being a Revision of Edmund Calamy’s Account of the
Ministers and Others Ejected and Silenced, 1660-1662. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1988. Quoted in L. Gatiss. The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and
Persecution of the Puritans. London: Latimer Trust: 2007, chap. 1.5, Kindle.
Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.
McCarthy, William. “Mother of All Discourses: Anna Barbauld’s Lessons for Children.” The
Princeton University Library Chronicle 60, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 196-219.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.25290/prinunivlibrchro.60.2.0196pdf.
McGillis, Roderick. “Irony and Performance: The Romantic Child.” In The Child in British
Literature: Literary Constructions of Childhood, Medieval to Contemporary, edited
by Adrienne E. Gavin, 101-115. London: Palgrave, 2012.
Nardinelli, Clark. Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990.
Newbery, John. A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. Newbery, 1744. image 11.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2003juv05880/?st=gallery
Newbery, John. The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of young
Gentlemen and Ladies, and familiarized and made entertaining by Objects with which
they are intimately acquainted. London: 1761. “The Newton Project.”
www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/record/OTHE00114.
Newton, Hannah. “The Dying Child in Seventeenth-Century England,” Pediatrics 136, no. 2
(August 2015): 218-222. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4568305/.
O’Brien, Patrick. “The Impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815, on the
Long-Run Growth of the British Economy.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 12,
no. 3 (1989): 335-95. Accessed March 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/
40241130.
“The Period of the French Revolution: XVI Children’s Books, 13. Sarah Trimmer.” The
Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes 1907-21 Vol
XI https://www.64.202.287.143/CHEL/XI/1613.html).
50

Plumb, J.H. “The New World of Children in Eighteenth-Century England.” Past & Present
no. 67 (May 1975): 64-95. https://www.jstor.org/stable/650233.
Razzell, Peter and Christine Spence. “The History of Infant, Child and Adult Mortality in
London, 1550-1850.” The London Journal: A Review of Metropolitan Society Past
and Present 32, no. 3 (2007): 271-292 published online 18 Jul 2013.
https://doi.org/10.1179/174963207x227578.
Reynolds, Kimberly. “Perceptions of childhood.” Discovering Literature: Romantics and
Victorians (May 15, 2014).
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/perceptions-of-childhood.
Riebeek, Holli. “Planetary Motion: The History of an Idea that Launched the Scientific
Revolution.” Nasa Earth Observatory (July 7, 2009).
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OrbitsHistory.
Robbins,Sarah. “Lessons for Children and Teaching Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld’s Primer for the
Textual Construction of Middle-Class Domestic Pedagogy.” The Lion and the
Unicorn 17 no. 2 (December 1993): 135-151.
https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.tru.ca/article/243927 doi:10.1353/uni.0.0058
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques and Barbara Foxley. Emile, Or, On Education. [Waiheke Island]:
The Floating Press, 2009.
https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=tru&db=nlebk&AN=
313733&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile, Or, Concerning Education (1762) [10],
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165rouss-em.html.
Ruwe, Donelle. “Guarding the British Bible from Rousseau: Sarah Trimmer, William
Godwin, and the Pedagogical Periodical.” Children’s Literature 29 (2001).
https://resolver-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/openurl?sid=EBSCO:edb&genre=
article&issn=00928208&ISBN=&volume=29&is
sue=1&date=20010101&spage=1&pages=1-17&title=Children%27s%20Litera
ture&atitle=Guarding%20the%20British%20Bible%20from%20Rous
seau%3A%20Sarah%20Trimmer%2C%20William%20Godwin%2C%20and%20
the%20Pedagogical%20Periodical.&aulast=Ruwe%2C%20Donelle&id=DOI:
10.1353/chl.0.0788.
“Schooling before the 19th Century” UK Parliament.
https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/tranformingsociety/livinglearn
ing/school/overview/before19thcentury/.
Schultz, J.A. The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages, 1100-1350.
Philadelphia,1995. Quoted in H. Cunningham. Children and Childhood in Western
Society Since 1500. London: Routledge, 2014, 34.

51

Secord, James A. “Newton in the Nursery: Tom Telescope and the Philosophy of Tops and
Balls, 1761-1838.” History of Science 23, no. 2 (June 01, 1985).
https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/scholarlyjournals/newton-nursery-tom-telescope-philosophy-tops/docview/1298061446/se2?accountid=14314.
Sharrock, Roger. “John Bunyan: English Author.” Britannica.
https:www.britannica.com/biography/John-Bunyan
Smith, Bonnie G. Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700. Toronto: D.C.
Heath and Co.,1989.
“Timeline: Britain 1750-1900.” History World (2012) Oxford Reference,
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.103/acref/9780191736254.timeline.0001
Trimmer, Sarah. Fabulous Histories, Designed for the Instruction of Children, Respecting
Their Treatment of Animals. London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1838.
Trimmer, Sarah. “Notice of the Newtonian System.” (1798 edn). Guardian of Education I
(1802): 441-2. Quoted in J. Secord. “Newton in the Nursery: Tom Telescope and the
Philosophy of Tops and Balls, 1761-1838. History of Science 23 no. 2 (June 01,
1985). 141. https://ezproxy.tru.-ca/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.tru.
ca/scholarly-journals/newton-nursery-tom-telescope-philosophy-tops/
docview-1298061446/se-2?accountid=14314.
Trimmer, Sarah. The Economy of Charity ; or, An address to ladies concerning Sundayschools (1787): 70-83, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-conomy-of- charity.
Tuttle, Carolyn. “Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution,” Economic History
Association.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/child-labor-during-the-british-industrial-revolution/.
Watts, Ruth. “A gendered journey: travel of ideas in England c. 1750-1800.”
History of Education 37 no. 4 (July 2008): 513-530,
https://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=7c7dc50aceb5-495e-ad09-87e254aee85b%40sessionmgr4008.
Wills, Deborah. Sarah Trimmer's Oeconomy of Charity: Politics and Morality in the
Sunday School State. Lumen 12, (1993):157–166, https://doi.org/10.7202/1012588ar.
Wood, Naomi. “Angelic, Atavistic, Human: The Child the Victorian Period.” In The Child in
British Literature, edited by Adrienne E. Gavin (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2012):
116-130.
Wordsworth, William. “Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle: William
Wordsworth (1770-1850),” bartleby.com: Great Books Online,
Wordsworth, William. “An Evening Walk,” All Poetry, https://allpoetry.com/AnEvening-Walk.

52

Wordsworth, William. “Ode: Intimations of Immortality: from Recollections of Early
Childhood.” Poetry Foundation (2021) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/
45536/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollections-of-early-childhood.
Worthen, John. The Life of William Wordsworth: a Critical Biography (Malden: John Wiley
& Sons, Ltd.,: ProQuest Ebook Central, 2014) https://ebookcentral-proquestcom.ezproxy.tru.ca/lib/trulibrary-ebooks/reader.action?docID=1603102.
Yonge, Charlotte. “Children’s Literature of the last Century,” Macmillan’s Magazine (JulySeptember 1869) Part I, 234. Quoted in J. Lim. “Barbauld’s Lessons: The
Conversational Primer in Late Eighteenth-Century British Children’s Literature,” 43,
no. 1 (August 15, 2019): 101-120.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/10.1111/1754-0208.12648

53