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, religious, 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.
