Part 10

The truth of the matter is that a new impulse was started; the national spirit began to move toward a more democratic goal; the rank and file began to look beyond the narrow hill and dale; women sought wider spheres; the poor demanded constitutional rights; energy began to stir from underneath. The word _modern_ was in every one’s mind. The old order changeth, giving place to new. The child’s intellect must be furnished with food for its growth; Rousseau’s doctrine of “back to nature” was found not to have worked; it was realised that special training must begin early for all the walks of life. Carlyle was pleading for a _public_ library, education was widening its sphere.

In the preceding pages, we have tried to establish a continuous line of development in children’s books through several centuries; upon such a foundation the English story and the American story of to-day are based. The table of English writers on page 147 contains names of minor importance, but still forming a part of the past history--foreshadowers of the new era. For therein you will discover that juvenile literature first begins to show signs of differing from adult literature only in its power; that where Macaulay tells the story of England in terms of maturity, Miss Strickland, Lady Callcott, Miss Tytler, and Miss Yonge adopt a descending scale. Where children were wont to act in accord with the catechism, they are now made to feel an interest in their surroundings. Mrs. Marcet writes for them “talks” on chemistry and political economy, Mrs. Wakefield on botany and insects. The extension of schools meant that literature must be supplied those schools; writers were encouraged in the same way that Miss More was prompted to produce her “Repository Tracts.” Grammars and histories began to flood the market, and in the wake of Scott’s novels, taking into consideration the fact that books were being written for the purpose of information, the child’s historical story was a natural consequence. Thus we discover the connection between “Waverley” and Henty. The death-blow to fairy tales in England, brought about by the didactic writers, resulted in a deplorable lack of imaginative literature for children, until a German influence, around 1840–1850, began to take effect, and the Grimms’ Household Tales afforded a new impulse.[41] Mrs. Gatty, author of the famous “Parables of Nature,” deigned to rejoice over the classic nonsense of Lewis Carroll. The line of descent can be drawn from Perrault to Grimm, from Grimm to Andrew Lang’s rainbow series of folk-lore.

The table is intended to do no more than indicate the gradual manner in which this break took effect. The student who would treat the evolution fully will find it necessary to place side by side with his discussion of individual books for young people, a full explanation of those social changes in English history which are the chief causes of the changes in English literature. Children’s books are subject to just those modifications which take place in the beliefs, the knowledge, and the aspirations of the adult person. The difference between the two is one of intensity and not of kind. The student will discover, after a study of the development of the common school, how and why the educational impulse dominated over all elements of pure imagination; how the retelling craze, given a large literary sanction by such a writer as Lamb, and so excellently upheld by Charles Kingsley, lost caste when brought within compass of the text-book. He will finally see how this educational pest has overrun America to a far greater extent than England, to the detriment of much that is worthy and of much which should by rights be made to constitute a children’s reading heritage.

ENGLISH TABLE

MRS. PRISCILLA WAKEFIELD. 1751–1832. Member of Society of Friends; philanthropic work among the poor. Author: Juvenile Anecdotes; Juvenile Travellers; Conversations; Introduction to Botany; Introduction to Insects; Present Condition of Female Sex, with Suggestions for Its Improvement; Life of William Penn. Reference: D. N. B.[42]

FRANCES BURNEY (MADAME D’ARBLAY). 1752–1840. Reference: D. N. B.

WILLIAM FORDYCE MAVOR. 1758–1837. Ed. 1799, juvenile periodical for Walker, Newbery. Reference: D. N. B.

JOANNA BAILLIE. 1762–1851. Work among the poor made her known as Lady Bountiful. Reference: D. N. B.

JEREMIAH JOYCE. 1763–1816. Author: Lectures on the Microscope.

MRS. JANE MARCET. 1769–1858. Macaulay wrote: “Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet’s little dialogues on political economy could teach Montague or Walpole many fine lessons in finance.” Author: Scientific text-books; Conversations on Chemistry intended for the Female Sex; Conversations on Political Economy, imitated by Harriet Martineau in her Illustrations of Political Economy. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. BARBARA HOFLAND. 1770–1844. Imitated the Edgeworth style. Author: Emily; The Son of a Genius; Tales of a Manor; Young Crusoe. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. MARY MARTHA SHERWOOD. 1775–1851. Stories and tracts evangelical in tone. With her sister, Mrs. Cameron, invented a type of story for rich and for poor. Author: The Fairchild Family (intended for the middle classes); Little Henry and His Bearer. Reference: _New Review_ (May 18, 1843); Life of Mrs. Sherwood by her daughter; D. N. B. An edition of The Fairchild Family, New York, Stokes, $1.50.

JANE PORTER. 1776–1850. Reference: D. N. B.

MARIA HACK. 1778–1844. Quaker parentage. A believer in the “walk” species of literature. Author: Winter Evenings, or Tales of Travellers; First Lessons in English Grammar; Harry Beaufoy, or the Pupil of Nature. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. ELIZABETH PENROSE. 1780–1837. Pseud. Mrs. Markham. Daughter of a rector. One critic wrote: “Mrs. Penrose adapted her history to what she considered the needs of the young, and omitted scenes of cruelty and fraud, as hurtful to children, and party politics after the Revolution as too complicated for them to learn.” Author: Began school histories in 1823; these were brought up to date afterward by Mary Howitt. Moral Tales and Sermons for Children. Reference: D. N. B.

JOHN WILSON CROKER. 1780–1857. One of the founders of the _Quarterly Review_; reviewed abusively Keats’s Endymion. Author: Stories from the History of England, 1817, which supplied Scott with the idea for his Tales of a Grandfather; Irish Tales. Reference: Jenning’s Diaries and Correspondence of Croker (London, 1884); Internat. Encyclo.

LADY MARIA CALLCOTT. 1785–1842. Author: Little Arthur’s History of England. Reference: D. N. B.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 1787–1855. Careful detail of description, akin to Dutch style of painting. Author: Tragedies; Village Stories; Juvenile Spectator. She was among the first women to adopt writing as a profession. Miss Yonge speaks of her “writing so deliciously of children,” but she “could not write for them.” Reference: D. N. B.; Recollections; Letters.

AGNES STRICKLAND. 1796–1874. “With the exception of Jane Porter, whom she visited at Bristol, and with whom she carried on a frequent correspondence, and a casual meeting with Macaulay, whom she found congenial, she came little in contact with the authors of the day.” Author: Lives of the Queens of England; Two Rival Crusoes. [Note the hybrid type of story that sprung up around the real Robinson Crusoe.] Edited Fisher’s Juvenile Scrap Book, 1837–1839. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. MAY SEWELL. 1797–1884. Left Society of Friends for the Church of England. Wrote homely ballads. _Vide_ daughter, Anna Sewell. Author: Her ballad, Mother’s Last Words, circulated about 1,088,000 copies when it first appeared. Reference: Mod. Biog.

MARY HOWITT. 1799–1888. Authorship linked with that of her husband. In 1837 began writing children’s stories and poems. Her daughter, Anna Mary, also was a writer of children’s books. Author: Translator of Fredrika Bremer’s novels; editor, Fisher’s Drawingroom Scrap Book. Reference: Reminiscences of My Later Life (_Good Words_, 1886); D. N. B.

CATHERINE SINCLAIR. 1800–1864. Fourth daughter of Sir John Sinclair. Her work considered the beginning of the modern spirit. A friend of Scott. Author: Holiday House; Modern Accomplishment; Modern Society; Modern Flirtations. Reference: A Brief Tribute to C. S. (Pamphlet); D. N. B.

G. P. R. JAMES. 1801–1860. Influenced by Scott and encouraged by Irving. Thackeray parodied him in Barbazure, by G. P. R. Jeames, Esq., in Novels by Eminent Hands; also in Book of Snobs (chaps. ii and xvi). Author of a long list of novels.

HARRIET MARTINEAU. 1802–1876. Reference: D. N. B.

MRS. MARGARET SCOTT GATTY. 1809–1873. She was forty-two before she began to publish. _Vide_ Ewing. Author: Aunt Judy Tales; Parables of Nature; 1866--_Aunt Judy Magazine_ (monthly), continued after her death, with her daughter as editor; stopped in 1885. Reference: Life in ed. Parables (Everyman’s Library); _Illustrated London News_, Oct. 18, 1873; _Athenæum_, Oct. 11, 1873, p. 464; D. N. B.

ANNA SEWELL. 1820–1878. Author: Black Beauty (1877). Reference: D. N. B.

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 1823-. Author: Heir of Redclyffe; The Kings of England; The Chaplet of Pearls.

MRS. MARY LOUISA WHATELEY. 1824–1889. Went to Cairo and lived from 1861–1889, where she had a Moslem school. Wrote chiefly about Egypt. Fairy tale influence. Author: Reverses; or, the Fairfax Family. Reference: Hays’ Women of To-day; London _Times_ (March 12, 1889).

MRS. DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK. 1826–1887. Pseudo-fairy tale writer. Author: Adventures of a Brownie, etc.

JULIANA HORATIO EWING. 1841–1885. Reference: J. H. Ewing and Her Books, by Horatia K. T. Gatty; D. N. B.

ANN FRASER TYTLER. Daughter of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselel. Author: Leila on the Island; Leila in England; Leila at Home.

II. THE AMERICAN SIDE.

As for the American phase of the subject, we have already indicated three stages by which the Colonial or Revolutionary reader was given his “New England Primer,” his “Mother Goose,” and his Thomas books obtained directly from Newbery of England. The whole intellectual activity was in the hands of the clergy; even the governing body pretended to be God-fearing men, and were prone to listen to the dictates of the ministry. The austere demands of the Puritan Sunday, more than anything else, caused the writing of religious books, and so firm a hold did the Sabbath _genre_ of literature take, that, in 1870, it was still in full sway, and even now exists to a limited extent. The history of education in America for a long while has to do with denominational schools, and teaching was largely left in the hands of the clergy. So that we shall find our early writer of “juveniles” either a man of the church, or his wife; prompted solely by the desire to supply that character of story which would fitly harmonise with the sanctity of Sunday, rather than with the true excellence of all days. If, in the school, a book was needed, it was far better to write one than to trust to others for what might turn out to be heretical.[43] The Rev. Jedidiah Morse began his literary career in the capacity of teacher; Noah Webster’s idea was at first to prepare a treatise on grammar which could be used in the schools. These two were the most scientific thinkers of their period. The list on page 158, indicating but a few of the forgotten and only faintly remembered authors of early days, fairly well represents the general trend; in the writing done, there were the same morals, the similar luckless children, subject to the same thin sentiment of piety and rectitude as we discovered holding sway in England for nearly two centuries. The name of Peter Parley is no longer familiar to children, and a crusade is fast being formed against the Jacob Abbott class of book. The type of writer was the kind that debated for or against slavery in terms of the Bible. The Puritan soil was rich for the rapid growth of the Hannah More seed, and no one assisted in sowing it to greater extent than Samuel G. Goodrich (1793–1860). He may symbolise for us the reading child in New England at the beginning of the nineteenth century; his training, his daily pursuits, as told in his autobiography, supply pages of invaluable social colour.[44]

“It is difficult,” so he says, “... in this era of literary affluence, almost amounting to surfeit, to conceive of the poverty of books suited to children in the days of which I write. Except the New England Primer--the main contents of which were the Westminster Catechism--and some rhymes, embellished with hideous cuts of Adam’s Fall, in which ‘we sinned all’; the apostle and a cock crowing at his side, to show that ‘Peter denies his Lord and cries’; Nebuchadnezzar crawling about like a hog, the bristles sticking out of his back, and the like--I remember none that were in general use among my companions. When I was about ten years old, my father brought from Hartford ‘Gaffer Ginger,’ ‘Goody Two Shoes,’ and some of the rhymes and jingles now collected under the name of ‘Mother Goose,’ with perhaps a few other toy books of that day. These were a revelation. Of course I read them, but I must add, with no relish.”

The confession follows that when he was given “Red Riding Hood,” he was filled with contempt; and in this spirit he condemns such nonsense as “hie diddle diddle,” which is not fit for Christian parents to use. He found some considerable pleasure in “Robinson Crusoe,” but it was not until he met with Miss Hannah More’s tracts that he might be said to have enjoyed with relish any book at all.

Thus his reading tastes foreshadowed his literary activity. When he turned writer, he aimed for the style which distinguishes Mary Howitt, Mrs. Hofland, and Miss Strickland; he disclaimed any interest in the nursery book that was unreasonable and untruthful, for so he considered most of the stories of fancy. In his books, his desire was chiefly “to feed the young mind upon things wholesome and pure, instead of things monstrous, false, and pestilent.... In short, that the element of nursery books should consist of beauty instead of deformity, goodness instead of wickedness, decency instead of vulgarity.” In this manner, the mould of the Peter Parley tales was shaped. Goodrich at first adopted no philosophy of construction, so he says; he aimed to tell his story as he would have spoken it to a group of boys. But after a while, a strong sense of the child’s gradual growth took hold of him; he recognised psychological stages, and he saw that, as in teaching, his books must consider that children’s “first ideas are simple and single, and formed of images of things palpable to the senses.”

While on a visit to England in 1823--the memorable time he met Miss More--he turned his attention to what was being accomplished there in popular education for children. After investigation, he thus wrote:

“Did not children love truth? If so, was it necessary to feed them on fiction? Could not history, natural history, geography, biography become the elements of juvenile works, in place of fairies and giants, and mere monsters of the imagination? These were the inquiries that from this time filled my mind.”

Under such conditions Peter Parley was born, and reborn, and overborn; battles were waged for and against him, just as they have only recently been waged for and against the Elsie books. But no sooner was Peter Parley identified with a definite person than Mr. Goodrich’s trials began. He became a victim of the imperfect copyright system; he found his tales being pirated in England. And as fast as he would settle one difficulty, another would arise; spurious Parleys came to light, conflicting with his sales. It was the case of Goodrich _alias_ Kettell, _alias_ Mogridge, _alias_ Martin, and many more beside. In fact, a writer, considering the life of William Martin (1801–1867), quotes a statement to the effect that “Messrs. Darton, Martin’s publishers, in especial used to prefix the name [Peter Parley] to all sorts of children’s books, without reference to their actual authorship.”

Isaiah Thomas may be taken as representative of our Revolutionary period, even as the “New England Primer” may typify the chief literary product of our Colonial life. Peter Parley marks for us the war of 1812. It was after this that our country began to expand, that the South and the Southwest unfolded their possibilities, that the East began the Westward move that led to the craze of ’49. The Indian, the scout, the cowboy, the Yankee trader have been the original contributions of America to juvenile literature. A close study will indicate that Cooper was the creator of this _genre_ of story,--more painstaking, more effulgent, more detailed than the Indian story-writer of to-day, but none the less a permanent model. So, too, he will be found, in his accounts of the navy, in his records of common seamen, in his lives of naval officers, to be no mean, no inaccurate, no dry historian; in fact, Cooper, as one of our first naval critics, has yet to be accorded his proper estimate.

American history, American development being of a melodramatic character, it is natural that the opposite to Sunday-school literature should rapidly take root as soon as begun. A period of the ten-cent novel flourished about 1860, when the Beadle Brothers, who were finally to be merged into the publishing house of George Munro, began the publication of their series of cheap volumes--the sensationalism of Cooper raised to the _n_th power. To-day there are men who glow with remembered enthusiasm over Colonel Prentiss Ingraham and the detective stories of A. W. Aiken--whose record was often one a week--as they do over the name of Hemyng _alias_ Jack Harkaway, or Mayne Reid, with his traditional profanity. Edward S. Ellis (b. 1840) was one of the young members of this group of writers. He became inoculated, but was forced, when the milder process came into vogue, to soften his high lights, and to accord with the times. What such early “wild cat” literature did, however, for present upholders of the “series” books, was to exemplify that, by a given pattern, a tale could be made to “go” to order. There was then, as there is now, a certain type of book, neither moral nor immoral, and not at all educational, but only momentarily diverting; written without motive, without definite object, but whose ground plan and mechanism were workable.

The increase of the public-school system was the chief opponent of the Sunday-school book, as it likewise, by its educational emphasis, fought against the dime-novel vogue. And with the inception of the public school on its present large scale we reach the immediate stage, the era of over-productivity, with its enormous average taste, with its public regard for readers in the libraries, for scholars in the class-rooms, for the poor in settlements, and for the emigrant on the high seas.

After an experience of five years in reviewing juvenile books of the past and in estimating the varied stories of the present, I do not think it sweeping to assert that while education has snatched the child’s book from the moralist and taken away from writing a false standard of right doing, it has not, as yet, added any worthy attribute of itself. It has not taught the child to judge good literature from the bad; it has supplied, in a prescribed course, certain isolated books or stereotyped poems, with which the child is wearied in the class-room, and from which, once outside, the child turns with natural dread. I am judging solely from the standpoint of juvenile taste. And so, with the entrance of a new consideration--the children’s reading-rooms--it may well be queried at the outset: What will this institution add to the creative force? How far will it seek to improve conditions? Will there be an increased demand for the good and for the best books? Will there be a more careful art manifested in the writing of stories? Will the gaps in the field be filled up? For an examination of the past and of the present tells me that children’s literature, generally speaking, has yet to be conquered.

With these remarks in view, the table that follows may, on examination, bear some significance.

AMERICAN TABLE

NOAH WEBSTER. Ct. 1758–1843. Cf. Mavor in England. Author: New England Spelling Book; American Dictionary. Reference: Memoir by Goodrich (in Dictionary); Life by H. E. Scudder; Appleton.[45]

JEDIDIAH MORSE. Ct. 1761–1826. Congregational minister; wrote first school text-books of any importance in America. His son was S. F. B. Morse. Author: Geography Made Easy, etc. He is called the “Father of American Geography.” Reference: Life by Sprague; Appleton.

THOMAS HOPKINS GALLAUDET. Ct. 1787–1851. Minister. Educator of deaf mutes; in this work assisted by wife, Sophia Fowler (1798–1877), and two sons. Author: The Child’s Book of the Soul; The Youth’s Book of Natural Theology; Bible Stories for the Young. Reference: Life by Humphrey; Tribute to T. H. G. by Henry Barnard (Hartford, Conn., 1852); Appleton.

ELIZA LESLIE. Pa. 1787–1857. Wrote cook books, girls’ books, and juvenile tales for _The Pearl and The Violet_, which she edited annually. She also edited _The Gift_. One of her brothers, a well-known artist. Author: The Young Americans; Stories for Adelaide; Stories for Helen; The Behaviour Book. The Wonderful Traveller consisted of altered versions of tales from Münchausen, Gulliver, etc. Reference: Appleton.

MRS. SARAH JOSEPHA (BUELL) HALE. N. H. 1788–1879. It was through her efforts that Thanksgiving became an American national observance. Her son, Horatio, was an author. Author: The famous “Mary had a little lamb.” Edited _Lady’s Book_ for forty years from 1837. Reference: Appleton.

CATHERINE MARIA SEDGWICK. Mass. 1789–1867. Author: The Boy of Mount Rhigi, a tale of inspired goodness; Beatitudes and Pleasant Sundays; The Poor Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man; A Love Token for Children; Morality of Manners; Lessons without Books. Reference: Hart’s Female Prose Writers of America; Life and Letters, ed. Mary E. Dewey; Appleton.

MRS. SUSAN (RIDLEY) SEDGWICK. Mass. 1789–1867. Author: Walter Thornley; Morals of Pleasure; The Young Emigrants. Reference: Appleton.

MRS. LYDIA HOWARD (HUNTLEY) SIGOURNEY. Ct. 1791–1865. Author: Letters to Young Ladies; Poetry for Children; Tales and Essays for Children. Reference: Griswold’s Female Poets; Hart’s Female Prose Writers; Life and Letters; Parton’s Eminent Women; Appleton.

MRS. CAROLINE (HOWARD) GILMAN. Mass. 1794–1888. Took great pride in her children’s books. Began writing in _Southern Rosebud_ (Charleston), afterward called _Southern Rose_ (1832–1839). This magazine has been credited as the first juvenile weekly in the United States. Her daughter, Caroline H. (b. S. C. 1823), also wrote for the young. Author: Oracles for Youth; Mrs. Gilman’s Gift Book. Reference: Autobiographical sketch in Hart’s Female Prose Writers; Recollections; Appleton.

MRS. LOUISA C. (HUGGINS) TUTHILL. Ct. 1798–1897. Wrote moral tales; with others prepared Juvenile Library for Boys and Girls; her daughter, Cornelia (T.) Pierson (1820–1870), wrote Our Little Comfort; When Are We Happiest? Author: I will be a Gentleman; I will be a Lady; I will be a Sailor; Onward, Right Onward. Edited the Young Ladies Reader (New Haven, 1840). Reference: Hart; Appleton.

JOHN TODD. Vt. 1800–1873. Invented Index Rerum. Author: Religious works, mainly for young people; also educational works. Reference: Life; _Harper’s Magazine_, Feb., 1876.

LYDIA MARIA CHILD. Mass. 1802–1880. Foremost in the ranks of anti-slavery; influenced by Garrison. In 1826, founded the _Juvenile Miscellany_, forerunner of Harper’s _Young People_. Author: Flowers for Children (graded). Reference: Hart; Nat. Cyclo. Am. Biog.

MARIA J. MCINTOSH. Ga. 1803–1878. Quiet and domestic tone to her books. Author: Series known as the Aunt Kitty Tales, the first one being Blind Alice, published in 1841. Reference: Hart.

DR. HARVEY NEWCOMB. Mass. 1803–1866. Congregational clergyman. Wrote moral and religious books for young. Author: How to be a Man; How to be a Lady; Young Ladies’ Guide. Reference: Appleton.

REV. JACOB ABBOTT. Me. 1803–1879. Divinity school; Professor at Amherst; Congregationalist. Travelled extensively. Author: Rollo books (28 vols.); Lucy books (6 vols.); Jonas books (6 vols.); Franconia books (10 vols.); histories with brother (_vide_ p. 160). Reference: A Neglected N. E. Author (_N. E. Mag._, n. s. 30:471); Writings (_Lit. and Theol. R._, 3:83); (_Chr. Exam._, 18:133; 21:306); Appleton.