ABSTRACT
In the fi rst half of the nineteenth century a number of different genres were translated into English for children: the adventure story or historical epic; the moral tale with religious overtones; and a second wave of fairy tales translated from German rather than French. Adventure stories continued the tradition of the eighteenth-century robinsonnade as well as the medieval romance in tales of journeys, quests, fortitude, and historical drama. The Young Robinson. An interesting narrative of a French cabin-boy, who was shipwrecked on an uninhabited island (1825), translated by ‘F.L.’ from the French of Mme Mallès de Beaulieu, immediately reveals its literary heritage, whereas Blamires (2006) cites in his overview of nineteenth-century translations for children tales of heroism of diverse origins, including J.P.C. de Florian’s William Tell (1809), translated by William B. Hewetson1; Friedrich Gerstäcker’s The Little Whaler (translator unknown, 1857); and the epic historical fi ction with a Protestant fl avour of Gustav Nieritz2 —all translated from German.
