ABSTRACT

When Samuel Johnson criticized Hester Thrale for “putting Newbery's books into children's hands as too trifling to engage their attention,” she urged in rebuttal “the numerous editions and quick sale of Tommy Prudent or Goody Two-Shoes: ‘Remember always (said he) that the parents buy the books, and that the children never read them.’” 2 Johnson's reply voices a conviction about children's reading that has been current since the introduction of children's books, but that this study of eighteenth-century child readers at Rugby School challenges. The bookselling records of the Clays of Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick, which extend from 1744–1784, 3 show that when Rugby schoolboys—generally from professional or gentry and occasionally plebeian backgrounds—were empowered to purchase books on their own, they frequently chose Goody Two-Shoes as well as other Newbery books that combined adventure with moral instruction.