ABSTRACT
Propelled by rising literacy rates and ever-cheaper print technology, children’s literature boomed, both in quantity and in quality, across the nineteenth century. The reverse side of the phenomenon of the children’s book enjoyed by adults is the adult text that makes use of strategies more usually associated with children’s fiction – what Lynne Rosenthal has dubbed the “children’s book for adults.” The title Misunderstood thus refers ultimately to an apparently large number of real children, represented in the fiction by seven-year-old Humphrey Duncombe. The gender composition of Misunderstood’s audience is also relevant. The novel’s dominant subject is the adult male’s emotional inadequacy, which apparently matters only in the absence of his idealized wife. Misunderstood was participating in a commitment to moral uplift that was widespread in the nineteenth century. “The Gifts of the Christ Child” may initially seem to lack unity. Both Alice and Greatorex are flawed; however, at first sight their situations do not appear parallel.
