‘Nearly all are supported by children’: charitable childhoods in late- nineteenth- and early- twentieth- century literature for children in the British world

Children’s literature has long been recognized as a crucially important means of instruction. 1 In 1883 Mrs Ballington Booth, the Salvation Army activist, wrote in The War Cry : ‘Teach the child from infancy that all he possesses and acquires is not his own, but to be used for God and Humanity. […] [T] he great mistake in modern education is the cultivation of the intellect at the expense of the heart. It seems to me, then, the remedy is to begin from the very infancy of the child to cultivate the heart.’ 2 Mrs Booth was addressing the adult readers of The War Cry but, as this chapter explores, Maud Booth’s concern for cultivating the heart and encouraging charity was refl ected by many nineteenth-century British-world writers for children, who saw such encouragement as part of their mission and the reason for their writing.