ABSTRACT
Beginning in the later seventeenth century, and increasingly in the eighteenth, new kinds of literature especially designed for children began to appear in Britain. Previously there had certainly been religious and educational books intended for children’s use. But the new books, even if they were still pious and didactic to a greater or lesser extent, were also designed to engage children’s attention by offering them a robust narrative, strong child characters, attractive illustrations, rhymes or riddles, or a text which took the child’s point of view. But were children also reading for fun before the arrival of this new children’s literature? It has generally been assumed that they were. After all, in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance and Reformation there was a wealth of entertaining books available, not targeted at children in particular, but very possibly read by them. In his recent survey of the history of childhood in Britain, for instance, Hugh Cunningham writes that ‘There was no clear dividing line in the Middle Ages between adult and children’s literature’.1 Before modern children’s literature, in other words, there would certainly have been a literature exclusively for adults: serious and scholarly works requiring high levels of literacy and erudition (although no doubt some precocious children read these too). But, it seems likely, there would also have been a tradition of popular literature read both by adults and children. This consumption of popular literature by children, both before and during the development of a new literature exclusively for children, is what this chapter will investigate.
