ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the history of Anglophone children’s poetry from the earliest recorded lullaby in 1372 to the present. It takes a chronological approach, dividing the history into pre-nineteenth and succeeding centuries, and links the development in the form and content of children’s poems to larger cultural changes, such as the spread of Enlightenment values and the concomitant emphasis on education, technological sophistication, multiculturalism, and the institutionalism and academicization of children’s literature. It also looks at contributions by influential poets such as Isaac Watts, Christina Rossetti, Lewis Carroll, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Shel Silverstein.
