ABSTRACT

Rarely do critical works include much discussion of books for children published during the French Revolution or its aermath. However, the excellent bibliography by Michel Manson of works for young readers published between 1789 and 1799 indicates that this was in fact a very fertile period. ere appeared not only new editions of a number of books popular during the ancien régime but a wide range of new works in many of which traditional formats were revisited and revised to suit the current political, religious, and moral ideologies.1 Far from there being a lacuna in the history of children’s books, the last decade of the century saw both a surprising degree of continuity on the one hand and a radical break with the past on the other; together they laid the foundations for the development of children’s books in the nineteenth century.2 e period saw, moreover, an attempt to revise from the grass roots level children’s experience and ways of reading.