ABSTRACT
Traditionally, scholars of children’s literature have described the nineteenth century as one of immense, and linear, progression. As Gillian Avery explains: “In eleven decades … the world of the juvenile novel changed from a place where all childishness was exorcised, to one where the child was supreme and the adults only shadows” (226). A classic study of historical influences on children and their reading, A Critical History of Children’s Literature (ed. Cornelia Meigs), defines the literature of the era of 1840-1890 as consisting mainly of fairy tales, nonsense fiction, and adventure stories. The authors fail to address religious works, though, when suggesting the “Widening Horizons” offered to the auspicious late-century child. Patricia Demers divides her two anthologies of children’s literature at the year 1850 and argues that, prior to this date, the literature focused on stern instruction while, after this, the literature became one “whose unashamed raison d’etre was to give pleasure to children. The Golden Age had dawned” (From Instruction to Delight xi).1 Indeed, the history of childhood and children’s literature in nineteenth-century Britain is often shown to be an awakening consciousness, a Romantic dawning, not only to the joy of childhood but the freedom and innocence of children, Alice rising triumphantly after decades of Goody Two-Shoes. As children’s literature evolved to reflect changing views of childhood, Evangelical didacticism gave way to Romantic idealism at the end of the century. Largely, the differences being transmitted concerned the ideologies for the child reader, even
of the child reader, changing from a concern for the “little sinner” to an exaltation of the pure child.
