British Children’s Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme

265 Pages·2014·3.065 MB·English

by  Donelle Ruwe (auth.)

British Children’s Poetry in the Romantic Era
Also by Donelle Ruwe
CULTURING THE CHILD 1690–1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers (ed.)
British Children’s Poetry in
the Romantic Era
Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme
Donelle Ruwe
© Donelle Ruwe 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-31979-1
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First published 2014 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-45748-9 ISBN 978-1-137-31980-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137319807
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To
James Quincy Leve
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Contents
Illustrations and Tables viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Reading Romantic-Era Children’s Verse 18
2 Myths of Origin: Original Poems for Infant Minds 53
3 The Mother Attitudes: Ann Taylor’s “My Mother” and
the Rise of the Sentimental 84
4 Teaching Nature and Nationalism: Adelaide O’Keeffe
and the Poetry of Active Learning 108
5 Utilitarian Poetry: Versified Study Guides and Riddles,
and the Handmade Verse Cards of Sara Coleridge 139
6 The Limits of the Romantic-Era Children’s Poem:
The Case of The Butterfly’s Ball 167
Appendix A: Selected Volumes of Original Verse
for Children, 1782–1835 195
Appendix B: Selected Poetry Anthologies and Reciters 206
Notes 208
Works Cited 224
Index 240
vii
Illustrations and Tables
Illustrations
2.1 Title page of Original Poems for Infant Minds (1804) 71
2.2 Title page of Adelaide O’Keeffe’s Original Poems,
Calculated to Improve the Mind of Youth (1808) 78
2.3 Original Poems for Infant Minds editions by Lippincott 1879,
Ward 1876, and Hazard, 1859 80
3.1 My Mother from Uncle Dick series (McLoughlin, c.1870s) 87
3.2 My Mother from Aunt Louisa series (McLoughlin, c.1880s) 88
3.3 My Mother (1807). Engraving by Peltro Williams Tomkins 95
3.4 My Mother (1807). Engraving by Peltro Williams Tomkins 96
3.5 Childhood (1816) 101
3.6 My Mother (1873). Illustration by Walter Crane 103
4.1 Arabella B. Buckley’s Eyes and No Eyes (c.1901);
R. Cadwallader Smith’s Eyes and No Eyes (c.1930);
Anon., Eyes and No Eyes; or, Eyes that See Not How to
Read the Bible Aright (c.1832); John Aikin and Jane Marcet’s
Eyes and No Eyes and the Three Giants (c.1910); M. V. O’Shea,
ed., Eyes and No Eyes and Other Stories (1909) 114
4.2 Adelaide O’Keeffe’s National Characters (1818) 124
4.3 Dramatis personae, O’Keeffe’s A Trip to the Coast (1819) 134
4.4 Opening page, O’Keeffe’s A Trip to the Coast (1819) 135
5.1 Food for the Mind, or, A New Riddle Book (1778).
Illustrations by Thomas Bewick 146
5.2 Sara Coleridge verse cards 156
5.3 Sara Coleridge’s notebooks of children’s verse 157
6.1 George Thomas Smart’s The Butterfly’s Ball Or, The
Grasshopper’s Feast; A Canzonettina for Three Voices 172
6.2 The Butterfly’s Ball (1807). Illustrations by William Mulready 176
6.3 The Butterfly’s Ball (1808) 178
viii
Illustrations and Tables ix
6.4 The Peacock “At Home” (1808) 183
6.5 Council of Dogs (1808) 189
Tables
1.1 Structural patterns of children’s verse 22
2.1 Poem sequences in first editions of Original Poems 72
6.1 J. Harris chapbook editions of The Butterfly’s Ball
(1807, 1808) 173