Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter

396 Pages·2008·2.89 MB·English

by  Seth Lerer

children’s literature

Children’s Literature
a reader’s history, from
aesop to harry potter
Seth Lerer
The University of Chicago Press  Chicago and London
seth lerer is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and professor of English 
and comparative literature at Stanford University. His most recent books are Error and the
Academic Self and Inventing English.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2008 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08      1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-47300-0 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-47300-7 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lerer, Seth, 1955–
    Children’s literature : a reader’s history, from Aesop to Harry Potter / Seth Lerer.
      p. cm.
    Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-47300-0 (alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-47300-7 (alk. paper)
  1. Children’s literature—History and criticism.  I. Title.
pn1009.a1l44 2008
    809'.89282—dc22
2007046708
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the 
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for 
Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1992.
for my mother

Contents
List of Illustrations  ix
introduction 1
Toward a New History of Children’s Literature
1 • speak, child 17
Children’s Literature in Classical Antiquity
2 • ingenuity and authority 35
Aesop’s Fables and Their Afterlives
3 • court, commerce, and cloister 57
The Literatures of Medieval Childhood
4 • from alphabet to elegy  81
The Puritan Impact on Children’s Literature
5 • playthings of the mind  104
John Locke and Children’s Literature
6 • canoes and cannibals  129
Robinson Crusoe and Its Legacies
7 • from islands to empires  151
Storytelling for a Boy’s World
8 • on beyond darwin  172
From Kingsley to Seuss
• vii •
9 • ill-tempered and queer  190
Sense and Nonsense, from Victorian to Modern
10 • straw into gold  209
Fairy-Tale Philology
11 • theaters of girlhood  228
Domesticity, Desire, and Performance in Female Fiction
12 •  pan in the garden  252
The Edwardian Turn in Children’s Literature
13 • good feeling 274
Prizes, Libraries, and the Institutions of American Children’s Literature
14 • keeping things straight  288
Style and the Child
15 • tap your pencil on the paper 305
Children’s Literature in an Ironic Age
epilogue  320
Children’s Literature and the History of the Book
Acknowledgments  333
Notes 337  Index 377
• viii •
Illustrations
1.  Papyrus text of the labors of Hercules (3rd c. ad)  22
2.  Nature on the margins (13th c.)  73
3.  Letters and animals (1703)  112
4.  Frontispiece to Robinson Crusoe (1719)  143
5.  Front page of The Boy’s Own Paper (1879)  158
6.  Front page of The Union Jack (1880)  159
7.  Types of faces (1908)  187
8.  Faces in the crowd (1950)  187
9.  “Nonsense Botany” (c. 1860s)  198
10.  The philologist as wizard (c. 1910)  219
11.  Rumpelstiltskin (1889)  221
12.   The world ash tree and the cosmography of Norse mythology 
(1924)  226
13.  John Millais, Ophelia (1851)  235
14. “They looked at her.” (1908)  237
15. “She balanced herself uprightly.” (1908)  238
16.  John Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (1888)  240
17. “He pulled close to the pile.” (1908)  240
18.  Children’s tea party (c. 1900)  252
19.  Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Caliban (1904)  256
20.  Frontispiece to The Story of Mankind (1921)  280
21.  Struwwelpeter (1845)  291
22.  The Frog Prince (1874)  324
23. “uvwxyz” (1886)  325
• ix •