Capturing (and Captivating) Childhood: The Role of Illustrations in Eighteenth-Century Children's...

Capturing (and Captivating) Childhood: The Role ofIllustrations in Eighteenth-Century Children’s Books in

Britain and France

P E N N Y B ROW N

Just as views on childhood and the upbringing of children in the eighteenthcentury were affected by social and economic factors, so the development ofthe children’s book trade in Britain and France was influenced by evolvingviews on the family and social class, the place of religion in daily life, theinterest in science, the rise of consumerism, the growth in literacy and,perhaps most importantly, the debate about education. During the century,the special nature of children was increasingly recognised and the youngwere seen as vulnerable creatures to be safeguarded and moulded, a view thatbrought with it an increased emphasis amongst theorists on parentalaccountability.1 It is well established that John Locke’s writings on educationexerted a considerable and lasting influence on both pedagogical theory andthe ways in which the role of books for children was perceived.2 His argumentin Some Thoughts on Education (1693) that education shaped the moral andeconomic man and that children’s minds were a tabula rasa on which soundvalues, morals and habits had to be imprinted and an ‘empty cabinet’ to befilled with knowledge firmly established an acceptance of the crucial form-ative influence of education from an early age.3

With the general expansion of the book trade, reading material for theyoung that provided this service was increasingly seen as a socially useful andlucrative gap in the market to be filled. In an age when class boundaries weregradually becoming more flexible (more so in Britain than in France) andeconomic success through one’s own efforts was seen as an attainable goal,children’s books, like education, were marketed as an investment for thefuture for both the individual and the nation.4 From the mid-eighteenthcentury, when the publication of books explicitly targeting young readersbegan to take off, the vast majority of both school and leisure reading wasunderpinned by an overt pedagogical agenda that aimed to socialise theyoung and inculcate the religious beliefs and social and moral values of theprevailing dominant culture. Books were, in effect, now regarded as tools forthe social, moral and political conditioning of the young.5

Wolfgang Iser’s concept of the ‘implied reader’, a reader constructed by atext who ‘embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary workto exercise its effect’, is a particularly interesting one in respect of early

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 31 No. 3 (2008)

© 2008 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

children’s books.6 Writers assumed, or sought to construct in their contentand mode of address, a reader who either already shared, or who wouldrespond in the desired manner to, the social and cultural values inscribed inthe text. In his influential article, ‘The Reader in the Book’ in Signal (1980),Aidan Chambers describes the various strategies (such as tone, point of view,placing a child at the centre of the text) used by the successful author ofchildren’s books to ‘stage-manage the reader’s involvement’ in the narra-tive.7 Even in the eighteenth century, such narrative strategies as directexhortation, implied collusion and the assumption of shared values werealready being deployed to this effect. As cultural constructions of childhoodand views on the upbringing and education of children evolved in Britain andFrance under the influence of the thoughts of Locke, and François Fénelonand Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, so did the recognition that instructionwas more potent if allied to a degree of entertainment. The history of thedevelopment of children’s literature through the eighteenth century andbeyond is, in effect, linked to the shifting balance between these twin im-peratives of instruction and amusement, although views differed widelyon what should constitute the latter. One significant development was theinclusion of visual stimuli in the form of illustrations.

The increasing number of images in children’s books in the latter half ofthe century played an important part in the communication of meaning andthe construction of the implied reader, as well as in making reading mattermore enticing and available to less competent readers. John Locke em-phasises, in Some Thoughts on Education, the importance of the senses andobservation in storing the empty cabinet of the mind, and recommends theuse of images in helping children to become acquainted with the world.Speaking of Aesop’s Fables, he recommends:

If his Aesop has pictures in it, it will entertain him much the better, andencourage him to read, when it carries the increase of knowledge with it. Forsuch visible objects children hear talked of in vain, and without any satis-faction, whilst they have no ideas of them: those ideas being not to be had fromthe sounds; but from the things themselves, or their pictures.8

His contemporary, Fénelon, in his Traité de l’éducation des filles (1689), alsoargued the case for making instruction pleasurable and recommended en-couraging children to look at engravings and paintings because ‘tout cequi réjouit l’imagination facilite l’étude’ (‘everything which delights theimagination makes study easier’).9

The same pedagogical ethos had informed Jan Amos Comenius’s OrbisSensualium Pictus (1658), originally published in Latin and German andwidely used in translation throughout Europe. This work, which is often seenas the forerunner of illustrated books for children, made language andknowledge accessible to the young via the juxtaposition of word and image sothat the word and the object designated would be learnt together. The prefacespeaks of enticing children through pictures to imbibe knowledge about the

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© 2008 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

world through interest and entertainment, and the many topics coveredinclude scenes of daily and family life, school and games as well as cities,food, animals, the land, the sea and the heavens. The content of the Orbissensualium pictus remained largely unchanged up to the end of the eighteenthcentury and served as a model for later encyclopedias and textbooks. Earlyalphabet books had also exploited the possibility of images as a visualstimulus to learning and, of course, young readers had long had access tocheap chapbooks (in France the Bibliothèque bleue) which included roughwoodcuts in their presentation of legends, fairy tales and practicalknowledge.10

The eighteenth century, with its passion for the mediation of knowledgeabout the world rather then purely spiritual instruction, saw a proliferation ofworks on history, geography and the natural sciences that were profuselyillustrated with woodcuts of historical figures, places, animals and naturalwonders for readers of all ages. Two widely read and influential French textsthat enjoyed numerous editions, adaptations and translations throughoutthe eighteenth century were Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière(1749-1789) and Pluche’s Le Spectacle de la nature, ou Entretiens sur les par-ticularités de l’histoire naturelle qui ont paru les plus propres à rendre les jeunesgens curieux et à leur former l’esprit (1732-1750). The former, in particular,remained a best-seller into the nineteenth century and later abécédairesfrequently drew on Buffon’s detailed images of animals. The combination oftext and image was, of course, also exploited in France in the Encyclopédie, ofwhich extracts and adaptations were produced for young readers, includingworks focusing on arts et métiers to introduce them to agricultural andindustrial activities and products. In Britain, Thomas Boreman’s Description ofThree Hundred Animals; viz Beasts, Birds, Fishes, Serpents and Insects (1730), acompilation of images of creatures real and mythological, aimed explicitly,with its many copperplate illustrations, to ‘lure children to read’; A GeneralHistory of Quadrupeds produced in 1790 by the celebrated illustrator ThomasBewick, targeted a dual readership with over two hundred wood engravingsand numerous title vignettes and tailpieces that have been described as‘wonders of observation’.11 In her Adèle et Théodore, ou Lettres sur l’éducation(1782), translated into English by Thomas Holcroft in 1783, Mme de Genlis,pedagogue and author of many works for both children and adults, describedher method of routinely exposing children to information by decorating thehouse with pictures of biblical and mythical scenes, classical history,historical personages, and maps. This strategy not only appealed to Richardand Maria Edgeworth who recommended it in their Practical Education (1798)but also inspired Sarah Trimmer’s series of prints accompanying lessons onthe New Testament, ancient and English history.12

Although not actually referring to images, Locke’s recommendation in thecontext of warning children against vice, that ‘the showing him the world, asit really is, before he comes wholly into it, is one of the best means, I think,to prevent this mischief ’, can be seen as equally applicable to subsequent

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writers’ approach to both text and image in books that sought to teach moralsand manners rather than just to impart information.13 Books which aimed toteach young readers how to see themselves in relation to the world aroundthem, and how to interact with other people in their society, proliferated in thesecond half of the century. John Trusler’s The Progress of Man and Society(1791) was influenced by Comenius; it aimed at ‘opening the eyes andunfolding the minds of youth gradually’ and spoke of using pictures ‘to cheatthem into thought by amusement’. It was described as ‘an encyclopaedia ofmanners’ and, in its large number of illustrations by John Bewick, portrayedadult and child figures indulging in various work and leisure activities.14

Locke’s recommendation is exemplified in a decorous manner in the first ofWilliam Blake’s illustrations for the 1791 edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’sOriginal Stories (1788), which recounts the upbringing of two young girls inthe home of a strictly rational governess who cures them of their faultsand teaches them reason and virtue. In the frontispiece, the governess, MrsMason, her arms outstretched, presents to the reader’s scrutiny twoimmaculately attired and virtually identical young girls, their hats like halosaround their heads, who gaze admiringly up at her. Although the captionreads ‘Look, girls, what a fine morning it is. Insects, birds and animals are allenjoying existence’, the impression is rather that she is presenting the girls tothe world, rather than the other way around (Fig. 1). Indeed, her charges,Mary and Caroline, do represent role models for the reader in a text in which‘conversations and tales are accommodated to the present state of society’and which portrays and castigates folly and unsocialised behaviour.15

Locke insists upon the power of example in instructing children: ‘But of allthe ways whereby Children are to be instructed, and their Manners formed,the plainest, easiest and most efficacious is, to set before their Eyes theexamples of those Things you would have them do, or avoid’.16 Although hedisagreed with Locke over the role of reason in the early upbringing of a childand advocating rather a ‘natural’ education based on learning throughexperience, Rousseau, in Emile, ou de l’éducation (1762), concurred warmlywith this recommendation: ‘L’Exemple! L’exemple! Sans cela on ne réussitrien auprès des enfants’ (‘Examples! examples! Without them you can’tsucceed in doing anything with children’).17 The emphasis on the social-isation of the young in a secular sense in works of fiction such as moral andcautionary tales increasingly incorporated images to support and exemplifythe examples portrayed in the text. For the very young, images are arguablymore potent than words, and there was an increasing recognition in theeighteenth century that inexperienced and impressionable readers weremore likely to be moved and influenced by images than by words alone.Illustrations, especially those featuring a child figure, aimed not only tofurnish the ‘empty cabinets’ of the young readers’ minds, but to encourage anappropriate construction of the self while they assisted in the process ofreading and following a narrative. The reader’s attention is often explicitlydrawn to an illustration, and she or he is encouraged to observe and assess its

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content and consider its application to their own behaviour or way of life.18 Itis clear that the implied reader is one who will react as the narrator suggestsand draw the desired conclusions from what they see.

Whether in the form of crude woodcuts in the first half of the century or ofmore sophisticated engravings on wood, copper or steel in the last years of the1700s, illustrations were employed to exemplify good and bad role modelsand the consequences of desirable or undesirable behaviour, according tocontemporary standards, and were invested with considerable persuasive

1. Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories



power. They reflected the world in which the actual readers lived and in whichthey were expected to learn to make their way and achieve success andhappiness through the internalisation of contemporary ideologies. They alsooffered vicarious and hence safe access to different kinds of social conditionand experience. As such, they potentially offer the reader today considerableinsight into the way of life in eighteenth-century society in the countries oforigin. In his book Fictional France. Social Reality in the French Novel 1775-1800(1993), Malcolm Cook argues, in respect of a fictional text, that a moral ismore effective if the illusion of reality is a convincing one.19 How, then, and towhat extent do illustrations support the illusion of authenticity? Just as afictional text manipulates reality to ‘produce a set of circumstances thatreality seldom produces’ (for example, a happy ending in which all dilemmasare resolved), so illustrations in children’s books tend to mediate a clearand simplified image of reality.20 They depict, in effect, a re-imagined realitywhich is profoundly informed by the ideological agenda of the accompanyingtext. This is most noticeable, for example, in the portrayal of the family andthe widespread modifying and even at times romanticising of poverty andhardship, a topic that nonetheless plays an important role in eighteenth-century children’s books.

This paper will now examine some of the specific ways in which illus-trations functioned in books for young readers in Britain and France in theeighteenth century and how they represented the society of the times.Reference will be made to a range of texts, from the rough woodcuts of JohnNewbery’s publications, like his Little Pretty Pocketbook of 1744, to the moresophisticated engraved images of John Bewick for The Looking-Glass for theMind (1792), an adaptation of Arnaud Berquin’s L’Ami des enfans of 1782-1783. The discussion will also include less well known texts that targetedchildren of both sexes and consider, amongst other aspects, the construction ofgender and evolving concepts of personal and civic virtue to show how imageswere deployed not so much to portray childhood and the world as they were inreality, but to capture the impressionable child reader within a predeterminednexus of social and moral values while, at the same time, making the book itselfand the values it mediated attractive and desirable to the young.

The audience for children’s books for leisure reading in both Britain andFrance in the middle of the eighteenth century came largely from the middleand upper classes of society, who were economically privileged enough to beable to afford books and to have the education to learn to read them. Becauseof the sporadic and uneven nature of the provision of education in bothcountries, levels of literacy and opportunities for access to reading materialsamongst the working classes and the peasantry varied enormously. Themajority of early children’s books reflect the likely dominant readership inthe situations narrated, so that their mode of address in the text andaccompanying illustrations depict, for the most part, the private sphere ofcomfortable bourgeois domestic life, particularly in books for the very young.The often slender plots evolve in the social spaces of eighteenth-century

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childhood, the home, the garden and occasionally the school, and focus onthe dilemmas of interaction within a family context. The portrayal of thefamily faithfully reflects the social, religious and cultural norms informing apatriarchal society’s views on the relationship between parents and children;they offer an idealised image of stability, unity and harmony, one exemplifiedand endorsed by the illustrations. Children are frequently portrayed kneel-ing before a parent or standing at the parental knee receiving a blessing.Obedience to adult authority is promoted as an essential grounding forhappiness and success in later life, and discipline and the correction of vice isa common theme. The presence in the illustrations of an adult figure, whetherparent, tutor or servant, reminds the young reader of their relative position inthe power structure of the household and the social hierarchy. In order tomake their works interesting and attractive to the young, and hence moreeffective as vehicles for morals and manners, writers attempted to enter thechild’s world by depicting typical childhood activities. These are often strictlygendered: girls are depicted in sedentary activities such as reading and sewingwith their mother or another female authority figure, while boys are shownengaging in more energetic activities in the open air, such as running andkite-flying. Such images thus offer useful information about the way in whichchildhood was perceived and, more importantly, desired to be. The sanitisedand ideal world portrayed is one to which, it is implied, the reader can easilyaspire, and it is the task of the writer to persuade the reader that this worldcan also be found in reality if they willingly collude with the moral valuesembedded in the text.21

In Britain, John Newbery was the first to exploit the potential of the marketfor children’s books, and aimed his publications at the growing middleclasses. His best-known publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744), amiscellany for both boys and girls, was one of the earliest texts to exploit textand image to instruct child readers while entertaining them with a variety ofmaterial and a plethora of illustrations. A brief introductory essay addressedto parents outlines a theory of upbringing overtly indebted to ‘the great MrLocke’ and advises that the key to happiness is to ‘subdue therefore yourChildren’s Passions; curb their Tempers, and make them subservient to theRules of Reason’.22 An alphabet of children’s games and a set of proverbsare accompanied by small woodcuts, which, although crudely drawn, andlacking either nuance, detail or complexity, nevertheless focus firmly onchildren’s experience and activities. The frontispiece of the book clearlydemonstrates the target audience: an elegantly dressed lady with a book inone hand sits before an imposing and ornate fireplace with two equallyelegantly attired young children standing before her (Fig. 2). This com-position recalls the frontispiece to Charles Perrault’s Contes, ou Histoires dutemps passé (1697), published in English with the same illustrations in 1729,in which a group of children surround a seated figure of an elderly woman (lamère l’Oye, or Mother Goose) who appears, by the position of her raised hand,to be recounting a tale. But whereas the setting of Perrault’s text is a modest



cottage, Newbery’s setting indicates the high social standing of the figures,reflecting the likely readership of the work, and thereby aiding the youngreader’s identification with Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly forwhom, the subtitle indicates, the text is intended. Such a compositionis found repeatedly in frontispieces to children’s books throughout theeighteenth century and beyond, and promotes the increasing contemporaryemphasis on the importance of family and, for the adult purchasers of suchbooks, on the role of parents in educating the young. The activity of readingtogether is associated with an attractive ideal of family harmony and mutualbenefit and delight but also indicates the belief held by many writers thatchildren’s reading should be carefully monitored and glossed by an adultco-reader.

Newbery’s optimistic belief in a meritocracy led him to show the world asfull of opportunities for self-betterment and advancement, and the emphasis

2. John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book

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in all his books for children is on the importance of virtue, hard work andeducation.23 The letters purporting to be from Jack the Giant Killer to LittleMaster Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly, who are explicitly compared with thereader, promote the notion of the acquisition of worldly goods through virtue.The text tells how a young boy and girl who were attentive to their studies,dutiful to their parents and obliging to all, achieved general esteem and socialsuccess. The boy’s behaviour and learning ‘raise him from a mean state of lifeto a coach and six, in which he rides to this day’, while the girl also ‘works wellwith her needle, and is so modest, so willing to do as she is bid, and soengaging in company’ that a wealthy patron presents her with a gold watch.24

The accompanying images show a young man seated in a moving coachand a young woman standing in an elegantly furnished room displayingher watch, thus foregrounding for the reader the results and rewards ofgood behaviour and emphasising the gender-specific aspect of contemporaryassumptions about the nature of social success and personal happiness. Agroup of four images that follow the letters illustrate models of behaviour:two children are shown kneeling in prayer bathed in the light from largewindows; kneeling again to receive the blessing of their finely dressed parents;reading at a table in a well-stocked library (Fig. 3); and finally, bestowingcharity at their door to a passing family with a dog.

Although the illustrations are stiff and primitive, they powerfullycommunicate the moral in the text: that cultivating the habit of goodbehaviour at home, obedience to parental authority and charitableness willearn the love and admiration of all, beginning within the family andextending to everybody they meet. The prescription of such virtues came todominate in children’s literature for a century and more and present anidealistic view of how a child can influence not only her or his own future,but the well-being of society as a whole.

The Little Pretty Pocket-Book also reveals its debt to illustrated alphabetbooks in its section in which letters of the alphabet are accompanied byillustrations of children’s games juxtaposed with moral reflections andproverbs. This is clearly an attempt to encourage the association of learningwith fun and suggests a link between the rules of games and the rules of life.The images display a common division in children’s books, mainly depictingboys indulging in sports and activities outdoors (playing with balls, quoits oron stilts, flying kites, playing leapfrog, dancing around a maypole) while girlsare only portrayed twice, dancing and playing a version of blind-man’s buff ina domestic interior. The images are lively and portray the children engaging inthese activities without an intrusive adult presence, although the formalattire of the boys, who are wearing frock coats and tricorne hats in even themost energetic of activities, suggests that decorum is necessary even in play.

There were many children’s books in Britain in the second half of theeighteenth century that sought to promote virtuous behaviour throughincorporating moral lessons into a full-length narrative with more in-dividualised characters and entertaining episodes to capture the young



reader’s interest and stimulate the capacity for reflection and self-examination. They reflect the increased emphasis on appearance and be-haviour in the definition of gentility that was characteristic of the wealthymiddle classes.25 Samuel J. Pickering argues in John Locke and Children’s Booksin Eighteenth-Century England that such books became more serious to-wards the end of the century, emphasising constraints and ‘confining theimagination within a hedge of responsibilities’.26 This view is endorsed byMary V. Jackson in Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Magic, and she arguesmoreover that in later eighteenth-century books, there is an increasinggender divide in that girls’ activities are portrayed as more limited and theiractivities more passive and sedentary.27 In Britain and in France, largenumbers of books specifically targeting girls were published in the last thirdof the century and many reflect contemporary views on femininity and theeducation of girls which were derived from Rousseau’s Emile ou de l’éducation.Rousseau introduces Sophie as a contrast to Emile and proposes a form of

3. John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book

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education based on an assumption of intellectual inferiority and a notion ofthe role of women as guardians of morality as wives and mothers withina domestic environment. Despite Rousseau’s well-known opinion on en-couraging children to read, his pedagogical theories were immensely influ-ential on children’s books in Britain as in France. Narratives of family life thusreflected gender stereotyping already becoming firmly embedded in thetheory and practice of girls’ education, and in turn promoted to young femalereaders a creation of the self informed by a model of femininity based onessentially artificial constructs.28

Among the most entertaining of such full-length moral tales were theworks of Dorothy and Mary Ann Kilner, published by John Marshall, aleading publisher of children’s books, which were concerned with everydayconduct and therefore portrayed desirable and undesirable role models withina realistic and largely domestic environment. In Mary Ann Kilner’s JemimaPlacid; or, the Advantage of Good Nature Exemplified in a Variety of FamiliarIncidents (circa 1783), the slim plot involving a six-year-old girl’s sojourn withher quarrelsome and ill-mannered cousins in London portrays a series oflively episodes in which Jemima is a witness, and occasional victim, of otherchildren’s misbehaviour. This strategy, reflected in the illustrations, positionsthe reader in such a way that Jemima’s observations and reactions willencourage her or him to react in the desired manner. The episodes depictedare, moreover, of a kind that any young reader would easily have been able toidentify with. The agenda of exemplification is followed through in the simplewoodcuts which are placed within the text and for the most part depictJemima watching squabbles between her cousins Miss Sally and Miss Nellyor the unfortunate consequences of an incident.29 The backgrounds in theimages show plain panelled walls with minimal items of furniture (a pedestaltable, an ornate mirror), and the dress of the characters is simple but stylishenough to indicate a prosperous family setting. The physical context is thussimple and uncluttered which, although probably corresponding to practicaland economic necessities in the creation of the images, insinuates that this ishow the moral should be seen. Although still unsophisticated and rather stiffand formal, the images focus on action and a key moment in the episode,leaving no room for ambiguity: the unseemly violence of the cousins’ struggleto get the best position on the window-seat is shown to result in an overturnedtable which scatters their sewing tools and Jemima’s doll on the floor (Fig. 4).

In another, one sister seeks to snatch a plaything from the other’s handswhile their maid is trying to pack their belongings in a trunk. A prank inwhich a visitor’s snuffbox is filled with pepper is depicted in such a way as togenerate suspense and amusement: the man has his hand raised to his nose,while two young men stand by, their heads together in a complicitous pose.An interpolated tale which recounts how a father jabs the hands of both hisson and his daughter with a spur to teach them table manners is illustratedwith an image of the three sitting primly at their meal, the father, weapon inhand, closely scrutinising his son, who sits with his elbows on the table. The



focus of the images is thus predominantly on the negative example. At the endof the book, Kilner addresses the reader directly, emphasising the didacticagenda and her belief in the power of example:

The only use of reading is to acquire instruction; and if you seek not to resemblethe good, and avoid the bad examples with which you are presented, yourstudies will tend to little purpose. If the characters you meet with in any degreeresemble your own, and if the foibles of those characters disgust and offend you,instead of throwing the book aside with resentment, you should endeavour toimprove the failings of which you are conscious, and then you will no longermeet your own portrait, in that which the Author has described.30

While the focus in the illustrations to Jemima Placid is more on the childcharacters, in Dorothy Kilner’s The Holyday Present, containing Anecdotes of Mrand Mrs Jennet and their Little Family (circa 1781), the role of parents asdispensers of discipline is more overt, the text thus serving as an example to

4. Mary Ann Kilner, Jemima Placid or, the Advantage of Good Nature

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parents as well as to their offspring. The father purchases two boxes filled withvarious rewards or punishments: books, balls, doll in ‘the good child’s box’and a dunce’s cap, rods and medallions with inscriptions in ‘the naughtychild’s box’ and they are distributed as appropriate. The notion that virtue willreap material rewards as well as parental approval is a common one in texts ofthis period and is clearly endorsed here. The punishments to which themisbehaving children are subjected, on the other hand, are draconian andgraphically depicted. One image shows a crestfallen little girl, whose trans-gression is to have thrown mud at her maid, wearing a grotesque fool’s cap asshe stands before her shocked father (Fig. 5). The child’s transgression andher subsequent humiliation is thus rendered visible to all, including thereader, and the text, in stressing that she is an object of ridicule to her siblings,encourages the reader to think likewise. When one of the boys steals an applefrom his brother and ties his legs together, the father punishes him by binding

5. Dorothy Kilner, The Holyday Present



the boy’s hands and legs and leaving him trussed up for the rest of the day.The illustration introduces his brothers as sympathetic witnesses of his dis-comfort, using child figures, as in Jemima Placid, to lead the reader to identifywith their reaction. In this text, the illustrations depict the distribution ofrewards and punishments and would seem to support Jackson’s view ongender stereotyping, since the girls are often shown sitting sedately in thecompany of their mother while the boys are seen outside running about andthrowing stones. However, as in Jemima Placid, both sexes are subject to thesame constraints and discipline and are expected to conform to the samerequirements of decorum, good manners and restraint inherent in the socialand moral strictures of their class.31

An innovative use of illustrations is made in Juvenile Trials for RobbingOrchards, Telling Fibs and Other Heinous Offences (1771), allegedly by ‘MasterTommy Littleton’, but probably by Richard Johnson, who produced a numberof abridged and derivative works for children.32 In this work, a court run bychildren is set up to try their peers for a variety of misdemeanours, a mode ofcorrection seen as more effective than that dispensed by adults. The reader isinvolved as a member of the jury through the illustrations, for they arepresented as evidence by eye-witnesses of the ‘crimes’ and thus work tosupport the authenticity of the text. In ‘Trial the First’, which concerns a theftof fruit from an orchard, for example, the witness, asked by the judge todescribe his exact position in relation to the offender, presents a sketch of thekey moment, with a boy sitting astride a branch throwing fruit down onto apile on the ground and himself standing in a pose of alarm at a gate nearby(Fig. 6).

In the trial resulting from a dispute between a number of girls over apples(an episode possibly taken from Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, or Little FemaleAcademy of 1749), the witness presents a representation of her attemptedintervention, an animated image of slapping and hair-pulling. This strat-egy presents the nature of the misdemeanour graphically while clearlypositioning the reader alongside the disapproving witness, thus generatinga feeling of inclusion on the side of the ‘law’ which encourages the intern-alisation of the desired behavioural model.

With the growth of the middle classes and increased social mobility inBritain, many children’s books between 1740 and 1790 proactively or im-plicitly encouraged social and economic aspirations with ‘rags to riches’narratives of social advancement through personal endeavour.33 Newbery’sbest-selling and influential work, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765),which traces the rise of Margery Meanwell, the daughter of a ruined farmer,from destitution to marriage to a gentleman through her devotion to learningand teaching, endorses the value of education, hard work, energy and re-sourcefulness in achieving worldly success and personal happiness. The ac-companying woodcuts which are rough and simplistic, lacking specificity anddetail (despite the tongue-in-cheek attribution of them to Michelangelo),confirm this trajectory. The reader is first shown two poorly dressed children

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walking with their parents, then the meek and humble Margery acquiringher new pair of shoes from a charitable lady, an act that sets her on the roadto a sense of self worth. The emphasis on learning as well as virtue as herroute to economic self-betterment and on books as stepping-stones to successis overtly promoted in images of her sitting beneath a tree reading, and, as a‘trotting tutoress’, carrying her spelling aids in a basket to teach the localchildren. Subsequent images show Margery offering advice to others, andstanding with the birds and animals for which she cares and which get heraccused by jealous and superstitious neighbours of being a witch. In the newillustrations to the early nineteenth-century edition by Houlston, the finalimage portrays an elegantly dressed Margery, now herself transformed into amuch loved and revered lady bountiful (‘mother to the poor, a physician to thesick, and a friend to all who were in distress’), standing in a columned arcadeor hall dispensing gifts to a group of respectful young people (Fig. 7).34 Theconjunction of text and image successfully conveys her personal success story

6. [Richard Johnson], Juvenile Trials



and underlines the notion that the acquisition of wealth brings with it socialresponsibility and a charitable imperative.

As in Newbery’s other rags-to-riches narrative, The History of Giles Ginger-bread (1764) the protagonist, now an adult, is shown to the reader to be suc-cessful in a series of ‘before and after’ images. The illustrations in theHoulston edition, consisting of vignettes within an oval frame inside a squareouter frame, evoke earlier emblem books, and create both the effect of atheatrical ‘showing’ and a mirror in which the reader might see reflected the

7. The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes

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possibilities for their own life. Just as Margery is seen to owe her success toreading, so the reader who holds the book might also achieve a higher socialstanding by the same means. This view in fact informed not only thepedagogical thrust of most of Newbery’s books for children but also hismarketing strategy. Thus, the title page of The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes states that it was written for the benefit of those

who from a State of Rags and CareAnd having Shoes but half a Pair;Their Fortune and their Fame would fix,And gallop in a Coach and Six.35

Of course, such a substantial change in fortunes was rather an optimistic andidealised outcome, but the book offered an aspirational view of life to thoseunderprivileged readers who were literate enough to be able to access itsmessage.

The growth of Sunday schools in the 1780s and 1790s led to an increase inliteracy and a new reading public amongst the poor, so affordable children’sbooks were reaching a wider audience. Revulsion at events across the Eng-lish Channel in France after 1789 led, however, to a reaction against theegalitarian ethos underpinning Newbery’s works. Jackson describes howconservative reformers were already suspicious of texts that portrayedcharacters rising above their station in life at a time when Jacobin ideas werefeared, because they exposed young readers to notions that endangered classdistinctions and undermined respect for the social hierarchy. In the latteryears of the century, such sentiments were seen as potentially inflammatoryand as ‘potential seeds of revolution’.36

Among the strategies of reform adopted by writers of children’s books wereincreased emphasis on religion and the established social order. Charity andthe benefits of benevolent acts to the giver as well as the receiver had longbeen a feature of children’s books. Such works now sought to portray theworking classes as the deserving poor, who displayed humility, respect fortheir betters and acceptance of their position. Illustrations abound at thisperiod of children bestowing a gift upon a recipient, often an elderly personor another child, whose appearance contrasts with their own but fails toapproximate to reality, and whose gratitude appears out of proportion to thegift received. The actual moment of exchange is emphasised in such images tostress the psychological benefits to both parties. Such a sentimentalised imageof charity in no way addressed the real circumstances of poverty, hungerand squalor, and is clearly directed more at the privileged reader who isencouraged to view the poor as objects to boost their own self-image or asprops to assist them in the performance of their duties.

Even in Blake’s illustration in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories of thevisit of Mrs Mason and the girls to a poor family’s home (which does gofurther to suggest the misery of their situation in the man’s slumped posture



and the hopeless stance of his wife and children), the effect is one of offeringthis spectacle to the reader as it is offered by Mrs Mason to her pupils (Fig. 8).

Just as tales for girls and boys could now be found, so class-differentiatedtales began to appear in which the working-class protagonists wereencouraged to aspire to a moderate degree of success that would improve

8. Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories

436 PENNY BROWN


their condition rather than radically alter it. In Hannah More’s CheapRepository Tracts, for example, published between 1795 and 1798, and MariaEdgeworth’s stories in The Parent’s Assistant (1800), the characters are modelsof cleanliness, dignity and honesty and are shown to overcome hardshipby dint of hard work and initiative (and sometimes a helping hand froma benefactor). They are, however, content with their lot and do not have ex-pectations beyond a more comfortable existence and a sense of achievement.Poverty is thus idealised and sentimentalised even in texts aiming to instilgood habits of thriftiness and industriousness in their readers.

In France in the latter part of the century, reading matter for the youngremained conservative and elitist, dominated by the moral tale, and revealingthe same modified influence of Rousseau as in Britain. There was, in effect,considerable exchange between cultures in the form of translations andadaptations. Literacy was less widespread in France, and the audience forchildren’s books was more limited to the economically privileged classes.Françoise Huguet’s indispensable online database of French children’s booksof the Ancien Régime demonstrates that the Enlightenment agenda of dis-seminating knowledge by ‘showing’ the world resulted in large numbers ofbooks about history and natural history profusely illustrated with portraitsof monarchs and historical personages, mythological and biblical scenes andpictures of animals.37 Images were thus considered essential in providingaccess to knowledge. In her accompanying essay, Huguet describes children’sbooks as ‘le vecteur et le miroir, tout à la fois, des savoirs et valeurs que lasociété a voulu transmettre aux jeunes générations’ (‘at one and the sametime the vector and the mirror of the knowledge and values which societyhas wanted to transmit to the younger generation’).38 After 1750, the recog-nition of the needs and interests of children of different ages and a concernwith supplying appropriate reading material other than devotional orinstructional manuals led to new initiatives by publishers and writers thatshaped children’s books for many decades. A new genre of children’s bookscame into being that sought to promote models of conduct for everyday livingand attempted, with varying degrees of success, to attain an unprecedenteddegree of realism in the depiction of characters and situations. Rousseau’srecommendation of an intimate, individual education is replicated with aspotlight on the relationship between adult educator and child (an ideafrequently enshrined in the titles and the illustrations) although, contrary toRousseau’s theories, young readers became the object of an intense campaignof intellectual and moral indoctrination from an early age.

The twin icons of reason and virtue which dominated the manyeducational treatises published in France in the eighteenth century alsoinformed the narratives in children’s books. Marisa Linton has shown howthe discourse on virtue changed in the eighteenth century from thetraditional emphasis on a concept of morality founded on religious preceptto one of good citizenship aimed at the happiness and usefulness of theindividual in the context of social responsibility and concern for the general



good.39 As in Britain, the second half of the century saw an upsurge of booksfor young females which promoted the view that a future as wife and motherwas the source of social utility and personal happiness, and that all educationshould be geared to that end. Although charitableness and compassion to theunderprivileged are recurrent themes, very few books sought to addressworking-class children and, where such characters appear in moral tales,they are almost invariably stereotyped as examples of the virtue of notseeking to transcend one’s station in life. Although revolutionary idealism ledto the repackaging of instructional material in textbooks, a quarter of thebooks published between 1789 and 1799 were new editions or reprints ofbooks written prior to 1789, which indicates that the sentiments derived fromRousseau and Enlightenment thinkers were still considered to be appropriatein such turbulent times. The values embedded in many pre-1789 books foryoung readers (such as filial piety, dutifulness and compassion and theprecept that education and moral worth were more important than noblebirth) were entirely compatible with the new thinking.40

Until the last third of the century, few books of moral tales containedillustrations: the first editions of Mme Le Prince de Beaumont’s Magasin desenfans (1756), which is often said to be the first work written especially forchildren and was influenced by Sarah Fielding’s novel, did not containimages, nor did Mme d’Epinay’s Les Conversations d’Emilie (1774), a dialoguebetween a mother and daughter on a wide range of moral, personal andintellectual issues. Many books contained only a frontispiece, which oftendepicted an adult and child reading in a garden, encapsulating for both thechild reader and the adult purchaser of the book the value of a shared ex-perience. Illustrations sometimes operated on an allegorical level, depictingmythological figures or bucolic settings to which a contemporary significancecould be attached. This reflects, of course, the taste for the pastoral and theneoclassical in literature and the visual arts in the eighteenth century whichwas given an added impetus after 1760 with the publication in French ofSalomon Gessner’s Idylles. The tradition of the study of the culture of AncientGreece and Rome was firmly embedded in the French educational system,and, in books specifically targeting a young readership, mythological themeshad a precedent in one of the most widely texts of the time, Fénelon’s LesAventures de Télémaque (1699), a spin-off of the fifth book of Homer’s Odyssey.Even where the message is a contemporary one, the illustrations often presenta stylised image of reality. In Moissy’s volume of plays for children, Les Jeuxde la Petite Thalie, ou Petits Drames, dialogués sur des proverbes (1769), an in-triguing piece for the time is ‘Le Petit Paysan hardi’, a short play in which apeasant boy helps the children of the local seigneur to overcome their stage-fright by collaborating in acting a play, their embrace suggesting thatacceptance of their respective roles and mutual assistance will maintainsocial stability as they perform their respective roles in life. The accompanyingillustration depicts a reclining figure in classical drapery in the foreground,presumably the muse of comedy herself, with a mask and a lyre in her hands,

438 PENNY BROWN


watching two cherubic children in rustic costume on a stage, the wholeframed by highly stylised foliage.

More contemporary settings are portrayed in Le Nouveau Robinson, pourservir à l’amusement et à l’instruction des enfants, the 1785 French translation ofJoachim Campe’s Robinson der Jungere (1779), in which a father recounts thestory of a child called Crusoe to his children and encourages them to imitateCrusoe’s exercises in self-sufficiency and self-discipline. The frontispiece(Fig. 9) depicts the father showing a rural panorama to his children, fore-grounding his role as mentor which is reiterated in the other illustrations ashe shows them a map of America (with a ship rolling in the sea in thebackground) and instructs them in practical tasks such as making baskets,promoting the image of family harmony and the value of acquiring usefulskills. Other images depict the activities of the young Robinson described inthe father’s narrative and a family engaged in listening to the tale.41 Theillustrations appearing in the widely read Théàtre à l’usage des jeunes personnes(1779) by Mme de Genlis, reveal a persistently aristocratic view of the world,with fashionably dressed figures in smart high-ceilinged, panelled rooms. Thefourth volume of the 1780 edition of her plays, however, was dedicated to theeducation of the children of tradesmen, artisans and other members ofthe working classes, which added significantly to the originality of herproject, and she remained proud of being the first to write educational playsthat featured drapers, milliners, shop girls and apprentice housemaids. Theconservatism of her view that each class has its own particular moralprecepts so that ‘chaque personne doit tâcher d’acquérir les qualités qui peu-vent la distinguer dans sa condition’ (‘each person must try to acquire thequalities which mark them out in their station in life’) is, however, repro-duced in the illustrations which seem to re-inscribe a conventional orderingof social relations.42 Thus, in ‘La Lingère’, a young woman in a mob cap isdepicted kneeling before her mistress in a scenario suggesting confession orreconciliation while other young women stand by watching intently.Similarly, in ‘La Marchande de modes’, set in a draper’s shop, the pose of theelegantly attired lady vis-à-vis the three pinafore-clad girls suggestsbenevolence and condescension rather than a meeting of equals (Fig. 10).

The best-known and most innovative work by a French author which wasimmensely popular in English translation was Arnaud Berquin’s L’Ami desenfans, a compilation of short moral tales and plays for children under theage of eleven, sold by subscription and published in monthly instalmentsbetween 1782 and 1783. Berquin also produced L’Ami des adolescens, a similarcollection of tales for older children, between 1784 and 1785. As their simpletitles, unencumbered by a lengthy explanatory subtitle suggest, these worksprovided reading material for children to collect and read on their own,dispensing with an overt pedagogical framework or mediating adult author-ity figure, addressing the readers directly and featuring children as theprotagonists of highly realistically depicted situations. The tales, dialoguesand short plays, influenced by Rousseau, convey an optimistic moral outlook,



showing the power of reason and virtue in a secular context: the kind ofcircumstances and situations portrayed reflect relatively minor everydayencounters or dilemmas which the young reader may already haveencountered or surrogate experiences that would help them to make sense oftheir own in the future. As in conventional moral tales of the period,character flaws are exposed and corrected, but in many cases the charactersare seen to learn by experience and adults are absent for much of the time.The portrayal of interaction between children without adult interference was

9. Joachim Campe, Le Nouveau Robinson

440 PENNY BROWN


a significant innovation in French children’s books, although the role ofparents in the moral education of their offspring is nevertheless important forit is they who ultimately offer advice, distribute rewards or punishments andadjudicate in disputes. The social milieu in Berquin’s tales is that of the pros-perous middle classes living in a harmonious rural community, a setting thatoffers the young reader a simplified and idealised vision of interpersonal andinter-class relationships.43

The 1786 edition of L’Ami des adolescens, a work that contained dilemmasaffecting older young people in a wider social context, contained framed

10. Mme de Genlis, ‘La Lingère’



rectangular headpieces to each tale with brief sub-titles that whetted theappetite for the story to follow. They are more detailed and animated thanthose in many contemporary works and relate closely to the text. Acomparison of the illustration for ‘La Flatterie’ with that for ‘L’Inconstant’reveals the conventional gendering of the protagonists’ activities andcharacter flaws in Berquin’s tales: both depict homely but privileged domesticinteriors and a family situation44 (Figs 11 and 12).

The former replicates the traditional composition of a child standing beforea seated adult: the protagonist Delphine stands beside her mother’s chair,

11. Arnaud Berquin, L’Ami des adolescens

442 PENNY BROWN


introducing with a gesture her new friend, who is dressed in a fashionabledress and bonnet. The visitor’s elegant flattery is suggested by her stance andthe separation of the figures by a draped window indicates the moral distancebetween them, as she is revealed to be a fawning hypocrite whose insincerityis instantly identified and rejected by Mme de Laurencé. For ‘L’Inconstant’,the story of a young man whose father’s indulgence allows him to pursue hisfluctuating enthusiasms, the headpiece depicts the moment when he sees hisfriend copying a drawing of a Roman bust, a situation that sparks off his firstcraze. By portraying his failure to fulfil his potential in any one area of study,

12. Arnaud Berquin, L’Ami des adolescens



this tale reveals contemporary views on a desirable education for a wealthyyoung man (art, languages, dancing, music and, of course, the Grand Tour).

In 1792, the second edition of a collection of Berquin’s tales in Englishunder the title of The Looking Glass for the Mind, a free translation by RichardJohnson, appeared with seventy-four wood engravings by John Bewick, a pro-ject that is generally regarded as setting a new standard for children’s bookillustration.45 Each story has a headpiece framed in a rectangle adorned witha beribboned garland that depicts a key scene from the tale and a tailpiecevignette of a little rural genre scene. As in the French illustrations describedabove, the effect is to present the reader with an image of a cosy and protectedfamily life in which children are allowed a certain amount of freedom inwhich to exercise their judgement but with a benevolent parent close at handif needed. Children are frequently depicted alone playing or working in agarden: the headpiece for ‘The Sparrow’s Nest’, for example, a tale that showsthe unhappy consequences of the thoughtless plundering of a bird’s nest,reveals Bewick’s eye for detail (Fig. 13). Two girls are shown holding a ladderagainst a house wall while their brother climbs up to the eaves. The texture ofthe wall, the latticed window and garden fence in the background give depthand substance to the image. The older girl, like so many children in these

13. [Richard Johnson], The Looking-Glass for the Mind

444 PENNY BROWN


images who, despite their childish activities, are dressed like miniature adults,wears a flowing gown and tall, flower-trimmed hat. Their action is shelteredby the branches of a tree, the boy’s hat lies on the ground and a cat looks on.The children are viewed from behind, such that the reader is excluded frombut positioned as a witness of their misdemeanour, thus underlining theirtransgression.

Children are sometimes depicted in a domestic interior on their own (a littlegirl bends to her canary in its cage and a little boy stands on a chair to peer atthe barometer hanging on the wall) or in intimate interaction with a parent.The headpiece for ‘The Fruitful Vine’, in which a boy refuses to believe that thetwisted stump of a vine is still living, depicts a Rousseauesque image of afather and son, both in formal dress, standing in a garden (Fig. 14). In thiscase, the reader is allowed to glimpse the end of the story from the start,because the figures are standing beneath a luxuriant vine, the fathergesturing towards the bunches of grapes that testify to the plant’s renewedvigour. Once again, while foregrounding the figures, Bewick has createdperspective and depth with the receding hedges and parterres of the garden,such that the viewer feels as though they are looking into a familiar world. In‘Rosina, or the froward [sic] girl reformed’, a bad-tempered child is cured ofher faults by her mother who shows her a tableful of toys and a note statingthat they are for a good child and a note saying that they could be for a childwho intends to improve herself, encouraging the girl to examine herconscience and desire to mend her ways. The headpiece depicts the moment of




hesitation as the mother, seated at a laden table, offers one of the notes toRosina. An elegant pedestal table, chandelier and an ornate mirror suggest awealthy setting for this tale. The mother is attired in a highly fashionable andelaborate dress and bonnet, while Rosina is relatively simply dressed, a visualstrategy that suggests the power relationship inherent in the situation. Theexemplary nature of this tale is made explicit in the opening lines of the textwhich recommends the reader who has contracted such bad habits ofbehaviour to pay careful attention to the story, just as the illustration portraysthe moment at which Rosina is about to acquire self-knowledge.

Berquin’s philosophy was based on a belief in human and social progressthat did not endanger the social structure of the Ancien Régime. Conflicts areon an individual level and never pose a threat to the social order at large,which is unquestioningly accepted by all concerned. A number of tales dealwith the exercising of charity by the well-to-do youngsters, while projectingthe same sentimentalised image of the poor as in British children’s literature.The poor children and their families are depicted for the most part as honest,industrious and resigned. Unless misfortune is proved to be the result ofcharacter failings, there is deemed to be a moral nobility in poverty that earnsrespect from all – a comfortable doctrine for privileged young readers inFrance in the 1780s. The ‘Story of Bertrand, a poor labourer’, for example, inwhich one of the sons of a poor family starves himself in order that a loaf ofbread will go further amongst his siblings, is clearly aimed at the well-to-doreader who is urged at the start to think themselves lucky that they do nothave to endure hunger. The headpiece depicts the labourer’s family in a simpleundecorated room around a table on which stands a single loaf of bread.The reader is thus invited in both text and image to observe poverty fromthe security of their economically privileged position and to feel pity andbenevolence stimulated by the boy’s extreme self-sacrifice.

‘Bella and Marian’, a tale in which a rich girl befriends and helps a poorchild, is a typical example of the idealisation of working-class children and ofBerquin’s essentially conservative views on class distinctions. The wealthyBella takes the barefooted daughter of a gardener under her wing andshowers her with food and gifts of clothing until advised by her mother to bemore sparing and discriminating in her largesse. The headpiece highlights thecontrast in social stations between the two girls as the richly dressed Bellashows the overwhelmed ragged child the interior of a pretty summerhouse.The great house in the background places the action firmly within Bella’ssocial space in which Marian appears an anomaly, so that the mother’s advicethat it is not helpful to the poor to encourage them to accustom themselvestoo much to finery and rich food appears validated as sensitive and rational(Fig. 15).

In all these texts, the reader is confronted with images of their own lives asthey were, or could be if they heeded the message of the story. Of course, wecannot know how eighteenth-century readers actually responded to thesetexts, but authorial intention is at least unambiguous. The illustrations in

446 PENNY BROWN


eighteenth-century children’s books, through the appearance of a seductiverealism, sought to reinforce the moral lessons conveyed in the text and toconstruct both a desirable new model of reality and, at the same time, areader who, it was assumed, would aspire even in a small way to help createand inhabit that world.

NOTES1. Linda Pollock, ‘Parent–Child Relationships’, in The History of the European Family, vol.i,

Family Life in Early Modern Times 1500-1789, ed. David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (NewHaven, CT, 2001), p.191-220.

2. See Samuel J. Pickering, John Locke and Children’s Books in Eighteenth-Century England(Knoxville, TN, 1981).

3. Pickering, John Locke and Children’s Books, p.6-7.4. M. O. Grenby, ‘Introduction: Children, Childhood and Children’s Culture in the

Eighteenth Century’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 29:3 (2006), p.313-19, p.318.5. Mary V. Jackson, Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Magic (Aldershot, 1989), p.16.6. Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (London, 1978), p.34.7. Aidan Chambers, ‘The Reader in the Book’, The Signal Approach to Children’s Books: A

Collection, ed. Nancy Chambers (Harmondsworth, 1980), p.250-75.8. John Locke, Some Thoughts on Education, ed. John W. and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford, 1989),

p.212.9. François Fénelon, Traité de l’éducation des filles (1687), in Œuvres, ed. Jacques Le Brun

(Paris, 1983), i.110.




10. See G. Bollème, La Bibliothèque bleue: La littérature populaire en France du XVIIe au XIXesiècles (Paris, 1971).

11. Brian Alderson and Felix de Marez Oyens, Be Merry and Wise. Origins of Children’s BookPublishing in England 1650-1850 (London and New Castle, DE, 2006), p.7; p.101.

12. See Pickering, John Locke and Children’s Books, p.188-92.13. Locke, Some Thoughts on Education, p.153.14. Alderson and Oyens, Be Merry and Wise, p.5.15. Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life (1788), in Masterworks of Children’s

Literature, vol. 3, ed. Robert Bator (London, 1984), p.353-406; p.356.16. Locke, Some Thoughts on Education, p.143.17. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, ou de l’éducation (1762), Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard

Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris, 1969), iv.722.18. Jackson, Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Magic, p.98.19. Malcolm Cook, Fictional France. Social Reality in the French Novel 1775-1800 (Oxford, 1993),

p.2.20. Cook, Fictional France, p.8.21. Cook, Fictional France, p.7.22. John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book intended for the Instruction and Amusement of

Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly, with Two Letters from Jack the Giant-Killer, as also a Balland a Pincushion, the Use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good boy and Polly a good girl(London: J. Newbery, 1744). The facsimile of the 1767 edition referred to here is virtuallyidentical to the first edition: John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, introduction andbibliography by M. F. Thwaite (London, 1966), p.59.

23. For an assessment of John Newbery’s approach and career, see Jackson, Engines ofInstruction, Mischief and Magic, p.80-99.

24. A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, p.121-2.25. Peter Borsay, ‘Children, Adolescents and Fashionable Urban Society in Eighteenth-

Century England’, in Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century. Age and Identity, ed. AnjaMüller (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2006), p.60-1.

26. Pickering, John Locke and Children’s Books, p.206.27. Jackson, Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Magic, p.139.28. See Michèle Cohen, ‘“A Little Learning”? The Curriculum and the Construction of Gender

Difference in the Long Eighteenth Century’, in M. O. Grenby (ed.), British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29:3 (2006), p.321-35.

29. Mary Ann Kilner, Jemima Placid: or, the Advantages of Good Nature Exemplified in a Variety ofFamiliar Incidents (London: Thomas Marshall, circa 1783). The edition consulted in the Hockliffearchive is the third edition (circa 1787) and can be viewed at www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe//0158.

30. Kilner, Jemima Placid, p.89.31. M. O. Grenby, essay on Hockliffe web site at www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/Hockliffe//0158. This

text can be viewed at www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe//0157.32. The 1774 edition of Juvenile Trials for Robbing Orchards, Telling Fibs and Other

Heinous Offences (1771) can be viewed on the Hockliffe site at www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe//0167.

33. Jackson, Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Magic, p.55.34. The illustrations of the first edition are reprinted in Masterworks of Children’s Literature,

iii.73-111; The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes published by F. Houlston and Son (Wellington,Shropshire, n.d., but likely to be post 1804), p.10-11. According to the entry in the Hockliffearchive, this edition was a generally faithful reproduction of the original text, but theillustrations differ from those used by Newbery, although they depict the same scenes. Theauthorship of this text is uncertain: amongst the candidates are Newbery himself and OliverGoldsmith.

35. Newbery, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, title page.36. Jackson, Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Magic, p.125-8. The History of Little Goody

Two-Shoes nevertheless remained popular well into the nineteenth century.37. Françoise Huguet, La Littérature de jeunesse sous l’ancien régime, web site based on her

book, Les Livres pour l’enfance et la jeunesse de Gutenberg à Guizot (Paris, 1997); at www.inrp.fr/she/lej/index.htm.

38. Huguet, introductory essay on La Littérature de jeunesse sous l’ancien régime web site.

448 PENNY BROWN


http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe

http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/Hockliffe//0158

http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe//0157

http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe

http://www.inrp.fr

39. See Marisa Linton, The Politics of Virtue in Enlightenment France (Oxford, 1992),p.110.

40. See discussion of children’s books during and after the Revolution in Penny Brown, ACritical History of French Children’s Literature, vol.i (1600-1830) (New York and Abingdon,2007), ch. 6.

41. The illustrations for Campe’s Le Nouveau Robinson can be viewed on Huguet’s web site,www.inrp.fr/she/images.

42. Stéphanie de Genlis, ‘Préface de l’Editeur’, in Théâtre à l’usage des jeunes personnes (Paris:Dufour & Roux, 1784), p.iv. These images can be viewed at www.inrp.fr/she/images.

43. See John Dunkley, ‘Class Relationships and Social Norms in Berquin’s L’Ami des enfans’, inSVEC 305, p.1718-20.

44. These illustrations can be viewed at www.textesrares.com/berq037.htm.45. Richard Johnson, The Looking Glass for the Mind, can be viewed at www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/

hockliffe//0149.

Penny Brown is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature in the Department of FrenchStudies at the University of Manchester, U.K. She has published several articles on earlychildren’s books in Britain and France, and is the author of A Critical History of French Children’sLiterature, 2 vols. (vol. 1, From 1600 to 1830; Vol. 2, From 1830 to the Present Day) (Routledge: NewYork and London, 2007).



http://www.inrp.fr/she/images

http://www.inrp.fr/she/images

http://www.textesrares.com/berq037.htm

http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk

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