Children’s literature has a rich tradition and this carefully selected anthology demonstrates its strength and variety very well. The period covered allows Peter Hunt, a well‐established commentator in the field and Professor of English at the University of Wales in Cardiff, to show off many well‐known and lesser‐known writers (of prose and poetry) who wrote in English and published works between 1801 and 1902 in the UK and USA, Australia and New Zealand, and Canada. Criteria for inclusion in the anthology are representativeness (of period and of author’s output), historical significance, readability, and comprehensibility as an extract. The works are works for children, not about.
Hunt says they are not “to” them but modern readers will find the admonitory and evangelical tone of many of the extracts, though typical of their period (one which insisted on seeing reading as a way of making children good and keeping them quiet), do speak “to” and “at” them, judged by modern pluralist and postmodern standards. That points to the value of having an anthology like this, reflecting the long tradition of children’s literature and emphasising the need to see works in context and in period. Hunt’s helpful succinct notes help here, providing biographical and critical background without overwhelming the extracts.
The overall chronological structure proves helpful for understanding the changes (for example from evangelical to a view that implied readers could be be empowered by reading and entertained by it), back with the Hesba Strettons to piety and the Hentys the empire, and coming through time and time again the plain fun in writers like Catherine Sinclair (Holiday House), Frances Browne (Granny’s Wonderful Chair), and E. Nesbit (Treasure Seekers).
Standards are included ‐ Edgeworth, Roscoe, Marryat, Ruskin, Charlesworth, Yonge, Hughes, Farrar, Alcott, Ingelow, Coolidge, MacDonald, Rossetti, Twain, Sewell, Molesworth, Harris (of Brer Rabbit), Jefferies, Hodgson Burnett, Lang, Kipling, Farrow, Crockett, Falkner, Seton, and Baum. Many of their texts are available in other editions but never easy to find and often you need access to a large specialist or deposit library to be sure of finding them. Useful too are writers like Paulding and Optic, Goodrich and Alger, Page and Paine, American writers whose works are not always easy to locate quickly.
Ethel Turner comes as no surprise from Australia, and there are some well‐chosen treatures ‐ Stockton’s Bee‐man of Orn, Farrow’s Wallypug of Why, Hodgson Burnett’s lesser‐known Editha’s Burglar, and Thayer’s iconic From Log Cabin to White House. Within writers’ outputs (like the voluminous Henty or Molesworth, Stretton or Yonge), extracts are well‐chosen and will whet modern readers’ appetites for more. These readers are likely to be adults, researchers, students, rather than children: this is certainly not a book for children as such, although some may find some of the pieces nice to read (but obscure out of context).
A short helpful bibliography and index (to authors, titles and first lines [of poetry]) are provided. In the historiography of such anthologies, we have seen a regular demand for fresh collections and it is great to see many of these under‐read authors brought out again. Hunt is right to say that more research is needed into the unknown collections of material in nineteenth‐century magazines: if the book stimulates such research, it will be a bonus. There will be a large market for the book in circles where early children’s literature is studied seriously and enthusiastically, although for the general market such books tend to end up remainders, and that is a real shame.
