A Critical History of Children's Literature: A Survey of Children's Books in English from Earliest Times to the Present

Title

en_US A Critical History of Children's Literature: A Survey of Children's Books in English from Earliest Times to the Present

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US Fourth printing

en_US By Cornelia Meigs, Anne Thaxter Eaton, Elizabeth Nesbitt, and Ruth Hill Viguers

Creator

en_US Meigs, Cornelia

Contributor

en_US Bock, Vera

Date

2016-01-25T19:03:31Z

en_US 1996-07

en_US 1962

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:03:31Z

Date Issued

en_US 1953

Abstract

en_US I had decided not to include this book in the collection when I took another look at its four references to fables. While the chief emphasis on Caxton is his transmission of Arthurian material by Malory, there is a valuable reflection here on Caxton's Aesop (33-34). Finally, he did give to the English world and its posterity perhaps the oldest and the most widely beloved of the ancient classics. People have long read 'Aesop' who could not read the 'Aeneid' (34). I had not known, by the way, that Caxton finished the last of his translations the day before he died. On 89-90 there is valuable material on Lady Eleanor Fenn and on William Godwin. Fenn's sense of fable is presented with a good edge. Fables are stories to teach children what they should do, 'by showing them what may happen to them if they do not act as they ought to do' (89). I am happy to see something here about Godwin, who used the pen-name Edward Baldwin. He married Mary Wollstonecraft and set up with her a small publishing company which brought out children's books, including Edward Baldwin's Fables, Ancient and Modern. Charles Lamb, whose works the two published, said of Godwin, A middle sized man, both in stature and understanding (90)! The Lambs--but not necessarily the Godwins--stood up against the Age of Admonition in their literature for children. Isaiah Thomas of Worcester and Boston and Hugh Gaine of New York are discussed on 132 as following the lead of London's John Newbery. Mention is made here of Fables in Verse with the Conversations of Beasts and Birds by Woglog the Great Giant, which were published around 1762. Gay's fables are mentioned on 156 as written ostensibly for the six-year-old Duke of Cumberland. But satire rather than moral teaching is the burden of these fables, and their language is aimed more at parents than at children. They are keener and more ungentle than the kindly tales of Aesop, while the vehicle of long-drawn-out rhyme is much less effective than the old homely prose (156).

Identifier

en_US 4303 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/79577

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US The Macmillan Company

en_US New York

Subject

en_US PN1009.A1 M4 1953

en_US Secondary book

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole