19th century children’s literature

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As a child and teenager I was a big fan of works by L. M. Montgomery, Mrs. Burnett and Edith Nesbit - although in case of this last author I came across her novels in local library relatively late, I must have been at least 12 then – it was The Psammead series for which I was already getting a bit too old to derive such a pleasure from reading it as I would if I had found it several years earlier. I do love her Bastables series with my whole heart even now although here also I had an occasion to read it not earlier than when I was, I guess, in my middle teens. I liked also Pollyanna and What Cathy Did, about a disabled teen – I was disappointed that I never could find the next Cathy volumes anywhere (I don’t think they were even ever published here).

Did you like classic children’s books written in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century when you were younger?

When my brothers and sister were younger-these were the books our mother read to us. We would all climb into bed and settle in and it is a fond childhood memory. I loved the 5 Children and It and the others in the series. Something Amulet? A lot of what she read to us were written about the time when British children were sent to the countryside during the Blitz of WWII. Swallows and Amazons is another that comes to mind. They made a movie from The 5 Children and It but I was very disappointed with it.Too saccharine.

Hi

Aimless - there was a very good tv series made by BBC TV of the Five Children and It. Not saccharine.

I also really liked these books. I wonder if you have tried Lucy Boston's books - her series on the children of Green Knowe ?

I could never stand having books read to me when I was a child although I remember only one such a case – and that was enough for me to form such a conclusion. As a young child of about 5 I asked my mom once to read a book to me because I had seen many times parents reading books to their children in movies and I wanted to be like them. But after a short moment I told my mother to stop because it was so incredibly boring, not the book itself although I already knew it but listening to it – thoughts, after all, are much faster than words by their very nature and listening to my mom reading to me was just irritating to me –just way too slow, reading it on my own would be much faster.

When I was a girl, my mother had the collection of the Children's Book of Knowledge series that she and her brother and sister had read when they were children in the thirties. I must have read every volume over and over. Now, I have a collection of other children's collections: My Book House, a collection of books of folktales from around the world, etc. I bought them because I thought my daughter would enjoy them as much as I did, but she had other interests. Maybe the grandkids will.

Anything featuring the artwork of Arthur Rackham

Was a big fan of the animal stories of Thornton Burgess as a child - almost counts as 18th century - he was born in the late 18th, but started writing childrens' books in 1910.

Hard to tell; mainly the classics (Alice in Wonderland, etc). I'm an invertebrate reader (no backbone), so I read from all eras...

oxboy1997 wrote:

I've actually seen those My oldest brother had a copy and I saw it when I visited last.

Willard I love Arthur Rackham too. I used to buy a lot of posters when I was a teenager. That was the world I wanted to be in instead of soul stifling suburbia. I was embarrassed once when I went into the store and I heard one of the clerks say 'There's that girl that always buys those posters' in a stage whisper.

Yes. He made stories like Rip Van Winkle and Hansel & Gretel actually scary. It's easy to believe his forests could be inhabited by witchy crones and odd little people bowling with round stones. I' feel I'd fit right in.

I'm glad I was read the originals of many popular children's stories before Disney had his way with them. Mary Poppins was a bit of a b***h and I was terrorized by the black rabbits with the black coffin in Pinocchio.

I read, obsessively and repeatedly, the animal stories of Ernest Thompson Seton. Some were first published in 1890's, some as late as the 1920's. They are full of blood and thunder and would probably not be considered children's stories today, except for the fact that they're about animals and have pictures.



How do you establish what is a 19th century children's book? Literature just for children is a phenomenon that appeared fairly late in the 19th century. Seton's animal stories were for people of all ages. As were any number of other things that now (probably because people remember the titles but not the content from their own childhoods) are considered 'children's literature.' Huckleberry Finn, say. James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales series are 18th century works but spring brightly to mind because they keep getting printed as 'for young readers.' Yet if Cooper wrote those today and published them under that sort of cover he'd be peeled, salted and driven through the streets by soccer moms with spiked planks. And I keep seeing Moby Dick in the toy section of Wal-Mart, with a garish cover that calls it a 'children's illustrated classic.' That's odd. I wish it was Billy Budd.

George Macdonald's book "Lillith" and "Phantastes". All the blue and Yellow Fairy Books illustrated by H.J. Ford. Arthur Rackham and also the Goblin market. There are so many great stories and pictures.
Carson McCullers wrote a children's book "Sweet as a Pickle Clean as a Pig" . I wish i could find a copy.

I love children's literature! The best year of my life was my third year at university where they gave us a whole module on children's literature. I wrote my dissertation on it too.

I love 'escapism' books. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome is my favourite. I also love the Narnia books.