The Victorian Era

Children's Literature in the Victorian Era

Article · Literature & Theatre · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Children’s literature in the Victorian era stood fourth among the period’s literary forms, after the novel, poetry, and drama, and it was the medium in which the period’s children’s authors explored themes of childhood, innocence, education, morality, religion, family, play, and imagination. It developed out of the children’s books of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The history of Victorian children’s literature is examined in Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word. The context of the period is set out in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

The Origins of Victorian Children’s Literature

Victorian children’s literature had its origins in the children’s books of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which consisted largely of chapbooks, hornbooks, alphabets, catechisms, religious tracts, moral and cautionary tales, fairy and folk tales, nursery rhymes, and lullabies. Important figures in this earlier tradition included the London booksellers and publishers John Newbery and Thomas Boreman, and such authors as Sarah Trimmer, Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, Mrs Sherwood, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, William Blake, and Charles and Mary Lamb.

This earlier children’s literature was shaped by several intellectual currents. The Romantic movement encouraged an emphasis on the natural, the simple, the innocent, and the imaginative; the Evangelical movement stressed the Bible, conversion, and moral instruction; educational reformers promoted primers, readers, and structured lessons; and Utilitarian thought valued the useful and the practical above the fanciful.

The Major Children’s Authors of the Victorian Period

The Victorian period produced a generation of brilliant children’s authors who shaped the literature of the period. Charles Kingsley (1819 to 1875), the social reformer and clergyman, wrote The Water-Babies (1863) and The Heroes (1856). Lewis Carroll (1832 to 1898), the Oxford mathematician, wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking-Glass (1871), and The Hunting of the Snark (1876). George MacDonald (1824 to 1905), the Scottish novelist and minister, wrote At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and The Princess and Curdie (1883). Mrs Molesworth (1839 to 1921) wrote The Cuckoo Clock (1877) and The Tapestry Room (1879). E. Nesbit (1858 to 1924) wrote The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), Five Children and It (1902), and The Railway Children (1906). Beatrix Potter (1866 to 1943), author and illustrator, wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) and its many successors. Kenneth Grahame (1859 to 1932) wrote The Golden Age (1895), Dream Days (1898), and The Wind in the Willows (1908). J. M. Barrie (1860 to 1937), the playwright and novelist, wrote The Little White Bird (1902), the play Peter Pan (1904), and Peter and Wendy (1911).

The Forms of Victorian Children’s Literature

The Victorian children’s literature was produced in a wide range of forms. The most important forms of Victorian children’s literature were the fairy tale, the fantasy, the adventure story, the school story, the animal story, the nonsense verse, the cautionary tale, the moral tale, the religious tale, the educational tale, the historical tale, the biographical tale, the travel tale, the science tale, the nature tale, the toy story, the doll story, the picture book, the pop-up book, the movable book, the novelty book, the gift book, the annual, the almanac, the comic, and the magazine.

The fairy tale was a particular feature of Victorian children’s literature. The Victorian fairy tale drew on the French tales of Charles Perrault, the German collections of the Brothers Grimm (first translated into English in 1823), and the original tales of Hans Christian Andersen, which began to appear in English translation in 1846. Late in the century, Andrew Lang’s coloured Fairy Books, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book (1889), and Joseph Jacobs’s English Fairy Tales (1890) collected and popularised the form. Among the best-known tales of the period were Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Rumpelstiltskin.

Conclusion

Victorian children’s literature grew from modest didactic origins into one of the glories of the age, producing classics that remain in print today and giving imaginative expression to the period’s preoccupations with childhood and innocence. Its development is examined further in Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word and in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.