Popular Children's Literature in Britain

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2009), "Popular Children's Literature in Britain", Library Review, Vol. 58 No. 6, pp. 467-469. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530910969857

Once upon a time the term popular took on connotations of a value judgment in children's reading, as writers like Enid Blyton or G.A. Henty, who were prolific and popular by reason of high sales were contrasted with quality alternatives, like Carnegie Medal winners in the twentieth century and works like At the Back of the North Wind and The Daisy Chain in the nineteenth. This probably drew on the snobbery associated with Leavisite criticism, and the debate about “quality” in fiction in public libraries. It persists today in discussions about the value of computer games and Harry Potter.

Other convenient separations were made between adults' and children's reading, between elite and popular culture, and between historically credentialized bibliographical analysis of early children's books and the modern marketing of books for children. Possibly because of postmodernism, more likely because time has passed and we know how artificial and inhibiting such boundaries really are, critical work finds it easy to cross such boundaries and take advantage of a more eclectic approach.

A watershed was Victor Neuberg's early book on popular literature (1977), followed as it has been by work by Rogers and James, Altick and Spufford, Bratton and Green, all helping to redefine and relocate popular literature and culture, including children's reading. These provided it with credible research perspectives and interpretations, giving it the respectability it now has, enough for courses to be run at universities, for example. Peter Hunt's work has given us a framework for these changes, historiographically and critically, while the work of many more specialized scholars and societies, such as the Children's Books History Society, continues to elicit and tease out the place and significance of much of the detail.

This forms the backdrop to the book under review, one that takes the concept of popularity and considers it chronologically across the three or four centuries of mainly UK‐centred children's literature in book and magazine format. Understandably, the cultural and ideological context for the various periods and texts is given substantial attention – the imperialism behind Henty; the promotional momentum of Northcliffe behind Mee's Children's Encyclopedia; the evangelical background to the tracts published by the Religious Tract Society and written by authors like Hesba Stretton; the motivations behind the giving of reward books by Sunday schools and the like; the interest in pantomime that led to publishing harlequinades for children; the urge to get children reading that underpinned the work of Enid Blyton; and today's fascination with comfortable fantasy in the work of J.K. Rowling.

One of the opening claims of the book is, correctly, that we best understand popularity in children's reading by looking at it historically. Hofland and Stretton were as popular in their day, and for equally interesting reasons, as are Blyton and Dahl and Rowling today. Some might be popular because they were heavily marketed – say to middle‐class families, or by the tract societies for missions abroad or the urban poor at home, or (as with Harmsworth publications) because there were market opportunities for capitalists who also believed in education and good works. Evidence for popularity is hard to find in the past for obvious reasons, though contributors to this book do draw on publishers' archives, authors' diaries, evidence of sales (say of Henty and Blyton), and inclusion in contemporary books‐about‐books such as Edward Salmon's from 1888. In these ways readers are given some idea of where research materials, might be found, though some are residual and some are in archives abroad.

Other reasons for popularity lie in the fact that particular storylines and texts were aimed at everyone and not just children. Chapbooks were one such form, with exciting tales of Jack the Giant Killer and Robin Hood, and these persisted and grew into a successful publishing industry in the nineteenth century with authors like Pierce Egan and publishers like E.J. Brett and the Aldine Publishing Company. M.O. Grenby, one of the contributing authors (Newcastle University), provides a nice piece on chapbooks, Kevin Carpenter (University of Oldenberg) a well‐informed survey of Robin Hood stories, George Speaight and Brian Alderson an attractive discussion of the invasion of pantomime into children's reading, and David Blamires a bibliographical summary of the scope and destiny of the fairy tales of Madame d'Aulnoy. This forms the first of four sections in the book and offers a sound historical starting point.

Later sections cover Hofland and Stretton, Henty and Angela Brazil (of girls' school story fame), rewards and tracts, science books for children in the nineteenth century, the Mee‐Hammerton output for the Harmsworth empire, and a final section on Blyton, Dahl and Rowling. Contributors are all well‐recognized in the field the three editors contribute to the book and others, like Kimberley Reynolds and Julia Eccleshare, have publications to their name. Some of the chapters, though not all, have a bibliographical listing of primary works by the authors, a helpful feature which should have been standardized throughout (we have, for instance, Stretton and Henty and Blyton, but not Hofland). That said, we get a useful insight into how the contributors went about their research: for example, Dennis Butts' piece on Hofland draws on archives and contemporary reviews, while Reynolds' piece on rewards draws on a range of background information. Students will find this useful.

Ashgate have carved out an interesting niche for themselves in this specialized area and readers may wish to explore their online catalogue for items on early childhood, women and education, Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling. The book under review is destined for the academic library and for the scholarly shelf – there are specialists enough around the world. But above all, it is aimed at anyone who wants a good working list of critical and bibliographical works on early children's literature (some items are cited in the references here). The critical edge is generally consistent – things that happened to d'Aulnoy's fairy tales in later versions, how Stretton compared with other tracts at the time, why Brazil's school stories worked so well, why Blyton (prolific) and Dahl (sparse) are both regarded as popular authors but for different reasons, and what it is about Harry Potter that has opened up all kinds of sensible and pretentious criticism. Harry Potter is a brand and this probably accounts for the fact that Rowling, like Blyton, continues to do well.

This book is remarkably free from facile value judgments, but remains calmly and reasonably critical throughout, keen to open up the reasons why authors were popular at the time and have been since, and empathic in providing extensive advice on further reading. It is thus timely and welcome. It contains some black‐and‐white reproductions, and many contributors include excerpts from original texts to give readers the flavor of them. One or two chapters draw admittedly on material published earlier by the contributors. The book set itself realistic terms of reference – not too bibliographical, not too ideologically critical or riding a theoretical hobby horse, straight‐forwardly chronological, no overweening eccentricities (even Blyton's astuteness is praised and convinces!).

A presiding genius here is J.S. Bratton whose Impact of Victorian Children's Fiction (London Croom Helm, 1981) showed how a fused critical approach could work, and this is something that the editors and contributors have managed to capture and retain. The frame of reference in terms of past and present scholarship and practice‐led commentary is vast, while enough is suggested to give readers an idea of where to go next. A delightful book and one – unusually in this vulnerable field – likely to avoid the remainder piles.