original ) (raw )I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. — Anne Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale (2006), 32
The Relation of Children's Literature to Victorian Conceptions of Childhood The Child as Innocent The Child as Sinful The Child Within Orphans, Outcasts and Rebels Issues in Childrens Literature The Genres of Children's Literature What is Childrens Literature? Animal tales Aesop's Fables Anna Sewell's Black Beauty Alphabet books: from grim morality to pleasurable learning Book-length Fiction The Boarding School Novel (needed) The Adventure Novel Fairy Tales Fantasy Nonsense Nursery Rhymes Popularizations and age-appropriate versions of adult literature, history, and science Charles Kingsley's "Madam How and Lady Why" Penny dreadfuls Religious Tracts and Magazine Cautionary Tales Rev. Wilson and the Children's Friend "The Reformation; or, The History of Miss Mancel" Verse Edward Lear William Brighty Rands Robert Louis Stevenson Modes of Publication Hornbooks Chapbooks Fairy tales, toy books etc. illustrated by Walter Crane Magazines Introduction Penny Dreadfuls Jack Harkaway of Penny Dreadful Fame Evangelical Tracts and Magazines for Children Secular Magazines for Victorian Children Illustrations from British Victorian Magazines for Boys and Girls The History of Children's Literature Thomas Bewick and children's books The roots of Victorian Literature for Children Defending the Imagination: Charles Dickens, Children's Literature, and the Fairy Tale Wars John Ruskin's "Fairy Land" Ruskin on Fantasy in Art and Literature Evangelical Tracts for Children and Moral Tales — More and Ohers Theme and Subject The Death of Children
Victorian Authors of Children's Fiction R.M. Ballantyne Lewis Carroll Dinah Mulock Craik Mary De Morgan Julia Horatia Ewing F. W. Farrar Bracebridge Hemyng Thomas Hughes Richard Jefferies Charles Kingsley W.H.G. Kingston Rudyard Kipling Edward Lear George MacDonald Captain Marryat Hannah More William Brighty Rands Christina Rossetti John Ruskin Robert Louis Stevenson Charlotte Maria Tucker ("A.L.O.E.") Oscar Wilde Children's Literature and Gender Introduction: Boys will be Boys, and Girls should be Girls "Border Crossings": A Review of Claudia Nelson's Precocious Children & Childish Adults: Age Inversion in Victorian Literature Related material Victorian Print and Print Culture Ruskin’s debt to Anna Barbauld’s books for children The Victorian Book Industry: Political, Economic, and Technological Factors in the Rise of a Mass Audience James Catnach, "low-class jobbing printer," and Sensational Broadsheets "Border Crossings": A Review of Claudia Nelson's Precocious Children & Childish Adults: Age Inversion in Victorian Literature Resources Secondary Materials
Last modified 2 October 2025
