Bringing Up Baby Books for the Imagination

Bringing Up Baby :
Childhood in the Old Colony, 1620-1920

BOOKS FOR AMERICAN CHILDREN : FANTASY, HUMOR AND
PLYMOUTH’S OWN ABBY MORTON DIAZ

by Peggy M. Baker, Director & Librarian
Pilgrim Society & Pilgrim Hall Museum

The years between 1860 and 1900 brought dramatic changes in children’s literature. American’s view of children was changing once again as childhood became increasingly romanticized. Two new types of children’s literature became popular: the domestic novel, middle class in setting and values, with a young female heroine - domestic and patient - serving as a catalyst for moral improvement; and the adventure novel, starring an assertive and mischievous young boy, romanticizing the freedom of boyhood. The same virtues promoted by earlier children’s literature (kindness, honesty, truthfulness, self-reliance and hard work) were still being promoted. These were now seen not as necessary for salvation, but instead as necessary for a happy and productive life.

Some authors did transcend the bounds imposed by post-Civil War America. Among the foremost is Louisa May Alcott. The themes found in her most celebrated book, Little Women, were the sentimental themes familiar to her audience - an idealized childhood, an absent father, the affecting death of one of the "little women," moral lessons learned through self-sacrifice, poverty yet gentility. Alcott broke through the conventions, however, in creating strong and believable young characters, with faults as well as virtues, and with active - even "boyish" - heroines who are purposeful and practical in a way that young female characters were seldom allowed to be.

The 1860s also saw the reappearance of literature for the very very young, a genre that had languished since the first Rollo books were written in the 1830s. Sophie May (actually Rebecca Sophia Clark) was a prolific writer of series books for young children and introduced "baby talk" to children’s fiction. This was a distinct break with the earlier tradition of American children’s literature, which had encouraged children to grow up more rapidly and reach independence at an early age.

Books of gentle humor, even books of imagination, anathema to parents of an earlier age, now became popular. Authors used humor to make their young characters more realistic, children were frequently depicted engaged in amusing but harmless misadventures. The humorous tale for children is a major American contribution to children’s literature.

Fantasy writing was slower to win acceptance in America. Because of the strong Puritan hostility to what was seen as "dishonesty," the fairy tales that became so popular on continental Europe during the late 17th century - including such classic stories as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Puss in Boots and Little Red Riding Hood - did not flourish in England or in the English colonies in America. Many of these fairy tales were not in fact originally geared towards children. It was not until the early 19th century that the Brothers Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm) began to write fairy tales for children and to eliminate plot elements from the earlier tales that could be deemed unsuitable for children. The Grimms were followed by Hans Christian Anderson, writing in the 1830s, who combined fairy tale plots with humor, Christian sentiments and middle-class values. With the breakthrough translation into English in 1846 of the child-safe and respectable works of Hans Christian Anderson, fairy tales not only achieved popularity in England but inspired such great English writers as Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald.

The first American author to successfully introduce elements of fantasy into the canon of children’s literature was Nathaniel Hawthorne. His Wonder Book (1852), followed up by Tanglewood Tales, retold Greek and Roman mythology in a manner appropriate for children, including some new characters reflecting middle-class Victorian families.

Other American authors also attempted to write in this genre but without great success, largely because they adapted European models with results that often seemed awkward and foreign to American audiences. In 1859, for example, Jane G. Austin wrote a fantasy book, Fairy Dreams (with illustrations by Hammatt Billings, designer of the original canopy over Plymouth Rock and the National Monument to the Forefathers). It was not a success. Austin later wrote a number of very popular novels for adults based on Pilgrim stories, beginning with the Nameless Nobleman in 1881.

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