As for the American phase of the subject, we have already indicated
three stages by which the Colonial or Revolutionary reader was given
his “New England Primer,” his “Mother Goose,” and his Thomas books
obtained directly from Newbery of England. The whole intellectual
activity was in the hands of the clergy; even the governing body
pretended to be God-fearing men, and were prone to listen to the
dictates of the ministry. The austere demands of the Puritan Sunday,
more than anything else, caused the writing of religious books, and so
firm a hold did the Sabbath _genre_ of literature take, that, in 1870,
it was still in full sway, and even now exists to a limited extent.
The history of education in America for a long while has to do with
denominational schools, and teaching was largely left in the hands
of the clergy. So that we shall find our early writer of “juveniles”
either a man of the church, or his wife; prompted solely by the desire
to supply that character of story which would fitly harmonise with the
sanctity of Sunday, rather than with the true excellence of all days.
If, in the school, a book was needed, it was far better to write one
than to trust to others for what might turn out to be heretical.[43]
The Rev. Jedidiah Morse began his literary career in the capacity of
teacher; Noah Webster’s idea was at first to prepare a treatise on
grammar which could be used in the schools. These two were the most
scientific thinkers of their period. The list on page 158, indicating
but a few of the forgotten and only faintly remembered authors of early
days, fairly well represents the general trend; in the writing done,
there were the same morals, the similar luckless children, subject to
the same thin sentiment of piety and rectitude as we discovered holding
sway in England for nearly two centuries. The name of Peter Parley is
no longer familiar to children, and a crusade is fast being formed
against the Jacob Abbott class of book. The type of writer was the kind
that debated for or against slavery in terms of the Bible. The Puritan
soil was rich for the rapid growth of the Hannah More seed, and no
one assisted in sowing it to greater extent than Samuel G. Goodrich
(1793–1860). He may symbolise for us the reading child in New England
at the beginning of the nineteenth century; his training, his daily
pursuits, as told in his autobiography, supply pages of invaluable
social colour.[44]
“It is difficult,” so he says, “... in this era of literary affluence,
almost amounting to surfeit, to conceive of the poverty of books suited
to children in the days of which I write. Except the New England
Primer--the main contents of which were the Westminster Catechism--and
some rhymes, embellished with hideous cuts of Adam’s Fall, in which ‘we
sinned all’; the apostle and a cock crowing at his side, to show that
‘Peter denies his Lord and cries’; Nebuchadnezzar crawling about like
a hog, the bristles sticking out of his back, and the like--I remember
none that were in general use among my companions. When I was about
ten years old, my father brought from Hartford ‘Gaffer Ginger,’ ‘Goody
Two Shoes,’ and some of the rhymes and jingles now collected under the
name of ‘Mother Goose,’ with perhaps a few other toy books of that day.
These were a revelation. Of course I read them, but I must add, with no
relish.”
The confession follows that when he was given “Red Riding Hood,” he was
filled with contempt; and in this spirit he condemns such nonsense as
“hie diddle diddle,” which is not fit for Christian parents to use. He
found some considerable pleasure in “Robinson Crusoe,” but it was not
until he met with Miss Hannah More’s tracts that he might be said to
have enjoyed with relish any book at all.
Thus his reading tastes foreshadowed his literary activity. When he
turned writer, he aimed for the style which distinguishes Mary Howitt,
Mrs. Hofland, and Miss Strickland; he disclaimed any interest in the
nursery book that was unreasonable and untruthful, for so he considered
most of the stories of fancy. In his books, his desire was chiefly “to
feed the young mind upon things wholesome and pure, instead of things
monstrous, false, and pestilent.... In short, that the element of
nursery books should consist of beauty instead of deformity, goodness
instead of wickedness, decency instead of vulgarity.” In this manner,
the mould of the Peter Parley tales was shaped. Goodrich at first
adopted no philosophy of construction, so he says; he aimed to tell
his story as he would have spoken it to a group of boys. But after a
while, a strong sense of the child’s gradual growth took hold of him;
he recognised psychological stages, and he saw that, as in teaching,
his books must consider that children’s “first ideas are simple and
single, and formed of images of things palpable to the senses.”
While on a visit to England in 1823--the memorable time he met Miss
More--he turned his attention to what was being accomplished there in
popular education for children. After investigation, he thus wrote:
“Did not children love truth? If so, was it necessary to feed them
on fiction? Could not history, natural history, geography, biography
become the elements of juvenile works, in place of fairies and giants,
and mere monsters of the imagination? These were the inquiries that
from this time filled my mind.”
Under such conditions Peter Parley was born, and reborn, and overborn;
battles were waged for and against him, just as they have only recently
been waged for and against the Elsie books. But no sooner was Peter
Parley identified with a definite person than Mr. Goodrich’s trials
began. He became a victim of the imperfect copyright system; he found
his tales being pirated in England. And as fast as he would settle
one difficulty, another would arise; spurious Parleys came to light,
conflicting with his sales. It was the case of Goodrich _alias_
Kettell, _alias_ Mogridge, _alias_ Martin, and many more beside. In
fact, a writer, considering the life of William Martin (1801–1867),
quotes a statement to the effect that “Messrs. Darton, Martin’s
publishers, in especial used to prefix the name [Peter Parley] to
all sorts of children’s books, without reference to their actual
authorship.”
Isaiah Thomas may be taken as representative of our Revolutionary
period, even as the “New England Primer” may typify the chief literary
product of our Colonial life. Peter Parley marks for us the war of
1812. It was after this that our country began to expand, that the
South and the Southwest unfolded their possibilities, that the East
began the Westward move that led to the craze of ’49. The Indian,
the scout, the cowboy, the Yankee trader have been the original
contributions of America to juvenile literature. A close study will
indicate that Cooper was the creator of this _genre_ of story,--more
painstaking, more effulgent, more detailed than the Indian story-writer
of to-day, but none the less a permanent model. So, too, he will be
found, in his accounts of the navy, in his records of common seamen,
in his lives of naval officers, to be no mean, no inaccurate, no dry
historian; in fact, Cooper, as one of our first naval critics, has yet
to be accorded his proper estimate.
American history, American development being of a melodramatic
character, it is natural that the opposite to Sunday-school literature
should rapidly take root as soon as begun. A period of the ten-cent
novel flourished about 1860, when the Beadle Brothers, who were finally
to be merged into the publishing house of George Munro, began the
publication of their series of cheap volumes--the sensationalism of
Cooper raised to the _n_th power. To-day there are men who glow with
remembered enthusiasm over Colonel Prentiss Ingraham and the detective
stories of A. W. Aiken--whose record was often one a week--as they do
over the name of Hemyng _alias_ Jack Harkaway, or Mayne Reid, with his
traditional profanity. Edward S. Ellis (b. 1840) was one of the young
members of this group of writers. He became inoculated, but was forced,
when the milder process came into vogue, to soften his high lights, and
to accord with the times. What such early “wild cat” literature did,
however, for present upholders of the “series” books, was to exemplify
that, by a given pattern, a tale could be made to “go” to order. There
was then, as there is now, a certain type of book, neither moral nor
immoral, and not at all educational, but only momentarily diverting;
written without motive, without definite object, but whose ground plan
and mechanism were workable.
The increase of the public-school system was the chief opponent of the
Sunday-school book, as it likewise, by its educational emphasis, fought
against the dime-novel vogue. And with the inception of the public
school on its present large scale we reach the immediate stage, the era
of over-productivity, with its enormous average taste, with its public
regard for readers in the libraries, for scholars in the class-rooms,
for the poor in settlements, and for the emigrant on the high seas.
After an experience of five years in reviewing juvenile books of the
past and in estimating the varied stories of the present, I do not
think it sweeping to assert that while education has snatched the
child’s book from the moralist and taken away from writing a false
standard of right doing, it has not, as yet, added any worthy attribute
of itself. It has not taught the child to judge good literature from
the bad; it has supplied, in a prescribed course, certain isolated
books or stereotyped poems, with which the child is wearied in the
class-room, and from which, once outside, the child turns with natural
dread. I am judging solely from the standpoint of juvenile taste.
And so, with the entrance of a new consideration--the children’s
reading-rooms--it may well be queried at the outset: What will this
institution add to the creative force? How far will it seek to improve
conditions? Will there be an increased demand for the good and for
the best books? Will there be a more careful art manifested in the
writing of stories? Will the gaps in the field be filled up? For an
examination of the past and of the present tells me that children’s
literature, generally speaking, has yet to be conquered.
With these remarks in view, the table that follows may, on examination,
bear some significance.