Golden Age Flashcards
In the second half of the nineteenth century, British children’s literature was dominated by the _______
adventure or boys’ stories (including the so-called schools story)
Was a seaman and was the first to write historical adventures for children, most notably Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836) and Children of the New Forest (1847).
Captain Marryat
wrote The Coral Island (1857)
R. M. Ballantyne
a Robinsonnade or survival story inspired by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and the inspiration for William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954).
The Coral Island
a war correspondent who traveled widely throughout the British Empire, wrote historical adventure books about the places he visited, among which is With Clive in India (1884).
GA HENTY
He is remembered for Treasure Island (serialized in 1881, published in book form in 1883)
Robert Louis Stevenson
has become the quintessential pirate story swashbuckling and melodramatic, but not without its tantalizing ambiguity that keeps adults returning to it as well as children.
Treasure Island (serialized in 1881, published in book form in 1883)
A Child’s Garden of Verses [1885]
Robert Louis Stevenson
a vision of childhood as seen through an adult’s eyes.
A Child’s Garden of Verses [1885] by Robert Louis Stevenson
The glory of this first “Golden Age” is
its fantasy
An extraordinary fantasy filled with a delightful mixture of satire and nonsense and almost devoid of instructional moralizing, it is usually considered the first important work for children that completely broke the bonds of didacticism.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
is a literary fairy tale with Princess Irene as the heroine
The Princess and the Goblin (1872; originally serialized) by George Macdonald
The Princess and the Curdie (1883; also serialized earlier)
George MacDonald
is noteworthy for its rather bitter ending, indicative, some say, of MacDonald’s general attitude toward humanity
The Princess and the Curdie (1883; also serialized earlier) by George Macdonald
The Brownies and Other Tales (1870)
Juliana Horatia Ewing
is a collection that recalls the moralizing of the eighteenth century
Juliana Horatia Ewing’s The Brownies and Other Tales (1870)
The title story, about dutiful and helpful children, remains part of our culture for it gave its name to the junior Girl Guides (Girl Scouts in the United States).
Juliana Horatia Ewing’s The Brownies and Other Tales (1870)
is a rambling morality story describing the adventures of a chimney sweep in an enchanted underwater world. Despite the heavy-handed didacticism, the fantasy world is imaginative.
Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (1863)
One of fantasy’s earliest writer-illustrators, whose talking animal tales, beginning with The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901), have set a high standard for children’s illustrated books .
Beatrix Potter
best advice on writing for children that has ever been penned: “I think the great point in writing for children is to have something to say and to say it in simple, direct language” (quoted in Hunt, An Introduction to Children’s Literature, 88).
Beatrix Potter
Wrote Peter Pan (1904), originally a play and eventually a prose story entitled Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie
He is remembered for The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Kenneth Grahame
The work is a paean to an idyllic and masculine world, the quintessence of Edwardian England. It is an episodic work filled with affable characters- Rat, Mole, Badger, and, of course, Mr. Toad-engaged in a variety of adventures. As with much great fantasy, this is a sophisticated work with a fair share of commentary about the adult world.
The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame
Excelled not only in fantasies (Five Children and It, 1902, and The Phoenix and the Carpet, 1903), but in the family adventure story, most notably the stories of the Bastable children (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, 1899, and others).
Edith Nesbit
