History of Children's Literature: An Introduction

Abstract

History of Children's Literature:An Introduction Sylvia Patterson Iskander When Rod McGills asked me if I were interested in editing a special issue of the Quarterly on the history of British and American children's literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I jumped at the opportunity. This subject has long been an interest of mine. Though not new to editing, I now, however, have a much greater appreciation of what the job encompasses. First, numerous intelligent and well-written articles submitted must be decided upon, and articles possessing possibilities must be deferred since time limits on special issues prohibit the reworking of them. Second, mistakes do occur, and I apologize for the confusion about the due dates and the topic for this issue. The date of 1 October 1988 was changed inadvertently in CLQ to 1 December, and the topic from the history of children's literature to historical children's literature. I received several articles on the latter and hope one day a special issue can be devoted to it and also one to the concept of the child. Third, I was disturbed by some problems which I noted in the use of bibliographical style. Therefore, I would like to suggest that the Quarterly consider replacing the 1984 MLA Handbook for Writers, second edition, with the 1988 MLA Handbook, third edition, or even better, with the 1985 MLA Style Manual. Perhaps a brief history is in order. After the earlier skimpy MLA Style Sheets (1951, 1970), MLA published the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (1977), a vast improvement in coverage of bibliographical fine points and in the number of examples of entries. It still had lengthy notes, but they did not have to be footnotes, and it accepted some parenthetical documentation (long acceptable in other fields). This book, however, was later divided into two: one for undergraduates, the second edition of the MLA Handbook (1984), which includes such topics as how to write a research paper and how to use the library, and one for graduate students and scholars, the MLA Style Manual (1985), which includes information on theses and dissertations, copyrighting, and more sophisticated matters. One problem is that sometimes the Handbook is contradicted by the Manual (e.g., see 4.5. 11). Although the third edition of the Handbook (1988) rectifies that problem as far as I can ascertain, it is still directed toward undergraduates, hence my recommendation for the Style Manual. As I reviewed this history, I could not help but reflect that I have not regretted for one moment the timely demise of loc. cit., op. cit., and even ibid., or the deletion of "W.W." from Norton, but I do worry about the partners Brace, Jovanovich, Rinehart, Winston, and others, who took second billing for years and now have no bibliographical spot to fill. I still find it difficult to double space indented quotes, notes, and bibliographical entries. To space once after a colon directly contradicts my high school typing teacher and my daughter's, but alas, these changes seem to be here to stay.1 The best part of this editing assignment was reading the following articles, which I am pleased to present to you. All six relate to female education, although MacLeod's is not limited to females. The pedagogy included, however, is primarily moral and social, rather than academic. Stories of the nineteenth century are somewhat less didactic, of course, but then didactic need not have bad connotations, a point of view Mitzi Myers defends in her article. In the case of Alcott, Ewing, Phelps, and other later nineteenth-century writers, another aspect of education is health—exercise, diet, fresh air—as Mills and Segel explain. The diversity of approaches to both American and British works represented here is good, I believe, for as the study of children's literature advances from its childhood to adolescence and beyond, new criteria and approaches must be observed. Mitzi Myers in another issue of the Quarterly suggests this need: A New Historicism of children's literature would integrate text and socio-historic context, demonstrating on the one hand how extraliterary cultural formations shape literary discourse and on...