Honoring Our Mothers: The Legacy and Life of Mitzi Myers

Abstract

Culturing the Child 1690–1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers. Ed. Donelle Ruwe. Lanham, MD: Children's Literature Association and Scarecrow P, 2005. Mitzi Myers was unquestionably the founding mother of eighteenth-century children's literature criticism, and her untimely death was a great loss to the scholarship of that important period. Myers's readings challenged and routed the ad feminam attacks on women writers for children by Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Charles Dickens, attacks that influenced children's literature criticism and history for many generations afterward. Because of Myers we admire rather than vilify the accomplishments of those redoubtable women who challenged their periods' assumptions about women and children. At the same time she disputed and revised past assessments, Myers inspired contemporary feminist critics to evaluate women writers not only as feminists but also as writers and thinkers, placing them in context and not succumbing to what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery," the "presentist" assumption that we always know better than persons in the past. Myers's work taught us that we should not uncritically repeat past truisms without considering their source; as well, she showed us that no critical theory, however vast its claims, can replace careful reading and consideration of the cultural and historical contexts in which a text was produced. The essays in Culturing the Child 1690–1914 provide a fitting tribute to Mitzi Myers in their variety, their range, and their methodology. Culturing the Child is divided into four parts, each of which highlights a different aspect of Myers's legacy. The first, "Creating the Contexts of Children's Literature," focuses upon the eighteenth-century writers and publishers of children's books who laid the groundwork for later developments in children's literature. Chapter one, an essay by Ruth Bottigheimer on the usually yawn-inducing topic of bibliography, ought to be required reading in any graduate class in children's literature for the valuable overview she gives of what is and is not known about early children's books, publishers, and popularity. [End Page 218] Bottigheimer not only convinces readers of the rewards of more systematic study of books as objects rather than as simple containers of text (retrievable through microfilms and reproductions), she also provides the conceptual tools needed to perform such study. Next, Karen E. Rowe's article relates a useful history of the discourse and debates surrounding the eighteenth-century fairy tale, its production, and its suitability for children. Contemporary histories of children's literature are well versed in the debates between realism and romance; however, discussions about the role of the imagination, morality, and narrative within the fantasy tradition are not so widely known. Rowe's article provides important background on that debate, beginning with Charles Perrault and culminating in Mrs. Trimmer's repudiation of the form. Last in this section, Julia Briggs's enjoyable and illuminating essay on women, children, and reading in the eighteenth century demonstrates the extent to which the educational theories of John Locke and others were being debated in children's and adult literature of the time, from Samuel Richardson's Pamela to John Newbery's Goody Two Shoes and Sarah Fielding's Little Female Academy. This essay, too, will be valuable reading for any student of the eighteenth century interested in adult-child cross-writing, another important thematic strand in Mitzi Myers's critical oeuvre. Part two of Culturing the Child focuses on the "Rational Dames" so central to Myers's criticism. These chapters build upon her foundation and develop new avenues for further study. William McCarthy's fascinating study of the pedagogy behind Anna Barbauld's Lessons for Children helps us to appreciate the loving sensitivity she had for children's educational needs and does a great deal to recuperate her work for further study. Marjean Purinton's essay on Hannah More is informative and historically situated, albeit too prone to finding More's work insufficiently feminist and therefore wanting. M...