Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750-1914, edited by Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling

Abstract

Reviewed by: Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture ed. by Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling Siân Pooley (bio) Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750-1914, edited by Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling; pp. xiv + 272. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, £85.00, $130.00. Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750-1914 shows the benefits of a "collaborative, multidisciplinary approach" to the long nineteenth century (14). Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling have created a lucid and engaging volume that brings together expertise in history, classics, history and philosophy of science, and English literature. The edited volume reveals the "variety of historical, mythical or imagined pasts" with which children interacted, and the nine chapters guide the reader across disciplinary divides (7). The authors' complementary expertise thus enables connections and comparisons that a single-author monograph seldom facilitates. The book's chronological structure mirrors historical narratives that children encountered. The reader moves across the centuries beginning with children's engagement with biblical and archaeological pasts before examining classical encounters, representations of medieval and early modern England, and finally narratives that included recent events in British history. This structure expands on what Melanie Keene describes as the "multilayered series of pasts" with which children interacted (43). Each chapter offers important insights into how, as Virginia Zimmerman describes in relation to ancient Egypt, "the past was both framed by, and understood in relation to, the present" (53). The editors identify "consumerism, knowledge and interaction" as central themes (10). Many chapters address these themes obliquely, so that the nonexpert reader would sometimes have benefited from being told more explicitly how the findings presented here speak to wider debates in nineteenth-century studies. Four arguments are central to several case studies and suggest important avenues for future research. First, Pasts at Play emphasizes the "multiplicity of ways children encountered the past" (11). Rather than focusing on a single medium, the volume juxtaposes magazines, novels, guidebooks, exhibitions, toys, games, and pageants. This gives a powerful impression of the ubiquity of the past within products designed for children. The authors provide detailed context for the sources, many of which have relatively seldom been the subject of scholarly interest. This attention to little-used sources such as puzzles, games, and travel literature is invaluable for other scholars of childhood. Middle-class adults intended most of the histories for literate children, but several chapters reveal that these pasts could also reach working-class and [End Page 497] younger children. Given that the past was so pervasive within childhood activities, Pasts at Play shows how an understanding of the heroes and stories with which people grew up helps us to make sense of their values and identities. Future scholarship could helpfully build on these foundations by establishing whether this intense engagement with history was a distinctive feature of childhoods during the long nineteenth century. The volume's periodization reveals significant continuities across these decades. The volume thus extends J. H. Plumb's interpretation of "The New World of Children in Eighteenth-Century England" in which middling and elite parents newly spent "larger and larger sums of money, not only for their education, but also for their entertainment and amusement" (Past and Present, no. 67 [1977], 90). The book's thirty-one well-chosen illustrations bring to life the visual richness of the child-centered consumer culture across the period of 1750 to 1914. By analyzing changing interpretations, many of the authors reveal the value of tracing revisions and variations across editions and between genres. Rosemary Mitchell's study of biographies of Stuart women reveals "sustained continuity" in the presentation of female lives (152). Irrespective of readership, didactic works for girls continued to celebrate role models defined by their companionate marriages, domesticity, and Anglican piety into the early twentieth century. Scriptural pasts also coexisted with the newest scientific ideas, so that Noah's Ark could convey geological, zoological, and biblical messages simultaneously across these decades. The editors point out that "tracking what was expected to be known—requisite knowledge—and what explanations, clues and prompts needed to be provided, allows us to interrogate the sorts...