Victorian Horizons: The Reception of Children's Books in England and America, 1880-1900

Abstract

This article examines the critical reception of children's books in England and America, 1880-1900. The purpose of the study is to determine the nature and extent of interest in children's books in the formative period of the golden age of children's literature. Which periodicals covered children's books, and how did their cultural discourse, as revealed through reviewing and commentary, shape the norms and assumptions by which children's books were created and evaluated? Seventy-five literary periodicals were studied for their coverage of children's books in this period. The literary periodicals are drawn from Poole's Index, Nineteenth-Century Readers' Guide, and Wellesley Index. Using reception theory, a branch of reader-response criticism, I construct the contemporary context in which children's books were received-expressed as horizons of expectations. A spectrum of cultural discourse included the following horizons: the treatment of children's books as a commodity; the elevation of children's boo...