The Child in British Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. The Child in British Literature: An Introduction

   1. The Child in British Literature: An Introduction

      • Adrienne E. Gavin

      Pages 1-18

3. Medieval and Early Modern Literature (1200–1700)

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

      PDF

   2. ‘That child may doon to fadres reverence’: Children and Childhood in Middle English Literature

      • Daniel T. Kline

      Pages 21-37

   3. Shakespeare’s ‘terrible infants’?: Children in Richard III, King John, and Macbeth

      • Katie Knowles

      Pages 38-53

   4. Infant Poets and Child Players: The Literary Performance of Childhood in Caroline England

      • Lucy Munro

      Pages 54-68

   5. ‘Children read for their Pleasantness’: Books for Schoolchildren in the Seventeenth Century

      • Edel Lamb

      Pages 69-83

4. Eighteenth-Century, Romantic, and Victorian Literature (1700–1900)

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 85-85

      PDF

   2. Crusoe’s Children: Robinson Crusoe and the Culture of Childhood in the Eighteenth Century

      • Andrew O’Malley

      Pages 87-100

   3. Irony and Performance: The Romantic Child

      • Roderick McGillis

      Pages 101-115

   4. Angelic, Atavistic, Human: The Child of the Victorian Period

      • Naomi Wood

      Pages 116-130

   5. Degenerate ‘Innocents’: Childhood, Deviance, and Criminality in Nineteenth-Century Texts

      • Liz Thiel

      Pages 131-145

   6. ‘She faded and drooped as a flower’: Constructing the Child in the Child-Rescue Literature of Late Victorian England

      • Margot Hillel

      Pages 146-161

5. Edwardian, Modern, and Contemporary Literature (1900–2010)

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 163-163

      PDF

   2. Unadulterated Childhood: The Child in Edwardian Fiction

      • Adrienne E. Gavin

      Pages 165-181

   3. ‘From the Enchanted Garden to the Steps of My Father’s House’: The Dissentient Child in Early Twentieth-Century British Fiction

      • Andrew F. Humphries

      Pages 182-195

   4. Baby Tuckoo among the Grown-Ups: Modernism and Childhood in the Interwar Period

      • Paul March-Russell

      Pages 196-211

   5. The Post-War Child: Childhood in British Literature in the Wake of World War II

      • Pat Pinsent

      Pages 212-224

   6. Shackled by Past and Parents: The Child in British Children’s Literature after 1970

      • Karen Sands-O’Connor

      Pages 225-237

   7. Examining the Idea of Childhood: The Child in the Contemporary British Novel

      • Katherina Dodou

      Pages 238-250

The first volume to consider childhood over eight centuries of British writing, this book traces the literary child from medieval to contemporary texts. Written by international experts, the volume's essays challenge earlier readings of childhood and offer fascinating contributions to the current upsurge of interest in constructions of childhood.

• British novel
• children''s literature
• culture
• English literature
• Middle Ages
• William Shakespeare
• World War II
• childhood studies
• British and Irish Literature

'A sustained investigation of the representation and construction of childhood in literature across the centuries is long overdue, but here at last is a carefully assembled volume that comprehensively covers the subject. The impressive selection of essays, of consistently high quality, takes us from medieval literature, through the early modern and Victorian periods, to Elizabeth Bowen, Virginia Woolf and Iain McEwan. Many major landmark texts are discussed both works of literature and the key contextualising works by Locke, Rousseau, Freud and others. But the reader will find much that's surprising here too: neglected titles, forgotten authors, new contexts. Taken together the essays gathered here will challenge many of our assumptions about the place of childhood in culture and the ways in which this has or hasn't shifted over time. We will certainly no longer be able to believe that the child has not been an important and continuous theme throughout all of English Literature.' - Matthew Grenby, Reader in Children's Literature, Newcastle University, UK

'Gavin is to be congratulated on editing such a coherent volume, which successfully tracks bigger shifts in literature as well as society's construction of childhood, while each essay nevertheless retains its individual focus and nuance.' - Merridee L. Bailey, University of Adelaide, Australia

• Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

  Adrienne E. Gavin

KATHERINA DODOU Lecturer, Dalarna University, Sweden MARGOT HILLEL Professor and Head of the School of Arts and Sciences (Victoria), Australian Catholic University ANDREW F. HUMPHRIES Senior Lecturer in Education, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK DANIEL T. KLINE Professor of English, University of Alaska Anchorage, USA KATIE KNOWLES Liverpool University, UK EDEL LAMB Australian Research Council Fellow, University of Sydney, Australia PAUL MARCH-RUSSELL University of Kent, UK RODERICK MCGILLIS Professor of English, University of Calgary, Canada LUCY MUNRO Senior Lecturer in English, Keele University, UK ANDREW O'MALLEY Associate Professor, Department of English, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada PAT PINSENT Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Research in Children's Literature, Roehampton University, UK KAREN SANDS-O'CONNOR Associate Professor of English, Buffalo State College, USA LIZ THIEL Senior Lecturer in Children's Literature, Roehampton University, UK NAOMI WOOD Associate Professor of English, Kansas State University, USA

Policies and ethics