The Pilgrim's Progress

[8] A marginal note indicates, "There is no deliverance from the guilt and burden of sin, but by the death and blood of Christ", cf. Sharrock, page
59.
[9] "Many of the pictures in the House of the Interpreter seem to be derived from emblem books or to be created in the manner and spirit of the
emblem. ... Usually each emblem occupied a page, and consisted of an allegorical picture at the top with underneath it a device or motto, a
short Latin verse, and a poem explaining the allegory. Bunyan himself wrote an emblem book, A Book for Boys and Girls (1688) ...", cf.
Sharrock, p. 375.
[10] "the whole armour (panoply) of God"
[11] "the whole armour (panoply) of God"
[12] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1957), vi.
[13] Albert J. Foster, Bunyan's Country: Studies in the Topography of Pilgrim's Progress, (London: H. Virtue, 1911)
[14] Vera Brittain, In the Steps of John Bunyan, (London: Rich & Cowan, 1949)[http/::www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jbrittain.htm]
[15] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 17
[16] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 20.
[17] See article on John Bunyan
[18] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 37.
[19] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 41-42.
[20] A. Underwood, Ampthill in old picture postcards, (Zaltbommel, Netherlands: European Library, 1989).
[21] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 45.
[22] A. Underwood, Ampthill in Old Picture Cards, (Zaltbommel, Netherlands: European Library, 1989)
[23] E. South and O. Cook, Prospect of Cambridge, (London: Batsford, 1985).
[24] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 85-86.
[25] Vera Brittain, In the Steps of John Bunyan, (London: Rich & Cowan, 1949)
[26] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 105.
[27] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 107.
[28] A.J. Foster, Ampthill Towers, (London: Thomas Nelson, 1910).
[29] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 262-264.
[30] J. Hadfield, The Shell Guide to England, (London: Michael Joseph, 1970)
[31] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 119.
[32] E. Rutherfurd, London: The Novel, (New York: Crown Publishers, 1997).
[33] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 147.
[34] H.V. Morton, In Search of London, (London: Methuen & Co., 1952)
[35] http:/ / www. seegod. org/ Spurgeon. htm
[36] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 66, 299.
[37] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 86, 301.
[38] Revelation 17:1-18.
[39] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 258-59.
[40] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, W.R. Owens, ed., Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 318: "See Misc. Works,
xiii. 421-504."
[41] Jonathan D. Spence, God's Chinese Son, 1996. p. 280-282
[42] New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, vol. 2 sub loco. (http:/ / www. ccel. org/ ccel/ schaff/ encyc02. html?term=Bunyan, John)
[43] Bront, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard J. Dunn. WW Norton: 2001. p. 385.
[44] Bront, Charlotte. Shirley. Oxford University Press: 2008. p. 48, 236.
[45] Bront, Charlotte. Villette. Ed. Tim Dolin. Oxford University Press: 2008, p. 6, 44.
[46] Beaty, Jerome. "St. John's Way and the Wayward Reader". Bront, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard J. Dunn. WW Norton: 2001. 491-503.
p. 501
[47] http:/ / www. imdb. com/ title/ tt0234464/
[48] A Brief History of Christian Films: 1918-2002 (http:/ / www. avgeeks. com/ bhess/ christian_film_history. html#_ftn2)
[49] http:/ / www. astralresearch. org/ mysticalmovieguide/ mmlist. pl?exact=Pilgrim:27s%20Progress& year=1979& findwhere=allsyn&
index=1
[50] http:/ / www. astralresearch. org/ mysticalmovieguide/ mmlist. pl?exact=Pilgrim:27s%20Progress& year=1979& findwhere=allsyn&
index=1
[51] http:/ / www. astralresearch. org/ mysticalmovieguide/ mmlist. pl?exact=Pilgrim:27s%20Progress& year=1979& findwhere=allsyn&
index=1
[52] Heaven Bound Game for PC (http:/ / www. ceganmo. com/ 2008/ 07/ heaven-bound. html#_ftn2)
[53] http:/ / www. amazon. com/ dp/ 080246520X/ 978-0802465207

86

The Pilgrim's Progress

External links

Pilgrim's Progress (actual text)

Pilgrim's Progress (http://www.verselink.org/topics/stories.html) (condensed and illustrated)
Pilgrim's Progress (http://librivox.org/the-pilgrims-progress-by-john-bunyan/) (audio version)
Audio studies on the characters in Pilgrim's Progress (http://www.sermonsfortoday.org/browse/
sermonsinseries.php?series=Series on Bunyan's Characters)
Commentary on Pilgrim's Progress (http://www.bunyanministries.org/commentary_pp.htm) (PDF format)
Biography of Bunyan (http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/bbunyan.html)
Bunyan Meeting Church Bedford (http://www.bedfordmuseum.org/johnbunyanmuseum/church.htm)
John Bunyan Museum Bedford (http://www.bedfordmuseum.org/johnbunyanmuseum/bunyan_home.htm)
Moot Hall Elstow Museum specialising in 17th C life and John Bunyan (http://www.bedford.gov.uk/
moothall)
International John Bunyan Society (http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~dgay/Bunyan.htm)
Bunyan Ministries.org (http://www.bunyanministries.org) Large Bunyan Resource site
Works by John Bunyan (http://www.gutenberg.org/author/John_Bunyan) at Project Gutenberg
Writings of Bunyan (http://www.ccel.org/b/bunyan) at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Complete works online (http://www.johnbunyan.org)

John Bunyan Online (http://www.mountzion.org/johnbunyan/) Online Bunyan Archive.

Acacia John Bunyan Online Library (http://acacia.pair.com/Acacia.John.Bunyan/)
Anthology of English Literature (http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/bunyan/bunyanbio.htm)
International Literary Quarterly (http://www.interlitq.org/issue4/michael_schmidt/job.php)
Glimpses of Christian History (http://www.chinstitute.org/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps086.shtml)
Books by Bunyan (http://swordbooks.com/bunyanjohn.aspx) Sword of the Lord Publishers

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book

87

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book

A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, intended for the Amusement of Little

Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly with Two Letters from Jack the
Giant Killer is the title of a 1744 children's book by British publisher
John Newbery. It is generally considered the first children's book, and
consists of simple rhymes for each of the letters of the alphabet. To
market the book to the children of the day, the book came with either a
ball or a pincushion, depending on which gender the child is. The book
was very popular, and earned Newbery much fame. Eventually the
Newbery Medal was named after him. The book includes a woodcut of
stoolball and a rhyme entitled "Base-Ball." This is the first known
instance of the word baseball in print.[1] The book was very popular in
England, and was then later published in Colonial America in 1762.[1]
Of Baseball's English origin, "The game of Rounders has been played
in England since Tudor Times, with the earliest reference being in
1744 in "A Little Pretty Pocketbook" where it is called Baseball. It is a
striking and fielding team game, which involves hitting a small hard
leather cased ball with a round wooden or metal bat and then running
around 4 bases in order to score" [2] .

88

A woodcut from A Pretty Little Pocketbook,

(1744) England, showing the first reference to
baseball

References
[1] Lloyd, J & Mitchinson, J: "The Book of General Ignorance". Faber & Faber, 2006.
[2] National Rounders Association - History of the Game (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20071112065508/ http:/ / www. nra-rounders. co. uk/
dyncat. cfm?catid=17177) in an Archive.org snapshot from 2007

External links
Digital edition (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbc3&fileName=rbc0001_2003juv05880page.
db) at the Library of Congress
Article (http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume2/june04/pocketbook.cfm) from
History.org

The Governess, or The Little Female Academy

89

The Governess, or The Little Female Academy

The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (published 1749) by
Sarah Fielding is the first full-length novel written for children,[1] and a
significant work of children's literature of the 18th century.[2]

Title page from the first edition of Fielding's The

Governess

In her preface, the author says:

My young Readers, Before you begin the following Sheets, I
beg you will stop a Moment at this Preface, to consider with
me, what is the true Use of Reading; and if you can once fix
this Truth in your Minds, namely, that the true Use of Books
is to make you wiser and better, you will then have both
Profit and Pleasure from what you read.
One Thing quite necessary to make any Instructions that
come either from your Governors, or your Books, of any
Use to you, is to attend with Desire of Learning, and not to
be apt to fansy yourselves too wise to be taught. For this
Spirit will keep you ignorant as long as you live, and you
will be like the Birds in the following Fable:
"The Mag-pye alone, of all the Birds, had the Art of building a
Nest, the Form of which was with a covering over Head, and only a
small Hole to creep out at.The rest of the Birds, being without
Houses, desired the Pye to teach them how to build one.A Day is
appointed, and they all meet.The Pye then says, "You must lay
two Sticks across, thus.""Aye, says the Crow, I thought that was
the way to begin.Then lay a Feather, or a Bit of
Frontispiece to Mrs. Sherwood's 1820 revised edition
of The Governess.

Moss.Certainly, says the Jack-Daw, I knew that must

The Governess, or The Little Female Academy

follow.Then place more Sticks, Straws, Feathers and Moss, in such a manner as this.Aye, without doubt, cries the Starling,
that must necessarily follow; any one could tell how to do that." ...

The Reason these foolish Birds never knew how to build more than half a Nest, was, that instead of trying to
learn what the Pye told them, they would boast of knowing more already than he could teach them: And this
same Fate will certainly attend all those, who had rather please themselves with the Vanity of fansying they
are already wise, than take Pains to become so.
But take care, that instead of being really humble in your own Hearts, you do not, by a fansied Humility, run
into an Error of the other Extreme, and say that you are incapable of understanding it at all; and therefore, for
Laziness, and sooner than take any Pains, fit yourselves down contented to be ignorant, and think, by
confessing your Ignorance, to make full Amends for your Folly. This is being as contemptible as the Owl who
hates the Light of the Sun; and therefore often makes Use of the Power he has, of drawing a Film over his
Eyes, to keep himself in his beloved Darkness.

Notes
[1] Fielding, Sarah (with an introduction and bibliography by Jill E. Grey). 1749, 1968. The Governess or, The Little Female Academy. Oxford
University Press, London. 375 pages.
[2] Carpenter, H. and M. Prichard. 1984. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.

Bibliography
Bree, Linda. Sarah Fielding. Boston: Twayne, 1996.
Bundan, Judith. "Girls Must Be Seen and Heard: Domestic Surveillance in Sarah Fielding's The Governess".
Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19.1 (1994): 8-14.
Downs-Miers, Deborah. "For Betty and the Little Female Academy: A Book of Their Own". Children's Literature
Association Quarterly 10.1 (1985): 30-33.
Fielding, Sarah. The Governess; or, The Little Female Academy. Ed. Candace Ward. Peterborough: Broadview
Editions, 2005. ISBN 1551114127.
Suzuki, Mika. "The Little Female Academy and The Governess". Women's Writing 1.3 (1994): 325-39.
Wilner, Arlene Fish. "Education and Ideology in Sarah Fielding's The Governess. Studies in Eighteenth-Century
Culture 24 (1995): 307-27.

External links
The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/f#a747) at Project
Gutenberg

90

Lessons for Children

Lessons for Children

Lessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted
reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century
British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld.
Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a
revolution
in
children's
literature
in
the
Anglo-American world. For the first time, the needs of
the child reader were seriously considered: the
typographically simple texts progress in difficulty as
the child learns. In perhaps the first demonstration of
experiential pedagogy in Anglo-American children's
Title page for an 1801 edition of Lessons for Children, part I
literature, Barbauld's books use a conversational style,
which depicts a mother and her son discussing the
natural world. Based on the educational theories of John Locke, Barbauld's books emphasize learning through the
senses.
One of the primary morals of Barbauld's lessons is that individuals are part of a community; in this she was part of a
tradition of female writing that emphasized the interconnectedness of society. Charles, the hero of the texts, explores
his relationship to nature, to animals, to people, and finally to God.
Lessons had a significant effect on the development of children's literature in Britain and the United States. Maria
Edgeworth, Sarah Trimmer, Jane Taylor, and Ellenor Fenn, to name a few of the most illustrious, were inspired to
become children's authors because of Lessons and their works dominated children's literature for several generations.
Lessons itself was reprinted for over a century. However, because of the disrepute that educational writings fell into,
largely due to the low esteem awarded Barbauld, Trimmer, and others by contemporary male Romantic writers,
Barbauld's Lessons has rarely been studied by scholars. In fact, it has only been analyzed in depth since the 1990s.

Publication, structure, and pedagogical theory

Publication and structure
Lessons depicts a mother teaching her son. Presumably, many of the events were inspired by Barbauld's experiences
of teaching her own adopted son, her nephew Charles, as the events correlate with his age and growth.[1] Although
there are no surviving first edition copies of the works, children's literature scholar Mitzi Myers has reconstructed the
probable publication dates from Barbauld's letters and the books' earliest reviews as follows: Lessons for Children of
two to three (1778); Lessons for Children of three, part I (1778); Lessons for Children of three, part II (1778); and
Lessons for Children of three to four (1779).[2] After its initial publication, the series was often published as a single
volume.

91

Lessons for Children

92
Barbauld demanded that her books be printed in large type with wide
margins, so that children could easily read them; she was more than
likely the "originator" of this practice, according to Barbauld scholar
William McCarthy, and "almost certainly [its] popularizer".[3] In her
history of children's literature in The Guardian of Education
(18021806), Sarah Trimmer noted these innovations, as well as the
use of good-quality paper and large spaces between words.[4] While
making reading easier, these production changes also made the books
too expensive for the children of the poor, therefore Barbauld's books
helped to create a distinct aesthetic for the middle-class children's
book.[5]

A page from Barbauld's Lessons for Children,

part 2, the first part for children of three (1779
Dublin edition); demonstrating wide spacing and
large type

Barbauld's texts were designed for the developing reader, beginning

with words of one syllable and progressing to multi-syllabic words.[6]
The first part of Lessons includes simple statements such as: "Ink is
black, and papa's shoes are black. Paper is white, and Charles's frock is
white."[7] The second part increases in difficulty: "February is very
cold too, but the days are longer, and there is a yellow crocus coming
up, and the mezereon tree is in blossom, and there are some white
snow-drops peeking up their little heads."[8]

Barbauld also "departs from previous reading primers by introducing

elements of story, or narrative, piecemeal before introducing her first story": the narrator explains the idea of
"sequentiality" to Charles, and implicitly to the reader, before ever telling him a story.[9] For example, the days of the
week are explained before Charles's trip to France.

Pedagogical theory
Barbauld's Lessons emphasizes the value of all kinds of language and literacy; not only do readers learn how to read
but they also acquire the ability to understand metaphors and analogies.[10] The fourth volume in particular fosters
poetic thinking and as McCarthy points out, its passages on the moon mimic Barbauld's poem "A Summer Evening's
Meditation":[11]
Lessons for Children
The Moon says My name is Moon; I shine to give you light in the night when the
sun is set.
I am very beautiful and white like silver.
You may look at me always, for I am not so bright as to dazzle your eyes,
and I never scorch you. I am mild and gentle.
I let even the little glow-worms shine, which are quite dark by day.
The stars shine all round me, but I am larger and brighter than the stars,
and I look like a large pearl amongst a great many small sparkling diamonds.
When you are asleep I shine through your curtains with my gentle beams,
[12]
and I say Sleep on, poor little tired boy, I will not disturb you.

"A Summer Evening's Meditation"

A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise; nor wooes in vain:
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hours the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo GOD; a spark of fire divine,
Which must burn on for ages, when the sun,
(Fair transitory creature of a day!)
Has clos'd his golden eye, and wrapt in shades
Forgets his wonted journey thro' the east. (lines
[13]
4960)

Lessons for Children

93
Barbauld also developed a particular style that would dominate British
and American children's literature for a generation: an "informal
dialogue between parent and child", a conversational style that
emphasized linguistic communication.[14] Lessons starts out
monopolized by the mother's voice but slowly, over the course of the
volumes, Charles's voice is increasingly heard as he gains confidence
in his own ability to read and speak.[10] This style was an implicit
critique of late 18th-century pedagogy, which typically employed rote
learning and memorization.

Benjamin Harris's Protestant Tutor, a primer

popular for decades and the source for the New
England Primer. The typographical layout of
Barbauld's predecessors contrasts with her wide
margins and large letters in Lessons for Children.

Barbauld's Lessons also illustrates mother and child engaging in

quotidian activities and taking nature walks. Through these activities,
the mother teaches Charles about the world around him and he
explores it. This, too, was a challenge to the pedagogical orthodoxy of
the day, which did not encourage experiential learning.[15] The mother
shows Charles the seasons, the times of the day, and different minerals
by bringing him to them rather than simply describing them and having
him recite those descriptions. Charles learns the principles of "botany,
zoology, numbers, change of state in chemistry ... the money system,
the calendar, geography, meteorology, agriculture, political economy,
geology, [and] astronomy".[16] He also inquires about all of them,
making the learning process dynamic.

Barbauld's pedagogy was fundamentally based on John Locke's Some

Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), the most influential pedagogical treatise in 18th-century Britain.[17]
Building on Locke's theory of the association of ideas, which he had outlined in Some Thoughts, philosopher David
Hartley had developed an associationist psychology that greatly influenced writers such as Barbauld (who had read
Joseph Priestley's redaction of it).[18] For the first time, educational theorists and practitioners were thinking in terms
of developmental psychology. As a result, Barbauld and the women writers she influenced produced the first graded
texts and the first body of literature designed for an age-specific readership.[19]

Lessons for Children

94

Themes
Further information: Rousseau on Education
Lessons not only teaches literacy, "it also initiates the child [reader]
into the elements of society's symbol-systems and conceptual
structures, inculcates an ethics, and encourages him to develop a
certain kind of sensibility".[20] One of the series' overall aims is to
demonstrate that Charles is superior to the animals he
encountersbecause he can speak and reason, he is better than they
are. Lessons for Children, of Three Years Old, part 2 begins:
Do you know why you are better than Puss? Puss can play as
well as you; and Puss can drink milk, and lie upon the carpet;
and she can run as fast as you, and faster too, a great deal; and
she can climb trees better; and she can catch mice, which you
cannot do. But can Puss talk? No. Can Puss read? No. Then that
is the reason why you are better than Pussbecause you can talk
and read.[21]
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (17431825)

Andrew O'Malley writes in his survey of 18th-century children's

literature, "from helping poor animals [Charles] eventually makes a
seamless transition to performing small acts of charity for the poor children he encounters".[22] Charles learns to care
for his fellow human beings through his exposure to animals. Barbauld's Lessons is not, therefore, Romantic in the
traditional sense; it does not emphasize the solitary self or the individual. As McCarthy puts it, "every human being
needs other human beings in order to live. Humans are communal entities".[23]
Lessons was probably meant to be paired with Barbauld's Hymns in Prose for Children (1781), which were both
written for Charles. As F. J. Harvey Darton, an early scholar of children's literature, explains, they "have the same
ideal, in one aspect held by Rousseau, in another wholly rejected by him: the belief that a child should steadily
contemplate Nature, and the conviction that by so doing he will be led to contemplate the traditional God".[24]
However, some modern scholars have pointed to the lack of overt religious references in Lessons, particularly in
contrast to Hymns, to make the claim that it is secular.[25]
One important theme in Lessons is restriction of the child, a theme which has been interpreted both positively and
negatively by critics. In what Mary Jackson has called the "new child" of the 18th century, she describes "a fondly
sentimentalized state of childishness rooted in material and emotional dependency on adults" and she argues that the
"new good child seldom made important, real decisions without parental approval ... In short, the new good child
was a paragon of dutiful submissiveness, refined virtue, and appropriate sensibility."[26] Other scholars, such as
Sarah Robbins, have maintained that Barbauld presents images of constraint only in order to offer images of
liberation later in the series: education for Barbauld, in this interpretation, is a progression from restraint to
liberation, physically represented by Charles' slow movement from his mother's lap in the opening scene of first
book, to a stool next to her in the opening of the subsequent volume, to his detachment from her side in the final
book.[27]

Lessons for Children

95

Reception and legacy

Lessons for Children and Barbauld's other popular children's book,
Hymns in Prose for Children, had an unprecedented impact; not only
did they influence the poetry of William Wordsworth and William
Blake, particularly Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience
(178994),[28] they were also used to teach several generations of
schoolchildren both in Britain and the United States. Barbauld's texts
were used to perpetuate the ideal of Republican motherhood in
19th-century America, particularly the notion of the mother as the
educator of the nation.[29] British children's author and critic Charlotte
Yonge wrote in 1869 that the books had taught "three-quarters of the
gentry of the last three generations" to read.[30] Poet Elizabeth Barrett
Browning could still recite the beginning of Lessons at age
thirty-nine.[31]
Writers of all stamps immediately recognized the revolutionary nature
of Barbauld's books. After meeting Barbauld, the famous 18th-century
novelist Frances Burney described her and her books:
... the authoress of the most useful books, next to Mrs.
Trimmer's, that have been yet written for dear little children;
though this for the world is probably her very secondary merit,
her many pretty poems, and particularly songs, being generally
esteemed. But many more have written those as well, and not a few better; for children's books she began the
new walk, which has since been so well cultivated, to the great information as well as utility of parents.[32]

Maria Edgeworth, one of the most important

children's writers to benefit from Barbauld's
innovations

Barbauld herself believed that her writing was noble and she encouraged others to follow in her footsteps. As Betsy
Rodgers, her biographer, explains: "she gave prestige to the writing of juvenile literature, and by not lowering her
standard of writing for children, she inspired others to write on a similar high standard".[33] In fact, because of
Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer and Hannah More were galvanized to write for poor children and to organize a large-scale
Sunday School movement.[4] Ann and Jane Taylor began writing children's poetry, the most famous of which is
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". Ellenor Fenn wrote and designed a series of readers and games for middle-class
children, including the bestselling Cobwebs to Catch Flies (1784). Richard Lovell Edgeworth began one of the first
systematic studies of childhood development which would culminate not only in an educational treatise co-authored
with Maria Edgeworth entitled Practical Education (1798), but also in a large body of children's stories by Maria,
beginning with The Parent's Assistant (1798). Thomas Day originally began his important The History of Sandford
and Merton (178389) for Edgeworth's collection, but it grew too long and was published separately.[34]
In the second half of the 1790s, Barbauld and her brother, the physician John Aikin, wrote a second series of books,
Evenings at Home, aimed at more advanced readers, ages eight to twelve.[35] While not as influential, these were also
popular and remained in print for decades. Lessons was reprinted, translated, pirated, and imitated up until the 20th
century; according to Myers, it helped found a female tradition of educational writing.[36]

Lessons for Children

96

While Day, for example, has been hailed as an educational innovator,

Barbauld has most often been described through the unsympathetic
words of her detractors. The politician Charles James Fox and the
writer and critic Samuel Johnson ridiculed Barbauld's children's books
and believed that she was wasting her poetic talents.[37] In his Life of
Johnson (1791), James Boswell recorded Johnson's thoughts:
Endeavouring to make children prematurely wise is useless
labour ... Too much is expected from precocity, and too little
performed. [Barbauld] was an instance of early cultivation, but
in what did it terminate? In marrying a little Presbyterian parson,
who keeps an infant boarding-school, so that all her employment
now is, 'To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.' She tells the
children 'This is a cat, and that is a dog, with four legs and a tail;
see there! you are much better than a cat or a dog, for you can
speak.'[38]
Barbauld had published a successful book of poetry in 1773 which
Johnson greatly admired; he viewed her switch to children's literature
as a descent. The most damning and lasting criticism, however, came
from the Romantic essayist Charles Lamb in a letter to the poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge:

Title page from Sarah Trimmer's An Easy

Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature (1780),
which acknowledges Barbauld's influence in its
[4]
preface

Mrs. Barbauld['s] stuff has banished all the old classics of the
nursery ... Mrs. B's and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles
about. Knowledge insignificant & vapid as Mrs. B's books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the shape
of knowledge, & his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers, when he has learnt, that a
Horse is an animal, & billy is better than a Horse, & such like: instead of that beautiful Interest which made
the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to
Poetry no less in the little walks of Children than with Men.: Is there no possibility of averting this sore
evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with Tales and old wives fables in
childhood, you had been crammed with Geography & Natural History? Damn them. I mean the cursed
Barbauld Crew, those Blights & Blasts of all that is Human in man & child. [emphasis Lamb's][39]
This quote was used by writers and scholars to condemn Barbauld and other educational writers for a century. As
Myers argues:
[Lamb] expresses in embryonic form ways of thinking about children, teaching, and literature that have long
since been institutionalized in historical account and classroom practice: the privileging of an imaginative
canon and its separation from all the cultural knowledge that had previously been thought of as literature; the
binary opposition of scientific, empiricist ways of knowing and intuitive, imaginative insights; even the
two-tiered structure of most modern English departments, with male-dominated imaginative literature on the
upper-deck and practical reading and writing instruction, taught most often by women and the untenured,
relegated to the lower levels.[40]
It is only in the 1990s and 2000s that Barbauld and other female educational writers are beginning to be
acknowledged in the history of children's literature and, indeed, in the history of literature itself.[41] As Myers points
out, "the writing woman as teacher has not captured the imagination of feminist scholars",[42] and Barbauld's
children's works are usually consigned to "the backwaters of children's literature surveys, usually deplored for their
pernicious effect on the emergent cultural construction of Romantic childhood, or in the margins of commentary on
male high Romanticism, a minor inspiration for Blake or Wordsworth perhaps".[42] The male Romantics did not

Lessons for Children

97

explore didactic genres that illustrated educational progress; rather, as Myers explains, their works embodied a
"nostalgia for lost youth and [a] pervasive valorization of instinctive juvenile wisdom" not shared by many female
writers at this time.[43]
Serious scholarship is just beginning to investigate the complexities of Barbauld's Lessons; McCarthy, for example,
has noted the resonances between Lessons and T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland that have yet to be explored:
Lessons for Children
Come, let us go home, it is evening. See ... how tall my shadow
is.
[44]
It is like a great black giant stalking after me ...

The Wasteland
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
[44]

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you. (lines 5354)

Notes
[1] McCarthy, 92.
[2] Myers, 282, n. 17.
[3] McCarthy, 88; see also, O'Malley, 57 and Pickering, 146.
[4] Pickering, 146.
[5] Robbins, "Teaching Mothers", 137.
[6] O'Malley, 57; see also Jackson, 129 and Robbins, "Teaching Mothers", 140.
[7] Barbauld, Lessons for Children, from Two to Three Years Old, 2930.
[8] Barbauld, Lessons for Children, of Three Years Old. Part I, 12.
[9] McCarthy, 95.
[10] Myers, 27071.
[11] McCarthy, 103.
[12] Barbauld, Lessons for Children from Three to Four Years Old, 10507.
[13] Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. "A Summer Evening's Meditation". Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose. Eds. William McCarthy
and Elizabeth Kraft. Peterborough: Broadview Literary Texts (2002), 99.
[14] McCarthy, 8889; see also Myers, 27071.
[15] Myers, 261; Robbins, "Teaching Mothers", 142.
[16] McCarthy, 100.
[17] Pickering, 147; Richardson, 128.
[18] Richardson, 128; Robbins, "Teachings Mothers", 142.
[19] Myers, 258.
[20] McCarthy, 93.
[21] Barbauld, Second Part of Lessons for Children of Three Years Old, 46.
[22] O'Malley 57; see also Richardson, 133.
[23] McCarthy, 97; see also Robbins, "Teaching Mothers", 139.
[24] Darton, 152.
[25] McCarthy, 97.
[26] Jackson, 131.
[27] Robbins, "Teaching Mothers", 14042.
[28] McCarthy, 8586.
[29] Robbins, "Re-making Barbauld's Primers", 158.
[30] Pickering, 147.
[31] McCarthy, 85.
[32] Qtd. in Myers, 261.
[33] Rodgers, 72.
[34] Myers, 261; see also Richardson, 12930; Darton, 164; Jackson, 13436; O'Malley, 57; Robbins, "Teaching Mothers", 139.
[35] Richardson, 130.
[36] Myers, 260.
[37] Rodgers, 71.
[38] Qtd. in Myers, 264.
[39] Qtd. in Myers, 266.
[40] Myers, 26667.

Lessons for Children

[41] McCarthy, William. "A 'High-Minded Christian Lady': The Posthumous Reception of Anna Letitia Barbauld". Romanticism and Women
Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception. Eds. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky
(1999), 18385.
[42] Myers, 262.
[43] Myers, 266.
[44] Qtd. in McCarthy, 86.

Bibliography
Primary sources
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. Lessons for Children, from Two to Three Years Old. London: Printed for J. Johnson,
1787. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. Lessons for Children, of Three Years Old. Part I. Dublin: Printed and sold by R.
Jackson, 1779. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. Second Part of Lessons for Children of Three Years Old. Dublin: Printed and sold by R.
Jackson, 1779. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. Lessons for Children from Three to Four Years Old. London: Printed for J. Johnson,
1788. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Secondary sources
Darton, F. J. Harvey. Children's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life. 3rd ed. Revised by Brian
Alderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-521-24020-4.
Jackson, Mary V. Engines of Instruction, Mischief, and Magic: Children's Literature in England from Its
Beginnings to 1839. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8032-7570-6.
McCarthy, William. "Mother of All Discourses: Anna Barbauld's Lessons for Children". Princeton University
Library Chronicle 60.2 (Winter 1999): 196219.
Myers, Mitzi. "Of Mice and Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld's 'New Walk' and Gendered Codes in Children's Literature".
Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. Eds. Louise Wetherbee
Phelps and Janet Emig. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-8229-5544-3
O'Malley, Andrew. The Making of the Modern Child: Children's Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth
Century. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-94299-3.
Pickering, Samuel F., Jr. John Locke and Children's Books in Eighteenth-Century England. Knoxville: The
University of Tennessee Press, 1981. ISBN 0-87049-290-X.
Richardson, Alan. Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 17801832. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-521-60709-4.
Robbins, Sarah "Lessons for Children and Teaching Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld's Primer for the Textual
Construction of Middle-Class Domestic Pedagogy". The Lion and the Unicorn 17.2 (Dec. 1993): 13551.
Robbins, Sarah. "Re-making Barbauld's Primers: A Case Study in the Americanization of British Literary
Pedagogy". Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.4 (199697): 15869.
Rodgers, Betsy. Georgian Chronicle: Mrs. Barbauld and Her Family. London: Methuen, 1958.

98