Stratification of a System

It is almost impossible to discuss the development of
children's literature without accounting for the function
of chapbooks. Despite the fact that histories of chil-
dren's literature almost completely ignore them (see
Townsend 1977, Darton 1958, Thwaite 1972), chapbooks were the
core of seventeenth-century popular literature and served not only as
reading material for children but also as an important catalyst in the
development of children's books. Indeed, every stage in the develop-
ment of children's literature can be explained in terms of the com-
petition between the canonized children's system and chapbooks.

As determined in previous chapters, one of the results of the new
notion of childhood was the emergence of a new education system and
an enormous expansion in size and character of literate circles. A new,
previously unknown reading public -- children (and classes other than
the highbrow) -- came into being, gradually creating a demand for
children's books, which could not yet be supplied. The lack of almost
any official books for children meant that children adapted for their
own use what already existed: chapbooks. These books, until then
read mainly by the poor, were now read by both the poor and children.
At the same time, the literary, as well as the religious and educational
establishments, gradually became aware not only of the specifically
new phenomenon of children reading, but also of the nature of their
reading material. Not surprisingly, the reactions of the various estab-
lishments were identical: each felt an urgent need to compete with and
supersede chapbooks. This competition was a strong motivating force
for all establishments that, from the eighteenth century, became in-
volved in the production of books for children, albeit each from a
different point of departure. The first to react to chapbooks were
commercial publishers, who recognized the high commercial poten-

158

tial of a market which hitherto had not been explored. They realized
that as long as the education system's tenets were not violated, produc-
tion of children's books could become quite profitable; children and
their parents were clearly willing to pay the price of books. Hence,
commercial publishers tried to produce children's books that would be
as attractive as chapbooks, but that would still be acceptable to parents
and teachers.

Concomitantly, the other forces involved with publishing for chil-
dren could not lag behind if they were to survive. Both the religious
and moralist schools considered chapbooks corrupting and unsuit-
able for children; yet they realized that they could not prevent chil-
dren either from reading, now a widespread phenomenon, or from
acquiring inappropriate material. Thus, the only way left for them to
fight chapbooks was to replace them, which could be achieved only
by offering children alternative reading material.

Although the various establishments involved in the production of
books for children had different motivations and produced children's
books in order to achieve different goals, they did share one common
denominator: all tried to compete with chapbooks. By offering better
prices or by borrowing literary elements commonly found in chap-
books themselves (similar plots, stock characters), they increased the
appeal of their books. As a result of this effort and the newly stimu-
lated competition that stemmed from it, publishers of chapbooks
were forced to improve their products as well. Accordingly, they be-
gan to publish chapbooks especially designed for children that were
better illustrated and produced.
This then is the scheme of the historical process by which the
literary polysystem became more stratified. In addition to the forces
of the education system that made the creation of canonized chil-
dren's literature possible and were responsible for the increase in the
number of readers, new opposing forces emerged in the literary poly-
system. That is, in addition to the already existing opposition be-
tween canonized and non-canonized literature, a new opposition be-
tween adult and children's readership developed out of the popular
system. The new system resulting from this opposition, the autono-
mous children's literary system, soon became stratified itself; already
by the middle of the eighteenth century it had developed canonized
and non-canonized subsystems.

159

The State of the System

Prior to the seventeenth century there were few books specifically
produced for children; moreover, the few children who knew how to
read, read adult literature. Most children's exposure to reading was
provided in shared reading sessions with adults. For example, in one
of the early editions of Gesta Romanorum, a woodcut shows a whole
family gathered around the fire on a winter night reading stories to
pass the time. There is evidence of other shared stories, such as
traveler's tales, Caxton's books, and Ovid's Metamorphosis, which
were not intended for children at all. In fact, as Brockman observes,
the secondary importance of children is revealed by "a manuscript
illumination of Ovid reading the Metamorphosis which includes in the
outdoor audience, discreetly to one side, a pair of children" (Brock-
man 1982, 3). Some stories, like Aesop's Fables and The History of
Reynard the Fox, later became tales exclusively for children, as the
children's canonized system seized and monopolized them. Un-
doubtedly, this process could have occurred only after the stories had
gained the acceptance of the educational establishment.

Thus, almost three hundred years after the invention of the print-
ing press, children's books -- mainly ABC's and "courtesy" books --
were few in number and were produced neither systematically nor
steadily. The few children's books published prior to the seventeenth
century (and written in the vernacular)¹ therefore acquired only a
limited audience, comprising two types of children readers: those
who would hold a suitable place in "good" society or those who, in
one way or another, would serve the church. At the beginning of the
seventeenth century, however, as education spread and literate circles
expanded, a new reading public emerged, creating a large demand
for children's books. This demand could not, as yet, be supplied by
the educational establishment involved in publishing for children, in
spite of the legitimation that reading had recently gained; as noted in
the previous chapter, education was tightly controlled by the church
and was intended for "serious" educational purposes only. Thus,

1 They introduced the vernacular, which then became the language and dis-
tinguishing feature of children's literature. Whereas a portion of canonized literatu
for adults was still written in Latin, books for children were written or translated
the vernacular from the very beginning.

160

reading was viewed as acceptable as the gateway to higher religious
enlightenment, but absolutely not for entertainment or pleasure.

A new function was therefore created in the literary system -- the
function of supplying reading material to a new reading public --
which existing elements of the official system could not fulfill. Offi-
cially, the first to fill this vacuum were primers and some religious
treatises; unofficially, however, the task was taken over by chapbooks.
During the seventeenth and even at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the absence of books specially produced for children meant
that they still had to borrow reading material from the adult library in
order to satisfy their reading needs. This material consisted mainly of
chapbooks, which had reached a sizable output by the eighteenth
century.

SOURCES FOR CHAPBOOKS

Chapbooks, paper-covered books sold by peddlers and hawkers, be-
came the most popular reading material of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries. These commercially successful books were heavily
influenced by the following sources: ballad sheets (Children in the
Wood, The Death and Burial of Cock Robin), sometimes rewritten in
prose; Elizabethan jestbooks (Cambridge Jests, or Wit's Recreation;
Poets Jest, or Mirth in Abundance); romance and chivalry stories (Guy,
Earl of Warwick; Bevis of Southampton; Hector, Prince of Troy; Valentine
and Orson; Robin Hood); adventure stories (Johnny Armstrong of West-
moreland, Captain James Hind); sensational and supernatural stories
(The History of Dr. John Faustus, The History of Learned Fryar Bacon,
The Witch of the Woodlands, The Foreign Travels of Sir John Mandeville,
Containing an Account of Remote Kingdoms, Countries, Rivers, Castles,
etc. Together with a Description of Giants, Pigmies and Various Other Peo-
ple and Odd Deformities). A smaller number of chapbooks were adap-
tations and abridgments of books that enjoyed current popularity,
such as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders and Swift's
Gulliver's Travels. Chapbooks also included fairy tales (Blue Beard,
Jack the Giant Killer, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots) that were
later deemed unsuitable for children, as it was thought that they
would hinder the healthy development of sensitive young children.

161

PRODUCTION OF CHAPBOOKS

Writers of chapbooks had to fit texts into a certain format, usually
between sixteen and twenty-four pages. This was done either by
shortening or lengthening a given text, or by adding woodcut illustra-
tions, which until that time had not been used in texts produced for
children. These particular specifications of the chapbook proved to
be most agreeable to the chapbooks' intended audience, poor adults,
who also were attracted to the chapbook's low price. In fact, the
layout design and price of the chapbooks allowed them to become the
most popular source of reading material during the seventeenth
century.

A. E. Dobbs describes the widespread appearance of chapbooks as
reading matter: "In the provinces -- even in the larger towns -- there
was a great scarcity of first-rate literature, a disproportionate amount
of space being occupied by tales of magic and adventure, lives of
highway men, ephemeral histories, love stories, valentines, prophetic
almanacs, 'godly and other patters,' slip-songs, children's books and
antiquated treatises on various subjects sold in numbers four sheets
for a penny" (Neuburg 1972, 2). And Cotton Mather wrote in his
diary of 27 September 1713: "I am informed that the Minds and
Manners of many People about the Countrey are much corrupted by
foolish Songs and Ballads, which the Hawkers and Peddlars carry
into all parts of the Countrey" (Townsend 1977, 24). James Lack-
ington, the bookseller, details in his memoirs published in 1803 the
extent of chapbook dissemination, particularly among the poor, in the
eighteenth century:

I cannot help observing, that the sale of books in general has increased
prodigiously within the last twenty years. According to the best estimate
I have been able to make, I suppose that more than four times the
number of books are sold now than were sold twenty years since. The
poorer sort of farmers and even the poor country people in general,
who before that period spent their winter evenings in relating stories of
witches, ghosts, hobgoblings &c. now shorten the winter nights by
hearing their sons and daughters read tales, romances &c, and on en-
tering their houses you may see Tom Jones, Roderic Random and other
entertaining books stuck up in their bacon-racks &c. (Neuburg 1972,
14).

162

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, the
mass-produced chapbooks moved out of the somewhat exclusive do-
main of adult literature and became a major source of reading mate-
rial for children. This occurred not only as a result of their low price,
but also (and perhaps more importantly) due to the absence of other
sources of reading material for children. Thus from the seventeenth
century until the middle of the eighteenth, people of lower classes
and children shared books -- just as they shared other cultural items
such as clothes, costumes, games, and education (see Ariès 1962).
But the class differentiation between rich and poor, so markedly
characteristic of adult culture, did not carry over to children's
culture -- at least not until the middle of the eighteenth century. As
Neuburg claims, noting the chapbooks' transcendent appeal: "In the
eighteenth century, in the absence of juvenile books, chapbooks were
widely read by the children of well-to-do families" (1972, 5). One of
the children of those well-to-do families was Sir Richard Steele's
godson, whose reading material was described by Steele on the pages
of Tatler (1709, no. 5) in the following way:

I perceived him a very great historian in Aesop's Fables; but he frankly
declared to me his mind "that he did not delight in that learning, be-
cause he did not believe that they were true," for which reason I found
that he had very much turned his studies for about a twelve-months
past, into the lives and adventures of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of
Warwick, The Seven Champions and other historians of that age....
He would tell you the mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find fault
with the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, and loved Saint
George for being the champion of England; and by this means had his
thoughts insensibly moulded into the notion of discretion, virtue and
honour." (Muir 1969, 23; Darton 1958, 33)

Other adults also referred to reading chapbooks in their childhood --
and in quite a fashionable manner, as did Boswell or Goethe. In
Boswell's Journal of 10 July 1763, he described his visit to the "old
printer-office in Bow Churchyard kept by Dicey": "There are
ushered into the world the literature Jack and the Giants, The Seven
Wise Men of Gotham and other story-books which in my dawning
years amused me as much as Rasselas does now" (Thwaite 1972, 41).
In Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe wrote: "We children therefore had

163

the good fortune to find daily on the little table in front of the sec-
ond-hand bookseller's doorway these precious remnants of the Mid-
dle Ages: Eulenspiegel, The Four Sons of Aymon, Fair Melusine, Kaiser
Octavian, Fortunatus -- the whole bunch, right down to The Wandering
Jew; everything was there for us" (Hürlimann 1967, xiii-xv).

Once the book trade came to realize the commercial potential of
the children's market, as indicated by the expanding popularity of
chapbooks, it tried to appeal specifically to those who could afford to
buy other books -- the bourgeois and the upper classes. As a result, a
new gap was created in the reading material of upper and lower class
children, a gap that was widened by the educational establishment's
prohibition of chapbooks. In such a way, chapbooks became the overt
reading material solely of the poor, though it is evident that children
of higher classes continued to read them secretly. Yet in quite a short
time, chapbooks became underground literature for children of all
classes, as the religious establishment began to pay attention to the
reading material and education of the poor as well.

THE ESTABLISHMENT'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CHAPBOOKS

Neither the religious nor the educational establishments were as de-
lighted by the mass reading of chapbooks by children as Boswell or
Goethe were in their nostalgic childhood reminiscences. On the con-
trary, the more important the child's education (and consequently his
reading matter) became, the less the educational establishment ap-
proved of chapbook reading. As early as 1708, an anonymous writer
of the History of Genesis wrote about the dangers in reading chap-
books: "How often do we see Parents prefer 'Tom Thumb,' 'Guy of
Warwick,' or some such foolish Book, before the Book of Life! Let
not your children read those vain Books, profane Ballads and filthy
songs. Throw away all fond and amorous Romances and fabulous
Histories of Giants, the bombast Atchievements of Knight Errantry,
and the like; for these all fill the Heads of Children with vain, silly
and idle imaginations" (Avery 1975, 33; Neuburg 1968, 19-20). A
few years earlier, in 1702, Thomas White likewise warned his read-
ers in his school book: "When thou canst read, read no Ballads and
foolish Books, but the Bible" (Neuburg 1968, 18-19).

These were just the first people to denounce and fight chapbooks.

164

From the middle of the eighteenth century, a war on chapbooks was
declared mainly by the religious establishment, which regarded them
as the source of evil. Philip Dormer, the fourth earl of Chesterfield
and "patron" of Johnson, wrote to his son in 1740: "The reading of
romances is a most frivolous occupation, and time merely thrown
away. The old romances, written two or three hundred years ago,
such as Amadis of Gaul, Orlando the Furious, and others, were
stuffed with enchantments, magicians, giants, and such sort of im-
possibilities" (Darton 1958, 47). The establishment's fight against
chapbooks was not limited to propagandistic articles. At the same
time, there was a concerted effort to overcome chapbooks by offering
children alternative reading material; ironically, this effort in itself
played an important role in the development of the children's system.
But even more crucial for the growth of children's literature was the
discovery by the commercial publishing world of the hitherto unex-
plored potential of the children's reading market. Thus the existence
of chapbooks and the fact that they were read by children were the
the prime motivations for the momentous change in the field of pub-
lishing for children. The fight against chapbooks, for whatever rea-
son (and not least important, the commercial), also contributed to the
initial stratification of the children's system, as well as to its transfor-
mation from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous system.

Commerical Reaction: Manipulation of Chapbook Elements

The fact that children were reading chapbooks proved to eighteenth-
century commerical publishers that there was a section of the reading
public whose needs were hardly being administered to. Until the
eighteenth century, there was not a single publisher catering specifi-
cally to the children's market. However, in the eighteenth century,
publishers realized this potential and tried to compete with chap-
books, mainly by inserting identical elements into their books. For
instance, publishers like Thomas Boreman and Mary Cooper, who
published books with an educational appeal, nevertheless utilized
chapbook elements, especially in their titles. Boreman published
books entitled Gigantick Histories, while Cooper published books en-
titled The Child's New Plaything and short versions of Guy of Warwick

165

and Reynard the Fox. Neither had much success (the list of Boreman's
subscribers never extended beyond 649 and even decreased to 106),
apparently because they never took on steady and regular publishing
for children.

The first commercial publisher to be successful in building a solid
business of publishing for children was John Newbery. It might be
said that Newbery's success reflected what one writer, named Shen-
stone, wrote to his publisher when his fables project was being con-
sidered: "A book of this kind, once established, becomes an absolute
estate for many years; and brings in at least as certain and regular
returns" (Darton 1958, 23). Unlike other commercial publishers for
children at the time, Newbery understood that penetration of the
market must be constant and regular. He also understood that, in
order to compete with chapbooks, he had to appeal to the child; but,
in order to have an advantage over the chapbook, he must not violate
the values of the teachers and the parents. Thus he was not afraid to
announce that he aimed to provide amusement. In fact, in presenting
himself as Locke's disciple, Newbery boldly announced the enter-
tainment-amusement purposes of his books, particularly reflected in
his slogan "Trade and Plumb Cake Forever." Nevertheless, the justi-
fication for the insertion of amusement in his books was that it com-
bined instruction with morals. As a publisher, Newbery was bound,
to a certain extent, to the limits defined by the existing establishment.
At the same time, he was quite aware of the inventory of children's
literature at the time -- chapbooks, lesson books, manuals of good
advice, and Aesop's fables -- and attempted to use elements of each
in order to broaden the appeal of his books as much as possible. His
consistent use of chapbook features perhaps reflects, more than any-
thing, the great popularity of chapbooks in his time. Yet, Newbery
skillfully combined elements of chapbooks, which appealed to the
child, with morality, which appealed to the teacher and parent. An
example of this chapbook manipulation is discerned in his first book
when he utilizes "Jack the Giant Killer," a characteristic chapbook
figure, as a moral preacher. The supposedly entertaining long letter
from Jack the Giant Killer to Master Tommy turns out to be a long
tiresome lecture on good behavior: "This Character, my Dear, has
made every body love you; and, while you continue so good, you may

166

depend on my obliging you with every thing I can. I have here sent
you a Little Pretty Pocket-Book, which will teach you to play at all those
innocent Games that good Boys and Girls divert themselves with" (A
Little Pretty Pocket-Book,[14-15]64-65). In another book published
by Newbery, The History of Little Goody Two Shoes (1765), the heroine
Margery, is involved in strange adventures including an accusation of
witchcraft (also typical of chapbooks). As Darton claims: "It is plain
that the author, in writing this part of the book, had in mind the
chapbooks about Fortunatus and Friar Bacon, and, to all ap-
pearances, was using the familiar names to make better stuff pass
current" (1958, 134). In fact, the story of Margery was a sort of
variation of the prohibited tale of Cinderella. It is the story of an
unfortunate girl of good family who suffers many trials and tribula-
tions, but eventually marries the heir of the manor and becomes the
noble lady of the manor. This sort of story became quite popular and
found its way into other children's books, such as Maria Edgeworth's
The Entertaining History of Little Goody Goosecap (1780), published by
John Marshall, or Mary Pilkington's The Renowned History of Primrose
Prettyface, Who By Her Sweetness of Temper and Love of Learning, Was
Raised from Being the Daughter of a Poor Cottager, to Great Riches and the
Dignity of Lady of the Manor (1785).

However, the most obvious device Newbery borrowed from chap-
books in order to compete with them was illustrations, which at-
tracted attention and, from that time onward, became an indispens-
able feature of children's books. As a matter of fact, the use of
illustrations in children's books has led to the development of one of
the most prominent offshoot phenomena of children's books -- the
picture book. The picture book is itself responsible for the introduc-
tion of an interesting development in children's literature, age strati-
fication. This development has become institutionalized today in
children's literature as an elementary and self-evident subsystem.
Yet, it was only in the nineteenth century that age differentiation,
either in children's literature or in school, was made. During the
twentieth century, this stratification has become more refined, as
publishers distinguished between young and older children in much
more specific divisions (Popular today among publishers are the two-
year age divisions, such as 2-4, 6-8, 8-10, etc.).

167

NEWBERY'S AUDIENCE

Newbery's attempt to appeal to parents, educators, and children is
already clear from the title and description of his first book. Both
were undoubtedly aimed at the middle class and stressed the ped-
agogical importance of the book, while not losing sight of the fun and
amusement: "Little Pretty Pocket-Book Intended for the Instruction
and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly, with
Two Letters from Jack the Giant Killer; as also a Ball and Pin-
cushion; The Use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good Boy
and Polly a good Girl." Newbery's aim was to appeal to the growing
bourgeois audience that had become the main consumer of chil-
dren's books. This intention is reflected both in the underlying val-
ues of the texts as well as in Newbery's marketing devices. The val-
ues underlying the texts are discerned for instance in the reward
given to virtuous Margery in The History of Little Goody Two Shoes:

Who from a State of Rags and Care,
And having Shoes but half a Pair
Their Fortune and their Fame would fix
and gallop in a Couch for Six.

(my italics)

His marketing devices, aimed at superseding chapbooks, mainly ad-
dressed the bourgeois consumer who could afford to buy his books
and deliberately avoided the poor who could not afford them.

COMMERCIAL SUCCESS

It seems clear that Newbery's efforts were fruitful. His first book, A
Little Pretty Pocket-Book as well as others, were published in several
editions between 1744 and the middle of the nineteenth century,
despite the fact that he purposely limited himself to a middle- and
upper-class children's audience. Apparently, this successful trend
carried over to other publishers as well. Toward the end of the eigh-
teenth century, the book market was almost overflooded by publish-
ing for children, as the memories of a German schoolmaster L. F.
Gedike, indicate. While visiting the Leipzig Book-Fair in 1707, he
wrote:

168

No other form of literary manufacturing is so active as book-making for
young people of all grades and classes. Every Leipzig Summer and
Winter Fair throws up a countless number of books of this kind like a
flooding tide. And see how young and old rush to buy.... They take
all kinds of names and forms: almanacks for children, newspapers for
children, journals for children, collections for children, stories for chil-
dren . . . and unlimited variations on the same theme. (Muir 1969,
67)

By the end of the eighteenth century, through constant competition
with chapbooks, commercial publishing for children had become an
established branch of the publishing field. In this development, New-
bery's books had become the model that other commercial publishers
sought to immitate.

Religious Publishing for Children

Commercial publishing responded only to the needs of bourgeois
society and the upper classes who could afford it; yet there was still a
considerable section of the population that knew how to read, but
read unsuitable material, at least from the point of view of the re-
ligious establishment. As a result, the religious establishment, realiz-
ing the dangers lurking in children's reading, began to produce re-
ligious tracts that were made available to the poor and were intended
as a replacement for chapbooks.

Reading among poor people was a relatively new phenomenon. It
was initiated mostly by religious philanthropic endeavors that en-
couraged the establishment of charity schools where children of the
poor could be taught to read. Around the middle of the eighteenth
century, the Sunday School Movement, no longer a pioneering orga-
nization, had become an institution. Whereas one school was once
considered sufficient for an entire district, individual churches now
realized the benefits of having a school of their own. The spread of
the Sunday school resulted in an enormous growth of the reading
public, which meant that the question of reading material was a per-
tinent one. Moreover, when the establishment discovered what this
public was actually reading, the question became even more urgent

169

than ever. The first official Sunday school books were meant to teach
reading; they were not intended for home reading. Gradually, howev-
er, the religious establishment understood that if children were to be
prevented from reading chapbooks hawked by peddlers, they must be
provided with appropriate alternative reading matter. Once again, a
void in the system occurs that requires filling.

The first person to attempt to satisfy that need was Hanna More
(1745-1833). She was among the philanthropists and Sunday school
enthusiasts who became alarmed at the impact that unsuitable pub-
lications had on the poorer classes (who had learned to read in Sun-
day schools). The spread of chapbooks was regarded by More as a
real danger both to society and to the education of the child. Like
others, she believed that the work of the Sunday school would be
insufficient without the provision of "safe books"; on this principle,
she turned her views into action.

Hanna More was the first to understand that there was a need to
produce not only one or two books, but rather to produce a whole
literature. It was necessary to replace what she regarded as crude
chapbooks, as well as the current political pamphlets that were then
consumed by masses of working-class readers. As a result, she urged
her evangelical friends at Chapham Common to provide the poor
with proper reading material. Aided greatly by their financial sup-
port, her efforts proved successful, and in March 1795 the first of the
Cheap Repository Tracts was ready. These books, written by More
and her friends, aimed at competing with chapbooks by using the
familiar format, as well as woodcuts. Another technique used to
compete with chapbooks was the serialization of books. Some tracts
even deliberately tried to replace chapbooks by offering attractive ti-
tles that resembled well-known chapbooks, such as The Cottage Cook;
or, Mrs. Jones' Cheap Dishes; Tawny Rachel; or, The Fortune Teller; Robert
and Richard; or, The Ghost of Poor Molly, Who Was Drowned in Richard's
Mill Pond.

Another tactic used by tract writers to compete with chapbooks
was the adoption of familiar chapbook literary genres to didactic
teaching. Some prominent forms, like poems (The Carpenter; or, The
Danger of Evil Company), were intended to replace bawdy ballads,
while "Histories" (Tawny Rachel; or, The Fortune Teller) were to re-
place frivolous romances and adventures. Even the sensational and

170

manual books were not exempt. Mother Bunch of the chapbooks,
who gave recipes for finding the right husband, was replaced by Mrs.
James, who taught "the art of industry and good management."
Criminal stories were also used for moral purposes; in religious
tracts, crimes were never romanticized (on Robin Hood, see Brock-
man 1982), and criminals were always punished. Even ghosts, the
slandered heroes of chapbooks, were used for religious purposes. In
The Deceitfulness of Pleasure, the appearance of a ghost (the former
sinful lady) brings the heroine Catherine back to religious life (cf.
Pickering 1981, 104-37). Yet, most interesting of all, was the use of
the fairy-tale model by the tracts. Fairy tales posed a more difficult
problem than poems or even criminal stories because they were con-
sidered the most dangerous reading material for children. Thus, re-
ligious tracts could not openly use them; on the other hand, religious
educators wanted to take advantage of their popularity and appeal. A
solution to this conflict was found in the following manner: fairy tales
themselves were never included in tracts, although their literary
model was molded into an instructive tale; that is, the fairy was trans-
formed into a religious power, while giants and wild beasts were re-
placed by dishonesty, gambling, and alcoholism. In Madge Blarney, the
Gypsy Girl (1797), a poor girl has to fight single-handedly against the
wild beasts (the drunken and sinful gypsys); she is eventually saved
by religion, which keeps her from falling into sin like her mother
(Pickering 1981, 123-26). In this way, the transformed fairy tale of
religious tracts was born.

Sometimes tracts even lectured explicitly against chapbooks. In
The Sunday School, Farmer Hoskins finds out what bawdy songs and
stories his daughters have read and makes them promise that they
will buy only from "sober honest hawkers" who sold "good little
books, Christmas carols and harmless songs" (Pickering 1981, 133).
This polemical technique was also practiced by George Mogridge,
an evangelical writer, who wrote books that closely resembled the
chapbooks. While Mogridge consciously tried to adopt traditional
chapbooks as the medium for his own religious and moral teaching,
in his books he preached against "idle fictions" and "fleeting joys";
he even condemned "Tom Thumb" as corrupting for children.

In order to compete seriously with chapbooks, it was not enough to
try to replace them textually; rather, it was vital to maintain the lowest

171

possible price. This was made possible through generous contribu-
tions from religious-oriented societies. For instance, the publication
of the Cheap Repository Tracts was backed by Prime Minister
William Pitt, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops of Bris-
tol, Bath, Wells, Chester, Durham, Exeter, Ely, Gloucester, London,
Lincoln, Salisbury, and Worcester. Consequently, it was possible to
sell them at the same price as chapbooks, whose prices ranged from a
halfpenny to three halfpennies. Also, distribution of the books was
encouraged by offering peddlers and hawkers a favorable discount
rate. In this way, the tracts sold over England by the roving venders
were able to compete with chapbooks in format, illustrations, price,
and distribution. In fact, in the first six weeks of their publication,
three hundred thousand tracts were sold, and by March 1796 sales
were around two million. Though initially they were intended for
both children and the poor classes, the lists of 1826 reveal that in that
year, there were already books written specifically for children.

Once commercial publishers became aware of the potential of this
material, they did not hesitate to use it in their books. These pub-
lishers flooded the market with commercially produced books,
which, unlike the religious tracts, were not intended for the poor but
for the children of the bourgeois and upper classes. Among the most
famous was Mrs. Sherwood's The Fairchild Family (1818), which be-
came an indispensable item in the library of any well-to-do child.²

Thus, out of religious tracts emerged a new model in the chil-
dren's system -- that of the commercially successful religious story
probably based on John Janeway's A Token for Children.³ Janeway, and
other writers like Mrs. Sherwood and later Sara Trimmer, tried to
drive home to children two points: the depravity of their nature and
the inevitability of death. Their religious books for children were
based on the dogmatic belief that heaven or hell existed at every stage
of this mortal life and that conduct on earth leads either to the one or

2 The Fairchild Family was popular even at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Frederick Hamilton describes how in 1900 he attended a Fairchild Family dinner
where every guest had to appear as one of Mrs. Sherwood's characters (see Avery
1975, 93)

3 A Token for Children opens with the following exhortation to parents: "Are the
Souls of your Children of no Value? . . . They are not too little to die, they are no
little to go to Hell, they are not too little to serve their great Master" (Darton 19
56).

172

the other. Authors wrote for the purpose of saving children from hell;
accordingly, the child was taught to read for this devout aim. Only
when views on education changed with the onset of the moralist
school of education, did religious books lose their dominance in the
children's system; the new belief in reason demanded something for
boys and girls other than harrowing stories of martyrdom and holy
deaths. This encouraged books produced primarily by writers of the
Rousseauian school.

However, one thing remained the same even when the moralist
school had entered the scene; official children's literature, compris-
ing both religious and moralist writing for children, as well as com-
mercial literature, shared a total mistrust of fiction. In 1803, Sara
Trimmer revealed a basic mistrust of fairy tales:

Though we well remember, the interest with which, in our childish
days, when books of amusement for children were scarce, we read, or
listened to the history of Little Red Riding Hood and Blue Beard, etc. we
do not wish to have such sensations awakened in the hearts of our
grandchildren by the same means; for the terrific images which tales of
this nature present to the imagination, usually make deep impressions,
and injure the tender minds of children, by exciting unreasonable and
groundless fears. (Pickering 1981, 43-44)

In Guardian of Education, founded in 1809 by Trimmer to defend the
young from the dangers of inappropriate literature, she published the
following attack on Cinderella (under the initials O.P.): "Cinderella is
perhaps one of the most exceptional books that was ever written for
children.... It points some of the worst passions that can enter into
the human breast, and of which little children should, if possible, be
totally ignorant; such as envy, jealousy, a dislike to mother-in-law and
half-sisters, vanity, a love of dress etc., etc." (Darton 1958, 96-97).
On another occasion she claimed that Mother Goose was "only fit to
fill the heads of children with confused notions of wonderful and
supernatural events, brought about by the agency of imaginary
beings" (Darton 1958, 97). At the same time that the evangelists
thought that imagination was contrary to divine intention (as the
imagination of man's heart was intrinsically evil), the Rousseauians
believed that reason would inevitably suffer if imagination were culti-

173

vated. Even commercial publishers for children adopted these cur-
rent views on imaginary literature and regarded fairy tales as unsuit-
able reading material -- in spite of their obvious commercial value.
However, commercial publishers did try to use the appeal of the fairy
tale, although they took special care to announce the virtues of their
moralized versions. Thus, E. Newbery published the Oriental Moral-
ist (1791) by Richard Johnson (under the pseudonym of the Rev. Mr.
Cooper). In the preface, Johnson claimed that he "expunged every-
thing which could give the least offence to the most delicate reader"
(Thwaite 1972, 39). His words reflect a deep mistrust by the various
establishments of imagination in children's literature, a mistrust so
strong that Lamb, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, la-
mented the absolute absence of the classics he knew as a child. He
wrote to Coleridge, "Damn them! -- I mean the cursed Barbauld
Crew, those Blights and Blasts of all that is Human in man and
child," adding that the shelves were piled with Mrs. Barbauld and
Mrs. Trimmer nonsense (Townsend 1977, 43).⁴

Officially excluded from all establishment literature for children
fairy tales continued to find refuge in chapbooks, thus reinforcing
their negative image. This image persisted until the decline of chap-
books and the simultaneous rehabilitation of fairy tales by official
literature in the mid nineteenth century.

Response of the Chapbook to Developments
in Children's Literature

in the reading public and competition of official children's
literature with the chapbook inevitably forced a change in the pro-
duction of chapbooks themselves. In order to survive, the publishers
of chapbooks had to fight back and react to the new developments.
Consequently, two new phenomena arose in popular literature: the
growth of chapbook production and the publishing of chapbooks es-
pecially for children.

Until the eighteenth century, chapbooks in England were issued
chiefly from London, which made their distribution to the other

4 Even in 1887, Charlotte Yonge wrote that she had found village children who
were totally ignorant of Cinderella and other imaginative fiction (Avery 1975, 327).

174

areas quite difficult. By the middle of the eighteenth century, a score
of towns in the provinces produced their own chapbooks for large
local areas, greatly increasing distribution and sales. Chapmen were
no longer dependent upon purchasing books in the capital, but could
buy them from a local printer or dealer. However, because of simul-
taneous developments in publishing for children, chapmen sold not
only chapbooks but religious tracts as well. As a result, publishers of
chapbooks were forced to compete with those new publications.
They did so mainly by publishing chapbooks specifically for children,
which even included colored illustrations. These publishers also
managed to take advantage of what was prohibited in official chil-
dren's literature; that is, they published reading material that was
available only in chapbook form, such as fairy tales (Cinderella), ro-
mances (Tom Hickathrift) and others written specifically for children
(The House That Jack Built, The Tragical Death of an Apple Pye, Mother
Goose, and many more). Among these publishers of chapbooks for
children, the most prominent were Catnach and Dicey. Dicey pub-
lished between the years 1760 to 1770 some dozens of chapbooks for
children, including The History of Jack and the Giants, The History of
Fortunates, and The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.

James Catnach, who published between 1813 and 1838 quite a few
chapbooks for children (such as Cock Robin, Mother Goose, Simple
Simon and Tom Hickathrift) was not only very prolific, but was also the
last one to publish chapbooks in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, chapbooks already
had begun to decline, mostly because of changes in reading habits,
which were influenced by the emergence of newspapers and the suc-
cess of the novel; as a result, chapbooks gradually faded from popu-
larity. For about forty years, chapbooks scarcely existed in the adult
system and eventually were absorbed by the children's system, where
they stayed until the middle of the nineteenth century, when they
ceased to appear.⁵ As Neuburg claims: "Several printers in provin-
cial towns were printing chapbooks for children during the seventeen

5 This is often the case with elements initially belonging to the adult system, then
losing their higher status, and finally being accepted by the children's system. The
romances, which at first attracted the literate and sophisticated medieval audience (in
the original versions), became the stuff of chapbooks shared by children and the poor
when they declined. Later, they became the monopoly of children.

175

eighties and seventeen nineties and continued to do so during the
first decades of the l9th century; but the heyday of the chapbooks
was over. It was no longer the most important element in popular
literature; and it was now entirely intended for child readers" (1968,
65).

This was the process, beginning during the seventeenth century and
ending toward the middle of the nineteenth, by which chapbooks
were transferred into the system of children's literature.

Chapbooks for children continued to appear as long as they served
as the main body of popular literature for children -- and as a pre-
serving force of the literature of imagination for children. The new
stratification of children's literature into canonized and non-can-
onized literature was characterized by the opposition of nonimagin-
ary versus imaginary literature, as fairy tales and other imaginary lit-
erature was excluded from all forms except chapbooks. Gradually,
however, chapbooks for children began to lose their function, as the
model of the imaginary story was accepted by the canonized system
and as other elements entered into the non-canonized system. Thus
stripped of their preserving function and exclusive status, chapbooks
for children began to decline. The rise of periodical literature and
other cheap publications for children, such as dime novels, serials,
and comics, contributed to the decline in demand for chapbooks.
Once chapbooks had lost their function of supplying cheap and oth-
erwise inaccessible reading material, they ceased to exist.

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Contents