The Literature Book

168

CURIOUSER AND

CURIOUSER!

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865),

LEWIS CARROLL

T

he concept of “childhood”

was really only invented

in the 18th century, when

the middle classes began to see the

value of a child’s innocence and

play. For most of literary history,

children were rarely mentioned,

occasionally appearing in such

works as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s

Émile and William Wordsworth’s

The Prelude. In the 19th century,

Charles Dickens sometimes placed

children in the foreground of his

stories, but only in books for adults.

Most tales written for, as

opposed to about, children were

adaptations of adult stories, or

morally didactic. In the early 19th

century, the Brothers Grimm’s

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The invention of childhood

BEFORE

1812 Swiss pastor Johann

David Wyss’s Swiss Family

Robinson focuses on four

children who, with their

parents, discover self-

sufficiency on a desert island.

1863 The hero of The Water

Babies, by English author

Charles Kingsley, is a young

chimney sweep who learns

moral lessons in a fantastic

underwater realm.

AFTER

1883 Italian Carlo Collodi’s

The Adventures of Pinocchio,

featuring a marionette, is a

moral tale for children.

1894 Characters in English

author Rudyard Kipling’s The

Jungle Book include Mowgli,

a boy raised by wolves, and

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a mongoose.

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