From every opening flower...
In works of labour, or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do...By the beginning of the eighteenth century, therefore, books for children were becoming
more child oriented: in the tone, the language and the subject matter. While death and
damnation were still important concerns, so too were the more prosaic concerns of
family life. Watts was writing in the Puritan tradition, but his verse was accessible to
everyone, and remained a staple of schoolroom and nursery for two centuries.
Publishing for Children: the Early Eighteenth CenturyThere was growing commercial interest in publishing books for children that not only
taught them but also provided some amusement, as the numbers of children in the
British population increased during the eighteenth century. The child population was to
reach its peak in the early nineteenth century, but the intense commitment to educating
the children of the middle classes which was evident during this period as academies
and small private schools sprang up across the country stimulated the market for
schoolbooks and lighter reading. Nathaniel Crouch’s Winter Evening Entertainments was
an early example of the transition to more child centred material as publishers identified
the potential for selling books to parents and schools. The chapbook publishers—John
Marshall and William and Cluer Dicey were two of the earliest London publishers to
specialise in small books for children, many of them religious or moral tracts—produced
material at the cheaper end of the market to satisfy this demand. Children also
borrowed from adult books. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719 and
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Chapbook versions which were written for
children appeared later and adaptations became a genre in their own right, with the
Robinsonnade evolving into a European-wide phenomenon through numerous versions
of the story. One of the earliest examples to appear was Peter Longueville’s The Hermit: or,
the Unparalleled Sufferings and Surprising Adventures of Mr Philip Quarrl (1727). Joachim
Campe’s Robinson the Younger appeared in 1781, and a superior version—The New
Robinson Crusoe—was issued by John Stockdale in four volumes with twenty-two
woodcuts in 1788.
Of the books being published specifically for children, Mary Cooper’s The Child’s New
Plaything (1742) and Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book Voll 2 [sic] (1744) are two of the
most interesting. Several of the traditional nursery rhymes which were intended simply
to amuse children appeared for the first time in print in this latter volume, a tiny book
printed in red and black with neat copper engravings. The verses are an odd mixture of
ribald drinking songs and old favourites. Lady Bird, Lady Bird, fly away home, for
example, sits somewhat uncomfortably beside Fidlers Wife:
140 TYPES AND GENRES