Shakespeare was a popular writer, and much in the world’s best writing draws energy
from popular genres of the kind encountered early in life. Charles Dickens testified,
in a well-known passage, to the power of his own childhood reading; he loved the
marvels of the Arabian Nights and theTales of the Genii. Children’s books soon
became very popular. Dickens’s A Christmas Carol,1843, was a great success. So were
Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, the works of George MacDonald (see p. 375),
and Lewis Carroll’sAlice in Wonderland (see p. 306). Publishers noticed that adults,
unless they are unreformed Scrooges, buy books for children.
Early 20th-century critics, however, sternly disapproved of fantasy, sentiment and
whimsy as Victorian; exactly as Renaissance humanists deplored the continuing
popularity of medieval romance. What the Modern Age needed was naturalism, not
supernaturalism! But the popularity of the children’s books of J. R. R. Tolkien and C.
S. Lewis (discussed on pp. 374 and 375) revived the Edwardian vogue of J. M. Barrie,
E. H. Nesbit and Kenneth Grahame. T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone andThe
Once and Future King,written at the outbreak of the Second World War, were also
very widely enjoyed. Lewis and Tolkien’s revival of medieval legend was as success-
ful as that of their predecessors, Walter Scott, Tennyson and William Morris. Lewis
and Tolkien also helped devise the medieval part of the Oxford English syllabus, a
breeding ground for the further revival of medieval legend.Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman(1946– ) published Northern Lightsin 1995, the first of a trilogy
called His Dark Materials, a phrase taken from the cosmos devised by Milton for
Paradise Lost. The title suggests ambitions grander than those of J. K. Rowling, and
the books have an underlying esoteric cosmology which mingles secret knowledge
with magical tec hnology. Pullman inverts the analogy and cosmology of C. S. Lewis,
and appears to quote the account of Creation in Genesis while altering its text. The
interpolated Pullmanic Verse makes Genesis say that humans are each created with
a per sonal daemon or spirit.Pullman has this familiar spirit attend upon each
human being. The daemonis like an animal soul:both guardian angel, guard-dog,
personal genie and pet. It changes shape at will during its human’s childhood. In
Northern Lights the per sonal daemonsofthe childrenare animals or birds. The
daemonsare faithful to their humans and ferocious to their humans’ enemies. We are
firmly told that daemonsare notpets. It is true that they do not have to be fed or
looked after; but they do have the appeal of a graceful and innocent animal compan-
ion which guards its owner. The narrator-heroine, Lyra, is a tough and enterprising
young girl, mysteriously placed by her parents to live in an Oxford college. The story
is genuinely intriguing: its universe mixes the familiar and the unfamiliar, the ingen-
ious and the serious. Familiar things have unfamiliar names; ‘coal-spirit’ (oil);
‘anbaric’ (electric); ‘gyptians’ (gipsies). Time is fluid: medieval things mingle with
things of the present and the future. The story has initial suspense, intriguing narra-
tion, strong dialogue, and some good action. It is hinted that serious mysteries
underlie the story.J. K. Rowling
Children’s books became prominent from the 1960s on, but even Tolkien’s triumphs
have bee n dwarfed by the success of the English author J. K.Rowlingwith her first
book,Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,1997. A later volume in her saga of
junior wizardry allegedly sold 11 million copies on the day of publication. ‘Harry432 15 · CONTEMPORARIES