population in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, adults and children alike.
John Clare, born in 1793, noted how his father was ‘very fond of the superstitious tales
that are hawked about the streets for a penny’ (Spufford 1981: 3): tales which included
Guy of Warwick, History of Gotham, Robin Hood’s Garland and Old Mother Bunch. These
became the province of children as adult reading tastes shifted and, like the nursery
rhymes which evolved from an adult-oriented oral literature, provided the basis for a
specifically children’s literature.
The chapbooks and ballads which so appealed to Bunyan, and which he
acknowledged were also read by his fellows, were commonly available even to the
yeoman class. However, despite this widespread availability, literacy levels were low; by
the mid-seventeenth century only around 30 per cent of men could read fluently, and
even fewer women. (Cressy 1980: passim.) Nevertheless, that more and more children
were learning to read in Britain can be seen from the increasing numbers of schools in
towns and the larger villages. By the end of the seventeenth century even poorer
children in these areas had access to some rudimentary schooling, although pupils
would usually be removed from school as soon as they were old enough to earn for their
families, perhaps as early as 7 or 8. Social class differentiated those children who
received little more than the barest introduction to reading—using a basic primer or
horn book—from those who were taught to write and learn further from the better
produced school books, bound in sheepskin or calf. Horn books, which provided the
earliest exposure to reading for many children, have been dated from the fifteenth
century; several are shown in contemporary portraits, hanging by a ribbon from the
waists of young children. This type of ‘book’ was usually made from a bat-shaped piece
of wood, to which was pasted the alphabet and sometimes the Lord’s Prayer, and
covered with a transparent piece of horn. Versions in lead, alloy, bone and even silver
have also been found and the horn book frequently served as a battledore for play
between lessons. Primers—small booklets which contained the alphabet, the Lord’s
Prayer, catechism and collects—were also commonly available: Thomas Tryon, born in
Oxfordshire in 1634, learned to read by using one and then sold one of his sheep to
learn writing from a master ‘who taught some poor people’s children to read and write’.
More substantial, real, books for the education of well-to-do children included the
books of courtesy like Stans Puer ad Mensam (c.1479) and Hugh Rhodes’s Boke of
Nurture (c.1545), which were intended as much for the instruction of parents and tutors
as their charges, and schoolbooks—Latin and Greek grammars, spelling books,
arithmetic books and so forth—provided the mainstay of reading for older
schoolchildren. More boys than girls attended school during this period, and boys’
reading and writing skills were generally further advanced. While most of what was
offered would have seemed hard labour to a child, as few books were illustrated by more
than a crude woodcut frontispiece, some writers did attempt to provide a little lighter
material. John Hart’s A Methode, or Comfortable Beginning for all Unlearned (1570)
contains the first known printed picture alphabet and Francis Clement’s Petie Schole
(1576), one of the earliest English spelling books, offered some verses written for ‘the
litle children [sic]’. However, until the late seventeenth century, most schoolchildren had
little by way of diversion through their schoolbooks. One of the most significant changes
to this can be seen in the publication in English of John Amos Comenius’s Orbis
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