of Jill Paton Walsh, Nina Bawden, Penelope Lively, Jane Gardam, and others, whose
association with children’s literature has not damaged their reputations.
If Caxton’s invention opened up—with the recognition of the uses of literacy—a great
division between childhood and adult experience for which children had to be prepared,
it is all the more appropriate that his early printing of Aesop in translation should have
proved so regenerative and enduring a contribution to children’s literature. The male
authors notable in this field have defined themselves in many cases as writers for
children by reference to the fable tradition, a tradition which has remained sensitive and
accessible to continual reworking, The feminising of fiction extended the range and scale
of children’s literature, providing new opportunities for the revaluation of childhood and
its relationship to adult experience.
The texts for children considered here exemplify and derive significance from the
expression of the numerous semi-autonomous cultures which have always coexisted
alongside the dominant culture. From within these subordinate mental worlds every past
and future juvenile Edgeworth, Kipling, Eliot and Rushdie springs.
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416 MAJOR AUTHORS’ WORK FOR CHILDREN