origin. The results of these influences can still be seen at the end of the twentieth
century.
During the five hundred years that have passed since the invention of printing by
movable type in fifteenth-century Germany, children’s literature has developed in much
the same way and at much the same speed in most European countries. The influence of
individuals, developments due to social and economic factors, and technological
progress have all been shared experiences. Most countries can claim examples of books
for children from a period soon after the invention of printing, the widespread use of
traditional tales for books intended to entertain, the advent of literary magazines as a
cheap and effective way of getting reading material into the hands of as many children
as possible, the existence of a creative and imaginative literature by the mid to late
nineteenth century and a flowering in the years after the Second World War. Thus the
influence of Locke and Rousseau, and later the ideas of the Romantics fed through to
children’s books in many European countries; during the nineteenth century there was
a general move throughout Europe towards universal education, and the size of the
middle class increased; both helped to create a reading public with a viable market for
children’s books; while towards the end of the century, technical advances made the
production of full-colour picture books possible, at an economic price.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans were divided almost as much by
class as by nationality. Despite constant wars and the resulting changes in national
boundaries, royalty, the aristocracy and the growing middle classes moved around
comparatively easily, familiar with the major languages and receptive to new ideas. In this
environment, children’s books were translated and transferred from country to country
with amazing ease.
The recognised father of the children’s picture book is John Amos Comenius, born in
Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. His book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, published
in Nuremburg in 1658, with a Latin and High German text, was rapidly taken up by
other countries. It reached England only a year after its first publication, the High
German text translated into English. The French fairy tales written down by Charles
Perrault and published in Paris in 1697 were soon translated and published in most
other European countries: in England, they appeared in 1729. The German folk-tales
collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in German in 1812–1814 were
translated into English and published as German Popular Stories in 1823. Meanwhile,
literary works such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels swept across Europe in
translations from the English. The close links of many European countries with the
United States meant that American influences fed back from there. For example, Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Louisa M.Alcott’s Little Women (1868)
were quickly imported into many European countries.
In the twentieth century, children’s literature in Europe has been more seriously
affected by politics and by war. The First World War probably affected it little, but the
period of dictatorships in Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal certainly had a significant
influence on the content of the children’s books in those countries, as did the 1917
Revolution in the USSR. The Second World War had repercussions at the time on the
production of children’s books because of paper shortages, the absence on war service
of publishing personnel, and the bombing of publishing houses and warehouses. It
THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: AN INTRODUCTION 647