Fiber, Bone, and Sinew Aplenty

In the preface to Moral Instruction and Fiction for Children, 1749-1820, Samuel Pickering indicates that his distinguished scholarly work John Locke and Children's Books in Eighteenth-Century England (1981) lies behind this newest study. Yet the recent book—he would evidently have us believe—is less tough fibered than its predecessor, not merely different in approach. Noting the difficulty of writing about simple matters without sounding simpleminded, he tells us that he has eschewed luring us to marvel "at a Jamesian figure hidden in the carpet of children's literature." He would rather have us know well and truly "the carpet itself, its texture and colors, perhaps even a sense of its place in the House of Fiction" (viii). We are also warned not to expect his study to grapple with the thorny problem of the readings' influence on children. Instead, he will focus on the books themselves to demonstrate his findings on "narrative practice and authorial intention" (viii). Finally, he says, the book is "a covert celebration of imaginative instruction" undertaken because it was fun; his choices for discussion were dictated by his "penchant for sweets." He urges those who do not have his critical sweet-tooth to go forth into the libraries, where thousands of little books with more "fiber and bone, gristle and sinew" await their attention (ix-x).

This caveat is misleading. There are sinew, bone, and fiber aplenty in the particular fancy-filled sweets that he has chosen to discuss, and no lack whatsoever of mature critical judgment, backed by scholarly knowledge of the social and literary history of the age.

The many strengths of the book stem directly from Pickering's decision to quote liberally and to retell in some detail portions of many books. He has a knack for deftly seizing upon the most salient features of a narrative and re-creating a sense of the whole and of the means, the imaginative devices, that render these intensely moral stories prepossessing and on occasion even enchanting. Not only does this tactic convey a lively sense of the drama and humor in these teaching tales but it is probably the most convincing way to demonstrate one very important point that he makes. We often think of early children's books as being divided into two hostile, if not mutually exclusive, camps (fancy versus morality), but "this division is too simple. Although much early fiction warned children against the dangers of the imagination, it did so in imaginative stories . . . [that] led children across marvelously drawn landscapes, woods and meadows which may have delighted readers as much or more than fairyland" (viii-ix).

Moral Instruction, which is divided into seven chapters, organizes a huge number of works, some never before examined, around (1) genres, (2) imitations of central literary works, and (3) motifs significant to early children's literature generally. In the first chapter, "Allegory and the Eastern Tale," Pickering examines symbolic fictions that blend the "ordinary with the unusual," explaining how the adaptability of allegory made it equally if differently fruitful for both religious and secular writers and revealing numerous fresh and several surprising parallels between juvenile allegories and Pilgrim's Progress. Pickering delineates the eastern tale's appeal but shows that there was ambivalence toward it, chiefly among conservatives like Sarah Kirby Trimmer, who judged such tales insufficiently "favourable to the Christian Cause": "It is a great affront to the divine majesty . . . to ascribe to a Genii . . . that mediation which belongs to the SON OF GOD alone" (23).

In the next chapters, "School Stories," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Foundling," and "Pamela," Pickering explores scores of tales, explaining the artistry of each type, the moral issues inherent in them, and how and to what end writers of differing persuasions chose to utilize them. Differences in the codes of life that such books offered boys as opposed to girls, and the prosperous as opposed to the poor, are touched on briefly and sporadically in the early chapters, then focused on in the final chapters...