Historical and Sociological Studies

Ancient Kennell, Nigel M. The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1996. 241 pp. $43.95.

Orage, A. R. "Life as Gymnastics." Parabola 21.4 (Nov. 1996): 87-88. Reprinted from Psychological Exercises (1930). Advocates self-mastery by means of the imagination, using Aesop's fable of the fox and grapes as an example. G.A.

See also AUTHORS: Aesop, Bible

Medieval Hanawalt, Barbara A. Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Hanawalt divides her book into chapters devoted to each stage of childhood as defined in England in the 14th and 15th centuries, and provides a picture of each based on the basis of evidence found in court records, wills, and other archival, as well as literary, sources. Interesting, clear, and jargon free. G.A.

Hunt, Tony. Teaching and Learning Latin in 13th-Century England . Vol. 1, Texts, Vol. 2, Glosses, Vol. 3, Indexes. Cambridge: Brewer, 1991. This forbidding work is a study of the Latin and vernacular glosses found in medieval literature (classical auctores and "Cato"), grammars (including Aelfric's in Old English), and vocabularies. A storehouse of information. G.A.

Reynolds, Suzanne. Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 27. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. 235 pp. How 12th-century manuscript glosses on Horace's Satires "draw on, diverge from and redefine the technical grammatical practice of which they form a part." The 2nd chapter, "Learning to Read: The Classics and the Curriculum," explains how children actually learned to read. Exhaustive research. G.A.

Schultz, James A. The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages, 1100-1350. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1995. Distrib. Europe AUPG. 318 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3297-6. £36.95. Review Joachim Whaley, "Immune Children and Iron Maidens," TLS 23 Feb. 1996: 7. Basing his analysis on over 200 Middle High German texts written between 1150 and 1350, Schultz shows how "childhood was constructed in the literary imagination of the German-speaking nobility who were that literature's patrons and audience." G.A.

See also AUTHORS: Arthurian, Geoffrey Chaucer, Eileen Power; FOLKLORE: Leclerc

Seventeenth Century See AUTHORS: Elizabeth Jocelin

Eighteenth Century Townsend, John Rowe. John Newbery and His Books: Trade and Plum-Cake for Ever, Huzza!. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1994. 194 pp. ISBN 0-8108-2950-9. $25. The U.S. edition of Townsend's book published in England as Trade and Plum-Cake for Ever, Huzza! The Life and Work of John Newbery 1713-1769. G.A.

See AUTHORS: Thomas and John Bewick; FANTASY: Williams

Nineteenth Century Jalland, Pat. Death in the Victorian Family. London: Oxford UP, 1996. 464 pp. ISBN 0-8014-8146-5. £25 sc. Review Peter Gay, "Candour about the Body," TLS 29 Nov. 1996: 30. Based on family archives and secondary materials, "a masterly monograph." Contains much material about the deaths of children. G.A.

Keller, Holly. "Juvenile Antislavery Narrative and Notions of Childhood." Children's Literature 24 (1996): 86-100. How white children were used as symbols and agents of reform in the subversive, even radical, anti-slavery narratives; Black children were also idealized as "potent moral agents." G.A.

King, Wilma. Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteeth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996. $27.95. Brief review Douglas A. Sylva, NYTBR 27 Oct. 1996: 38-39. "[King's] research, including Government interviews with former slaves conducted during the 1930's, deserves more meaningful commentary." "The slaves' voices emerge strongly and often poignantly." G.A.

Stray, Christopher. Grinders and Grammars: A Victorian Controversy. Colloquium on Textbooks, Schools and Society, Department of Classics and Ancient History. Swansea: U of Wales, 1996. 83 pp. ISBN 0-9522346-1-0. Pbk £6. Brief review CE., TLS 19 July 1996: 32. The texts of "an impassioned series" of 32 letters written to The Times on the publication in 1866 of B.H. Kennedy's Public School Latin Primer, intended to replace the outdated Eton Latin Grammar. A "sharp and scholarly edition." G.A.

Werner, Emmy E. Pioneer Children on the Journey West. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996. Distrib. UK...