Politicizing the Nursery: British Children's Literature and the French Revolution

Despite claims that British Children's Literature, under the directives of critics such as Trimmer, avoided Jacobinism in the early eighteenth century primarily to protect the innocence of the child, Grenby demonstrates that this ideology was not so hegemonic. He cites examples found in geographical and historical grammars and in fictional work for children. Those children's authors who purported to entertain and instruct found the Revolution a rich field both for adventure and moral lessons. In particular a book such as Richard Hoare's Young Traveller as well as others gave the child reader access to the "war of ideas" which emerged around the Revolution.