Children’s Fiction 1765–1808. By John Carey; Margaret King Moore, Lady Mount Cashell; and Henry Brooke (review)

Children’s Fiction 1765–1808, edited by Anne Markey, has been produced as part of the series Early Irish Fiction, c. 1680–1820. The aim of the series is, as its general editors state in the Preface to this volume, “to indicate the diversity and breadth of Irish literature” in the long eighteenth century (7). In keeping with this aim, Children’s Fiction provides a scholarly introduction and an edition of several texts by Irish writers directed towards young people, texts that were reprinted multiple times after first publication but which have seldom been reprinted (if at all) since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Markey’s introduction establishes the context for the collection as a whole and provides historical context for each of the included texts. The introduction begins by briefly sketching the development of children’s literature in the eighteenth century as well as the academic study of such literature in the late twentieth century. Recognizing that fiction for children is “a significant site of cultural production” (9), Markey points to the lack of study in both the fields of children’s literature and in Irish literature studies of texts produced by Irish writers for children. This gap in the scholarship has implications for our knowledge of “broader adult anxieties and social concerns” of the period (9). Maria Edgeworth, of course, is an exception to this rule, which suggests the reason for her exclusion from this volume in favor of writers whose texts for children have been overlooked by children’s literature and Irish literature scholars. Markey argues that “children’s fiction displays national variations” (10), so the study of texts such as those included in her volume “not only provides insights into the early development of [children’s fiction]… but also illuminates specific national concerns and anxieties” (10). These concerns include emigration and the inequalities of Ireland’s relationship with England; Markey locates these texts’ “Irish” character in part in their ability to “replace parental authority with authorial influence” (29), citing the way English authority in Ireland was often coded in political discourse as a parental one (28). However resistant to the political status quo these texts might be, they follow much of early children’s fiction in writing in order to shape the morals and beliefs of their readers.

Much of the introduction provides historical and biographical context for the writers and their works included in the volume: John Carey’s Learning Better than House and Land (1808); Margaret King Moore, Lady Mount Cashell’s Stories of Old Daniel (1808); and Henry Brooke’s “Three Fishes” taken from his The Fool of Quality (1765), which is followed by two variations of that fable: “A Curious and Instructive Tale of Three Little Fishes” (anonymous, c. 1787) and “The Three Little Fishes, A Story” (1801) by John Clowes. The introduction carefully makes connections between these lesser known works and well-known writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft (a governess to Lady Mount Cashell), or to canonical novels, such as Pamela by Samuel Richardson (its concern with social advancement is compared to Carey’s text). Carey’s and Lady Mount Cashell’s texts are also linked in their use of travel, adventure, and exotic settings. Markey also pays attention to the double address of each text–that is, the ways in which each targets adult (presumably parental) as well as child readers. In each case, while there are child characters for young readers to see as models of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, there are also adult figures who model the correct way of educating and disciplining their young charges. Furthermore, Markey notes Carey’s political intentions in the often explicit critique of the British class system by comparison to America’s meritocracy (15). All three of the chosen texts can be read as demonstrating political commitment as well as the desire to educate young people.

The texts themselves follow...