John Rowe Townsend’s
Written for Children is a wonderful introduction to the history of children’s writing. Originally
published in 1965, the book was updated in 1987, and now takes its survey of children’s
literature up to 1985.The first section of the book traces children’s literature from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. This survey is not only fascinating but sometimes hilarious when one sees some of the early examples of children’s writing. The book then takes us through to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is a very clear explanation of the various trends in children’s writing, both in terms of their rise and their fall. These explanations take into account not only literary development, but place the developments in children’s books firmly in their social and
historical contexts. Besides analysing trends, the book is also fascinating when it highlights the value in historical terms of particular books. One sees Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Treasure Island in a different light when one realises it set children’s literature in a whole new direction. Prior to this novel, children’s stories where primarily concerned with moral teaching. The author broke the mould when he chose to write a story for no other reason than its entertainment value and when he was audacious enough to create in Long John Silver, a villain with some good qualities, rather than taking the usual noble hero and evil villain simplistic approach. Likewise, to see
The Wizard of Oz as a first attempt to create a truly American fairy story is to see it with fresh eyes.Children’s literature is a neglected area in literary criticism and it is rare to find such an informed, educated tome as this. Whilst not a work of criticism – other than inasmuch as the author obviously must choose which books to include and which to leave out – this book’s great strength is in painstakingly identifying changes and developments in children’s literature and giving a thorough and clear explanation as to why such a change occurred. The first step in literary criticism is to look at a book in its context and this novel helps the reader to do this. To go further would have given this book too great a remit. As it stands, it is a perceptive, intelligent and focussed look at the history of writing for children in the English-speaking world.