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Breaking the Icon: The First Real Children in English Books

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

C. John Sommerville
C. John Sommerville*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Extract

Anyone who has discussed the history of childhood with college students will surely have noticed that most of those students have not yet paid close attention to children. The children whom they imagine turn out to be memories of themselves. This is hardly surprising; it is just one more way of saying that it takes a truly mature person to understand a child. Our immaturity is responsible for our projections, and through most of history “childhood” has been a projection—of self-pity, self-righteousness, or self-hate. At times, “the child” has served as a cultural icon for a whole society—an image of perfection or of some power or virtue which adults seem to have lost. And we can expect some devotion to the child's image to persist throughout human history, so long as our most powerful memories refer to that stage of life. There are periods, indeed, which are characterized by a veritable cult of childhood.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1981 , pp. 51 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Graeffe, Lotte B., “The Child in Medieval English Literature from 1200 to 1400” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1965), passim .Google Scholar

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49. Ibid., p. 90.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., pp. 197–200.Google Scholar

51. Calamy, , Nonconformist's Memorial, I, p. 199.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., II, p. 164; I, pp. 124, 110, 165, 191, 271.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., I. p. 331; II, p. 159.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., III, p. 393; I, pp. 322, 222.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., I, p. 343; II, p. 449; III, pp. 258–259.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., II, pp. 340, 290–291.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., III, p. 31; II, pp. 133–135.Google Scholar

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63. Anon., A Brief Relation of the Life and Death of Elizabeth Braythwaite (n.p., n.d.). For accounts of other young Quakers with a poetic gift, see Mather, William, The Young Man's Companion (London, 1681), and anon., A Seasonable Account of the Christian and Dying-Words of some Young Men (Philadelphia, 1700). Richard Manliffe made an exception to the rule of unbroken innocence among the children described in Quaker works, having left the Society briefly before his repentance: anon., A seasonable account of the Christian and Dying-Words of some Young-Men (Philadelphia, 1700, originally published in London, 1697). The work of God in a dying maid, being a short account of the dealings of the Lord with one (n.p., 1677) is also a Quaker work.Google Scholar

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65. The only other seventeenth-century account of real children by Anglicans that I have found are John Evelyn's memorial to his five-year-old son in his translation of The Golden Book of St. John Chrysostom, Concerning the Education of Children (London, 1659); Nathaniel Crouch's stories from Josephus, the Bible, and church history, in The young man's calling, or the whole duty of youth (London, 1678); Peck's, Samuel, A New-Years Gift for Youth: being the substance of a sermon preached at the funeral of Mrs. Elizabeth Bell (aged sixteen years, odd months), (London, [1687]); Smythies, William, Advice for the prevention of theft. Being a short account of the confession and discovery which was made by a condemned prisoner (London, 1687). Sloane lists three other works describing actual children, which might have been by Anglicans. Two are broadsheets: The young-man's warning-piece: or, the extravagant youths pilgrimage and progress in this world. Being the faithful relation of the remarkable life of J. Bradwill, son of W. Bradwill, merchant of the city ([London], 1682), and The children's example shewing, how one Mrs. Johnson's child of Barnet, was tempted of the devil to forsake God, and follow the ways of other wicked children, who use to swear, tell lies, and disobey their parents; how this pretty innocent child resisting Satan, was comforted by an angel from heaven, who warned her of her approaching death. Together with her dying words, desiring young children not to forsake God, lest Satan would gain power over them. To the tune of bleeding heart (n.p., n.d.). Also Stephens, D., A new-years gift. Or, the youth's instructor through the wilderness of this world, to the mansions of eternal glory (London, 1698).Google Scholar

66. Anon., Praise out of the Mouth of Babes (London, 1708).Google Scholar

67. Arends, William Erasmus, Early Piety Recommended in the Life and Death of Christlieb Leberecht Von-Exter (London, [1709?]).Google Scholar

68. Anon., Daily Conversation with God (London, 1710).Google Scholar

69. Anon., A Short Account of the Conversion of Three Jewish Children to Christianity (second edition, London, 1717), reprinted in Gillies, John, Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of the Success of the Gospel (Glasgow, 1754–61), III, pp. 232–243.Google Scholar

70. The Young-Man's Monitor (London, 1706), sig. A3. Woodward died in 1712, which may explain the lapse of these publications at about this time. Downing and other Anglicans continued to recommend William Hamilton's Exemplary Life and Character of James Bonnell, Esq. (London, 1704) to children, for its picture of his pious childhood.Google Scholar

71. Matthews, William, “Seventeenth-Century Autobiography,” in Autobiography, Biography, and the Novel; Clark Library Papers, May 13, 1972 (Los Angeles, 1973), pp. 16–18, 25.Google Scholar

72. Delany, Paul, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1969), p. 169.Google Scholar

73. Watkins, Owen, The Puritan Experience (New York, 1972), p. 54.Google Scholar