Chapter 1

Beginnings

When did children’s literature begin? Was it perhaps with the first lullaby a mother sang to comfort her child? Or was it perhaps with the first tale about the dangers of the wild a parent used to caution curious children? Or was it perhaps with that first game of make-believe from Stone Age children romping at play? We’ll never know, of course. But we can be assured that for thousands of years children have enjoyed the pleasures of language and story—and these pleasures are the essence of children’s literature.

Surveying the landscape of the past may not necessarily provide us with an accurate map for the future, but it will make us more astute observers of the present. Although a true literature written explicitly for children has come about only in the past two or three hundred years, its roots are very deep indeed.

The Classical World

All literature began with the ancient art of storytelling. Our ancestors told stories to entertain each other, to comfort each other, to instruct the young in the lessons of living, to pass on their religious and cultural heritage. Storytelling is an integral part of every world culture. In early times, people did not distinguish between adult and children’s literature. Children heard and, presumably, enjoyed the same stories as their parents, whether they were the adventurous tales of cultural heroes—as retold by Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey—or the wondrous tales of gods and demons and magic spells and talking animals—as are found throughout the world.

Western civilization has its roots in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, which flourished between about 500 BCE and 400 CE, now known as the Classical period. Greece in the fifth century BCE is in many ways the birthplace of Western culture and so that is where our story begins. In this cradle of democracy and individualism, children grew up with the stories of the Trojan War (from Homer’s Iliad) and of the travels of Odysseus (from Homer’s Odyssey) and the stories of Jason and the Golden Fleece and the adventures of Hercules. They also knew of the now-famous fables attributed to the slave Aesop, believed to be a teacher, writing to instruct his students in cultural and personal values.

With the decline of Greek civilization, the Roman Empire rose to power, but the Romans remained under the long shadow of the Greeks, whom they greatly admired. The children of Rome in the first century CE undoubtedly knew not only Homer’s tales, but also Virgil’s Aeneid, which recounted the stories of Aeneas, the Trojan hero who was credited with founding the Roman race. They also knew the wildly imaginative tales of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the tales of the gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines of the Classical world. The power of these ancient stories remains with us, and modern writers and illustrators frequently turn to the Greek and Roman myths for inspiration and retelling.

Our culture is filled with references to these Classical stories—we speak of Achilles’ heels, Herculean tasks, the Midas touch, Pandora’s box, and sour grapes (a reference to one of Aesop’s fables). Planets, galaxies and star clusters, days of the week, months of the year, automobiles, and tennis shoes—all bear names of classical gods and heroes. These stories are both exciting and an important part of our cultural heritage—they should not be missed. A great many of these stories live today and children continue to find them fascinating. The retellings by the poet Padraic Colum (The Children’s Homer and The Golden Fleece) are excellent sources for children. Most recently, Jeanne Steig’s A Gift from Zeus: Sixteen Favorite Myths is a lively—sometimes racy—version for modern middle and high school audiences, and it is illustrated by William Steig’s earthy, even ribald, drawings. It is just the kind of rendition to bring the stories to life for older readers. These myths are an essential part of our culture and indispensable to any well-rounded education.

The Middle Ages

Following the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE, European civilization entered a period of decline. Much of the knowledge of the Classical world was lost during the early chaotic period historians once referred to as the Dark Ages. We now call the period between the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance (in about the fourteenth century) the Middle Ages—literally because they fell between the Classical and Renaissance periods. During the Middle Ages the Roman Catholic Church dominated the social and political scene and was responsible for what education there was. Throughout the Middle Ages, poverty was widespread and life for the average person was very difficult—much harsher than it had been in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Education was a luxury, and few people could read or write. Books were extremely rare and expensive, for they had to be hand copied on costly parchment. A single Bible could take as long as three years to produce, and in many medieval libraries the books were chained to the desks to discourage theft, such was their value. As it was in the Classical world, the oral tradition was the principal entertainment for most people. Local storytellers and professional bards (the famous wandering minstrels) recited stories and poems for eager audiences.

What stories did they recite? Biblical stories were among the most popular—both Old and New Testament—and so were the stories of the lives of saints of the church. The lives of saints were used to set examples for young people. In addition to religious tales, nonreligious—secular—stories were also popular. The romantic tales of the legendary King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table or of the great heroes Roland (from France) or the Cid (from Spain) or even Beowulf (from the Norse) surely thrilled many children—and adults, for, as in the Classical period, children and adults shared a common literature. The exciting battle scenes, powerful heroes, and wondrous enchantments of these romances made them very popular—and many remain so today.

Children’s versions of these tales are easy to find. Rosemary Sutcliff’s Dragon Slayer (1976) is a retelling of the old English epic, Beowulf, and she has also retold the legends of King Arthur and his knights in The Light Beyond the Forest (1979), The Sword and the Circle (1981), and The Road to Camlann (1981). Some of the Arthurian stories have been transformed into modern picture books, as in Selma Hastings’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1981). Barbara Cooney’s picture book, Chanticleer and the Fox (1958), adapted from Chaucer, is a retelling of a favorite medieval trickster tale about Reynard the Fox. Many of the stories from this period are exciting narratives that have become an indelible part of our society. Our entire reading experience is enriched if we know the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, Jonah and the whale, and the tower of Babel—side by side with those of King Arthur and Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere.

The Renaissance

Around 1400, a new era began in Europe. It was called the Renaissance, a term meaning “rebirth,” because people saw it as a rebirth of the ideals of ancient Greece and Rome—their art, literature, philosophy, and especially their respect for learning. Of course, the changes did not happen overnight, but the changes did come. The Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had opened up trading routes to the Far East, which brought both wealth and new ideas to Europe. Strong rulers rose up and established stable kingdoms with written laws. Trade, industry, and learning advanced. In 1492, Columbus’s voyage to the Americas resulted in the founding of overseas empires, which brought great wealth to many European kingdoms (sadly, at great expense to the native peoples). However, one development would overshadow all others.

Around 1450, a German named Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press—said by many to be the most significant invention of the last thousand years. (Actually the Chinese originally developed the technology, but the Europeans put it to practical use.) It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this event. The printing press made it possible to make multiple copies of books in a fraction of the time it took to hand copy them. In just a few decades, books became plentiful. Now it was possible to spread information quickly, and this opened the door to mass education.

During the Renaissance, most books specifically for children were textbooks or educational books. Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Book Named the Governor (1531) and Roger Ascham’s The Scholemaster (1570) are two examples of “books of courtesy,” giving lessons in proper behavior for young gentlemen. (Women did not yet merit their own books.) The Renaissance, like the Middle Ages, was a religious period and during this time the hatred between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants resulted in much bloodshed. John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563), an anti-Catholic work filled with grisly scenes of violent deaths for religion’s sake, was one of the most popular books among England’s schoolchildren. On a cheerier note, about one hundred years later, John Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658) appeared. It is generally regarded as the first children’s picture book and was intended as a textbook for the teaching of Latin through pictures (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 John Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus is often considered the first children’s picture book. It first appeared in 1658 as a German/Latin textbook and was an immediate success. It revolutionized Latin instruction, a necessity in a society in which Latin was still the language of scholarship. The English/Latin version, from which this illustration is taken, appeared in 1659. Although the woodcut illustrations appear crude, they provide a wealth of information about seventeenth-century European life.

 

The Seventeenth Century

The Renaissance gave way to the modern world. It is impossible to put a date on this event, but most historians see the modern era as beginning in the seventeenth century. It is characterized by the rise of democratic institutions, individualism, and modern science.

Puritanism

At least two specific influences of the seventeenth century heightened society’s awareness of the special needs of the child: the rise of Puritanism and the philosophy of John Locke. The Puritans were a very strict religious sect who believed that everyone was responsible for his or her own salvation and that success in life was a sign of God’s favor. They placed a high value on reading, because they believed the Bible should be accessible to everyone, and on education in general, since it helped ensure material success. Persecuted in England, many came to North America, where they soon established Harvard College (1636), emphasizing their commitment to education. If they did little to foster fine literature (they disapproved, in fact, of most literature as frivolous and ungodly), the Puritans are credited with encouraging literacy among the middle classes.

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Schooling was an important part of a Puritan child’s upbringing, and Puritan children used a variety of schoolbooks. Hornbooks (see Figure 1.2) consisted of simple wooden slabs, usually with a handle (many looked like paddles). Parchment containing rudimentary language lessons (the alphabet, numbers, and so on) was fastened to the wood and was then covered with transparent horn (from cattle, sheep, goats), a primitive form of lamination that made these books very durable. Battledores, cheap books made of folded cardboard and usually containing educational material, were widely used into the nineteenth century. The most famous of early schoolbooks was the New England Primer, which first appeared sometime around 1690 and continued in print in some form or another until 1886. It introduced young Puritan children to the alphabet through rhymes (“In Adam’s fall/We Sinned all” for the letter A) and then to increasingly sophisticated reading material—all with a religious intent (see Figure 1.3). Chapbooks, small and cheaply made books containing fairy tales and other secular works, were also widespread during the period, but the Puritans frowned on these forerunners of the dime novel.

Figure 1.3 The New England Primer was one of the longest-lived school texts in American history, flourishing from approximately 1690 to 1830. The earliest surviving copy is from 1727, from which these illustrations are taken. Intended to teach the children of the early Puritans how to live a godly life, the book is unabashedly didactic, which is evident even in its rhyming alphabet, recalling a time when church and state were not so completely separate as they are now.

 

John Locke and Educational Philosophy

The second great influence on children’s literature during this period was the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who in 1693 wrote a famous essay, Thoughts Concerning Education. In this work, he formulated his notion that the minds of young children were similar to blank slates (he called them tabula rasa) waiting to be filled up. All children had equal capabilities to learn and adults had the responsibility to provide the proper learning environment. For Locke, heredity was unimportant, since everyone, he believed, began life pretty much the same. Thus began the perennial argument over the relative influence of heredity and the environment (or nature and nurture). Today, Locke’s ideas have been seriously challenged by human genetic studies (see Chapter 2), but his belief in the power of education still drives our schools and universities.

The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

Books for Children—at Last

Locke’s influence notwithstanding, it was still some time before children had many books of their very own. They still had to be content reading books written for grown-ups. They enjoyed John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1768), a religious allegory filled with wonderfully horrific monsters; Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), a shipwreck survival story (among the first of its kind); and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), an allegorical travel fantasy whose protagonist visits a miniature land as well as a land of giants and of talking horses. But in the mid-eighteenth century a man named John Newbery (1713–1778) hit upon the idea of putting together books especially for children. Newbery may have been something of a hack writer, but he was a great publisher and a first-rate promoter. He published A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744), which is considered a landmark in children’s book publishing. This was the first of a series of books intended to entertain children (and not simply preach to them). Newbery opened up the market for professional writers of books for children and paved the way for the eventually flourishing of children’s literature. Newbery’s name was immortalized when the American Library Association began to present (in 1922) an annual award named for him and given to the best children’s book published in the United States.

Rousseau and the Moral Tale

The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) added yet another point of view to the concept of children’s reading. His ideas about education were expressed in a book called Emile (1762), in which he emphasized the importance of moral development (the Puritans’ concern had been spiritual; Locke’s had been intellectual). For Rousseau, proper moral development could be best accomplished through living a simple life (even 200 years ago people were becoming distressed with the pace of civilization). Rousseau’s followers wrote didactic and moralistic books to teach children how to be good and proper human beings. (Newbery also contributed his fair share of moralistic tales, Little Goody Two Shoes being the most famous.) A great many writers, most of them women (men still looked on writing for children as an inferior occupation), emulated Rousseau and churned out a great number of moralistic tales through the remainder of the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth centuries.

Among the best known of these writers is Maria Edgeworth (1744–1817), whose most famous works for children are her short story “The Purple Jar” (1796) and her book Simple Susan (1796), about a country girl whose goodness helps her to triumph over an ill-intentioned city lawyer. Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) wrote the History of the Robins (1786), an animal story that was unusual in a time that frowned on tales of talking animals (the eighteenth-century rationalists thought it was illogical and religious zealots thought it unholy). One of the first reviewers of children’s books, Mrs. Trimmer believed that literature must preach Christian morality above all, and she condemned fairy stories for children because they were sacrilegious and lacked moral purpose. Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) wrote in a similar vein; her most famous works were Lessons for Children (1778) and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781). Hannah More (1745–1833) and Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851) were also part of this moralizing company, and Mrs. Sherwood’s History of the Fairchild Family (1818) includes frighteningly vivid stories about the souls of impious children moldering in the cold grave or being consigned to the fires of hell.

The Rise of the Folktales

The didactic element in children’s books persisted through the early nineteenth century. But alongside the moralistic tales came the revival of the old folktales from the quickly fading oral tradition. Actually, folktales were printed in England as early as 1729, when Tales of Mother Goose, originally retold by the Frenchman Charles Perrault (1628–1703), was first translated and published in English. These retellings of old stories, including “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” soon became staples in English nurseries. In the middle of the eighteenth century, a Frenchwoman, Mme. de Beaumont, retold numerous fairy stories, including “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Three Wishes,” usually with a moral purpose. John Newbery’s successor, Elizabeth Newbery, published the first children’s edition of the Middle Eastern Tales from the Arabian Nights, featuring Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and his lamp, and others, in about 1791.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, two German brothers, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859) Grimm, collected a great number of folktales and published them, and the Grimms’ tales are still the most famous of all collections. The Grimms also inspired a flurry of folktale collecting throughout Europe, including Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark and Asbjörnsen and Moe in Norway. Folk rhyme collections were equally popular (see Figure 1.4). By the end of the nineteenth century, the collectors Joseph Jacobs (English Fairy Tales) and Andrew Lang (The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, and so on) were delighting children and adults alike.

Figure 1.4 Abel Bowen’s woodcut illustration of “The Man in the Moon,” from Mother Goose’s Melodies, dramatically depicts the contrast between the ridiculous and the sublime that underlies much of children’s literature. On the left-hand side, with grace and elegance, a youth descends from the crescent moon; on the right-hand side, a buffoonish character is engaged in a nonsensical act. Dating from 1833, it is among the earliest American children’s books designed purely for the pleasure of young readers.

 

The Victorians: The Golden Age

With the Industrial Revolution (beginning in the late eighteenth century) came still more social changes that would affect children’s literature. Among those changes are

• the strengthening of the family unit (brought about in part by a lowered infant mortality rate that helped to stabilize the family)
• rapidly developing technology that made possible still cheaper books along with high-quality full-color printing
• the slow, but inexorable, rise of the status of women (who have dominated children’s writing from the end of the eighteenth century)
• the growth of widespread educational opportunities, including mandatory education legislation in both the United States and Great Britain, creating more readers
• the continued growth of the middle class, which further broadened the reading audience (most writers must necessarily seek a broad appeal if they are to earn a living, and writing for children was not a truly profitable enterprise until the second half of the nineteenth century)
• and not least important was the Romantic Movement, from about 1790 to 1830, which idealized childhood, celebrated the imagination, and laid the foundation for many of the great children’s stories to come.

The confluence of these forces made possible the first “Golden Age” of children’s books during the reign of Britain’s Queen Victoria—hence the Victorian Period. However, children’s literature in Great Britain and the United States took somewhat different directions.

British Children’s Literature

Adventure or Boys’ Stories

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the most popular British children’s literature included the adventure or boys’ stories (the so-called school stories) and fantasy stories. The far-flung British empire may have encouraged an internationalism in British adventure stories, but it also resulted in a fair amount of jingoism—or chauvinistic nationalism that depicted British culture as superior to that of the colonies (and everyone else’s, for that matter).

British superiority is either implied or directly stated, for example, in the works of Captain Marryat, R. M. Ballantyne, and G. A. Henty, among others. Marryat, who was a seaman, was the first to write historical adventures for children, most notably Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836) and Children of the New Forest (1847). R. M. Ballantyne wrote The Coral Island (1857), which is a Robinsonnade or survival story inspired by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, The Coral Island, in turn, helped inspire William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954). G. A. Henty, a war correspondent who traveled widely throughout the British Empire, wrote historical adventure books about the places he visited, among which is With Clive in India (1884).

Robert Louis Stevenson is remembered for Treasure Island (serialized in 1881, published in book form in 1883), which has become the quintessential pirate story, swashbuckling and melodramatic. (Stevenson also wrote A Child’s Garden of Verses [1885], a vision of childhood as seen through an adult’s eyes. Although it has always been immensely popular, Stevenson himself had little regard for his poetry, which is generally sentimental, if not trite.)

The school story is usually set in a boarding school and depicts the camaraderie and rivalry of young boys (or girls) in their formative years. Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) is regarded as the forerunner of this type of fiction and is set in the famous English school, Rugby. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905) is an example of a school story featuring girls.

Fantasy Stories

The glory of this first “Golden Age” is its fantasy, and at the top of the list must naturally be Lewis Carroll (the pseudonym for Charles Dodgson, a mathematics professor at Oxford), whose Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) abandoned all the rules of writing for children. An extraordinary fantasy filled with a delightful mixture of satire and nonsense and almost devoid of instructional moralizing, it is usually considered the first important work for children that completely broke the bonds of didacticism. Alice, the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, and the Red Queen have all become a part of childhood mythology, familiar to children who have never read the original. This book and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871/2), along with Sir John Tenniel’s black-and-white illustrations, are justly celebrated.

George MacDonald is regarded as one of the outstanding Victorian fantasists. The Princess and the Goblin (1872; originally serialized) is a literary fairy tale with Princess Irene as the heroine. Its sequel, The Princess and the Curdie (1883; also serialized earlier), is noteworthy for its rather bitter ending, indicative, some say, of MacDonald’s general attitude toward humanity. But the fantasy world he created has kept his works popular to this day.

Two minor fantasies deserve mention. Juliana Horatia Ewing’s The Brownies and Other Tales (1870) is a collection that recalls the moralizing of the eighteenth century. The title story, about dutiful and helpful children, remains part of our culture for it gave its name to the junior Girl Guides (Girl Scouts in the United States). Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (1863) is a rambling morality story describing the adventures of a chimney sweep in an enchanted underwater world. Despite the heavy-handed didacticism, the fantasy world is imaginative.

One of fantasy’s earliest writer–illustrators is Beatrix Potter, whose talking animal tales, beginning with The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901), have set a high standard for children’s illustrated books. Potter refuses to talk down to her child audience, but rather treats them as confidants and equals. Her language is sophisticated and her stories often contain gentle irony. And Potter probably gave the best advice on writing for children that has ever been penned: “I think the great point in writing for children is to have something to say and to say it in simple, direct language” (quoted in Hunt, An Introduction to Children’s Literature, 88).

J. M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan (1904), originally a play and eventually a prose story entitled Peter and Wendy (1911). Despite the criticism that the hero, the boy who would not grow up, is at best enigmatic and at worst self-centered and cruel, the story has enjoyed immense popularity, undoubtedly through the imaginative power of its characters.

Kenneth Grahame is remembered for The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of the most enduring of animal fantasies. The work is a paean to an idyllic and masculine world, the quintessence of Edwardian England. It is an episodic work filled with affable characters—Rat, Mole, Badger, and, of course, Mr. Toad—engaged in a variety of adventures. As with much great fantasy, this is a sophisticated work with insightful commentary about the adult world.

Realistic Stories

Few British writers of the Victorian period excelled in realistic stories; perhaps they too closely associated them with the moralistic tales of the past. Two British writers did earn fine reputations as writers of both fantasy and realism, and a third writer of realistic stories is British by birth, but American by adoption. Edith Nesbit excelled not only in fantasies (Five Children and It, 1902, and The Phoenix and the Carpet, 1903), but in the family adventure story, most notably the stories of the Bastable children (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, 1899, and others). Her work looks backward to earlier Victorian literature in its sometimes condescending portrayal of children, but her best books contain interesting and strongly drawn characters engaged in compelling plots.

Rudyard Kipling experimented with a wide variety of genres for children. In 1894 he published The Jungle Book, a collection of fantasy tales set in India, featuring Mowgli, a boy who enjoys a special relationship with jungle creatures. Kipling turned to realism in Stalky & Co. (1899), an almost brutally frank school story. Kipling’s novel Kim (1901) is the story of a boy of mixed heritage growing up in British India; a coming-of-age tale, it is generally regarded as his finest work.

Frances Hodgson Burnett is a bridge between Great Britain, where she was born, and the United States, where she eventually settled. She gained a lasting reputation with her modernized Cinderella stories, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), about an American youth who inherits an English noble title, A Little Princess, mentioned above; and The Secret Garden (1911), the story of Mary Lennox’s redemption in the bleak English moors. The Secret Garden is a deliciously romantic work, with Gothic atmosphere, mysterious characters, and rich symbolism.

The United States

Adventure or Boys’ Stories

Like British boys, American boys of the nineteenth century enjoyed adventure stories, but the Americans preferred stories set in their own country. Americans have always had an isolationist streak in them. And, the American frontier was still a reality, so until the late nineteenth century most Americans felt no need to go looking for adventure abroad. Very popular among nineteenth-century boys (and girls as well if my own great-grandmother is any indication) were the stories of Oliver Optic (pseudonym of William Taylor Adams), who wrote Outward Bound; or, Young America Afloat (1867), and Horatio Alger, Jr., whose works included Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York (1867). Alger’s name became almost a household word, and his heroes became beacons for the poor. These heroes were always downtrodden boys who struggled for financial security and respectability, both of which they ultimately gained through a combination of moral uprightness and hard work.

However, clearly the best of writers of boys’ stories in America was Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), loosely based on Twain’s own boyhood experiences in Hannibal, Missouri, is filled with mystery, adventure, and comedy. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), one of the greatest American novels ever written, is a more sophisticated book filled with biting satire and, underlying the sometimes rollicking humor, a serious tone. Twain never really saw himself as a writer of children’s literature and would probably be surprised to find his name mentioned so prominently in the field.

Domestic or Girls’ Stories

Although the British writer Charlotte Yonge wrote one of the earliest domestic stories (also called girls’ or family stories), The Daisy Chain (1856), it was in the United States that domestic novels were most favorably received. In these stories virtuous heroines, often coming from dire circumstances, achieve good fortune and ultimate happiness, typically in the arms of a handsome young man. (If the themes of both the Alger stories and the domestic stories sound vaguely familiar, they should—they are essentially updated versions of the old folktales, in which persons of humble origins rise to wealth, fame, and happiness, primarily because they are good individuals.) Susan Warner, writing under the name of Elizabeth Wetherell, wrote one of the earliest American domestic novels, The Wide, Wide World (1850). This enormously popular work was both highly sentimental and religious.

The most famous of the domestic novelists was Louisa May Alcott, whose masterpiece, Little Women (1868), is still read today. It is a thinly disguised history of Alcott’s own family, and the book rose above most domestic stories of its day through its strong characters and lack of didacticism or sentimentality.

Susan Coolidge (pseudonym for Sarah Chauncy Woolsey) is best known for What