Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment: Literacy, Agency and Progress in Eighteenth-Century Children’s Books (Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood) 3030696324, 9783030696320

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD

Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment Literacy, Agency and Progress in Eighteenth-Century Children’s Books Feike Dietz

Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood Series Editors George Rousseau University of Oxford Oxford, UK Laurence Brockliss University of Oxford Oxford, UK

Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood is the first of its kind to historicise childhood in the English-speaking world; at present no historical series on children/ childhood exists, despite burgeoning areas within Child Studies. The series aims to act both as a forum for publishing works in the history of childhood and a mechanism for consolidating the identity and attraction of the new discipline. Editorial Board Matthew Grenby (Newcastle) Colin Heywood (Nottingham) Heather Montgomery (Open) Hugh Morrison (Otago) Anja Müller (Siegen, Germany) Sïan Pooley (Magdalen, Oxford) Patrick Joseph Ryan (King’s University College at Western University, Canada) Lucy Underwood (Warwick) Karen Vallgårda (Copenhagen) More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14586

Feike Dietz

Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment Literacy, Agency and Progress in Eighteenth-Century Children’s Books

Feike Dietz Utrecht University Utrecht, The Netherlands

ISSN 2634-6532     ISSN 2634-6540 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood ISBN 978-3-030-69632-0    ISBN 978-3-030-69633-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of i­llustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Heritage Images / Contributor This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

I am incredibly grateful to a variety of people whose mentorship and generosity have contributed to this book. I would like to thank several colleagues who have read and commented on earlier drafts of the chapters and kindly offered their suggestions and criticisms: Els Stronks, Nina Geerdink, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Jill Shefrin, Jeroen Salman, Alisa van de Haar, Ivo Nieuwenhuis, my supportive colleagues of the section Early Modern Dutch literature at Utrecht University and the female scholars of the ‘Muses’ network. Particular thanks have to go to Wijnand Mijnhardt, who took the time to read and discuss an earlier version of the entire manuscript. Over the past few years, Wijnand’s encouragement and critical eye have been of great value to me, not only regarding the writing of this book but also in the context of the Global Knowledge Society project and the Society of Dutch Literature. Exceedingly valuable support also came from Matthew Grenby, who not only helped to publish my work in the Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood but also brought me into contact with other colleagues working on historical children’s literature. I retain very fond memories of the wonderful conference in Princeton, autumn 2019, when specialists from all over the world tried to unravel the transnational encounters within the field of children’s books. I would like to thank all these inspiring colleagues, and in particular Andrea Immel, Nina Christensen and Charlotte Appel. I have also been helped immensely by my colleagues in several research groups that I have belonged to in recent years. I would like to thank the v

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Knowledgeable Youngsters group (whose work resulted in an interdisciplinary issue on ‘Youthful Minds and Hands’ for Science in Context) and the members of the working group ‘Market Knowledge as Affective Economies’ (NIAS themegroup 2018), whose lively conversations have fed my understanding of the economic and affective power of youth literature. Another continuing source of inspiration is the several students who have helped me explore the field of children’s literature in recent years. I especially would like to thank Carmen Verhoeven, as I profited from her comparative analysis of Swildens and Weiße’s alphabet books. For practical support, I am highly indebted to Emily Russell and Joe Johnson (editors Palgrave), Jim Gibbons (for language editing), Lieke Stelling (for language advice) and Annika van Bodegraven (who edited the book’s footnotes and bibliography). While this book was being written, Sybe came into my life, and he helps remind me of what it is to be a child. I hope that the ability to read and write will bring him as much as pleasure as they offer me. A final word of thanks goes to Laurens, my help and love, as well as my most precious colleague.

Praise for Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment “Lettering Young Readers presents a rigorous, hugely informative analysis of the early history of Dutch children’s literature, pedagogical developments and emerging family formations. The focus is on literacy, not just in the narrow sense, but considering how the project to teach reading both responded to, and forged, national and social identity. Thoroughly researched, Dietz’s study will be essential for historians of eighteenth-century childhood, education and children’s books, both in the Dutch context and more widely.” —Matthew O. Grenby, Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Specialist in Children’s Literature and Culture, Newcastle University “A rich, informative, well-documented and effectively illustrated discussion of the ways Dutch 18th-century educators tried to transform youth into responsible readers. It does so in a wide international context and masterfully connects this process to the radical politicization and de-politicization of Dutch society in the revolutionary period.” —Wijnand W. Mijnhardt, Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at Utrecht University (1991–2007) and of Early Modern Intellectual History at the University of California at Los Angeles (2001–2005) “Contextualizing early Dutch children’s books within the broader European market—as well as within cultural and educational developments in the Netherlands— this volume is both transnational and interdisciplinary. It is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship integrating children’s literature studies with histories of childhood and education.” —Jill Shefrin, Senior Research Associate in Arts, Historian of Children’s Books and Education, University of Toronto

Contents

1 Introduction  1 1.1 The Dynamics Between Literacy and Progress  1 1.2 The Agency of Young Readers  3 1.3 Child Agency as a Burning Question in the Eighteenth-­ Century Dutch Enlightenment  7 1.4 A Comparative Perspective on Children’s Books as a Literacy Instrument 11 1.5 Outline of the Book 14 Part I Young Readers as Social Participants  27 2 The Order of the Alphabet: The Representation of Consumption and Production in Audiovisual ABC Books 29 2.1 Introduction 29 2.2 Comenius as an Innovator? 31 2.3 Dutch Audiovisual Alphabets as Orders to Consume and Value 39 2.4 Communal Exchange in Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek 45 2.5 Conclusion 58

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3 Reading as Work: The Creation of Industrious Citizens in Dutch Reading Books 69 3.1 Introduction 69 3.2 Reading and the Virtue of Industriousness 72 3.3 Reading as Work Instead of Play 76 3.4 Becoming a Reading Worker 79 3.5 Reading Towards an Understanding of the Organization of Work 82 3.6 Reading and the Preservation of Social Hierarchies 88 3.7 Conclusion 91 Part II Young Readers as Knowledgeable Citizens  99 4 The Bounds of Empirical Modes of Reading: Knowledge About Visible and Invisible Worlds in the Dutch Adaptations of Georg Christian Raff101 4.1 Introduction101 4.2 Wolff’s Aardrykskunde voor kinderen (1779): Travelling Readers106 4.3 Berkhey’s Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen (1781): Looking Further111 4.4 The Roots and Pathways of Wolff’s and Berkhey’s Empirical Reading Strategies120 4.5 Conclusion128 5 The Moral Assessment of Historical Knowledge: Searching for Truths in Dutch History Textbooks143 5.1 Introduction143 5.2 History Textbooks from the Early 1780s: Univocal Historical and Moral Truths146 5.3 History Textbooks from the Late 1780s: Moral Judgements Under the Veil of Impartial Truths150 5.4 History Textbooks from the Late 1790s: Balanced Historical Judgements Rooted in Moral Truths154 5.5 Conclusion160

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Part III Young Readers as Epistolary Literate Writers 169 6 From Individual Boyhood to Political Brotherhood: Dimensions of Moral Education in Epistolary Prose for Children171 6.1 Introduction171 6.2 De kleine Grandisson as the First Epistolary Novel for Children173 6.3 Epistolary Literacy and Moral Education in De kleine Grandisson175 6.4 De Kleine Grandisson in a Transnational Tradition of Women’s Writing for Children180 6.5 From Individual to Political Progress185 6.6 Conclusion189 7 The Making of Lettered Girlhood: Epistolary Literacy as an Instrument of Peer Mothering in Dutch Girls’ Books203 7.1 Introduction203 7.2 Lettered Peer Mothering in Dutch Epistolary Girls’ Novels206 7.3 Literacy as a Technical Male Quality in Sixteenth-Century Dutch-French Girls’ Books211 7.4 Literacy as a Hierarchical Female Quality in Translated Girls’ Books217 7.5 Conclusion223 Epilogue239 Bibliography243 Index279

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4

Fig. 2.5

Fig. 2.6

Comenius, Johann Amos. 1659. Orbis sensualium pictus: Hoc est, Omnium fundamentalium in mundo rerum, & in vitâ actionum, pictura & nomenclatura. = Joh. Amos Commenius’s Visible world: Or, A picture and nomenclature of all the chief things that are in the world; and of mens employments therein. Translated into English by Charles Hoole. London: for J. Kirton, 4–5. @ British Library Board: E.2116.(1.) [Anonymous] 1781. Groot ABC boek: zeer bekwaam voor de jonge kinderen te leeren. Amsterdam: Adam Meyer. Utrecht University Library: UBU Rar. br. duod. 37 [Anonymous]. 1798. Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes almanach, voor het jaer ons heere Jesu-Christi 1798. Maastricht: Ph. and P. Gimblet, frontispiece. Ghent University Library: BIB.G.002521 v.1 [Anonymous]. [c. 1740]. Neu erfundener Lust-Weg zu allerley schönen Künsten und Wissenschaften. Nürnberg: Johann Christoph Weigel, 7. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: M: Pb 597 [Anonymous]. 1801. Het tweede deel van den Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes almanach, voor het tegenwoordig jaer. Maastricht: Ph. and P. Gimblet, 9. Ghent University Library: BIB.G.002521 v.2 [Anonymous]. [c. 1787]. The royal primer; or, an easy and pleasant guide to the art of reading. London: Isaiah Thomas, 8–9. Graphic Arts Collection, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library: Hamilton 118 s

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39

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8

Fig. 2.9 Fig. 2.10

Fig. 2.11 Fig. 2.12

Fig. 2.13 Fig. 2.14 Fig. 2.15 Fig. 2.16 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

[Anonymous]. [c. 1750]. Groot A, B, C, boek. Zeer bekwaam voor de jonge kinderen te leeren. Amsterdam: Kornelis de Wit, s.p. Leiden University Library: 1190 H 7 [Anonymous]. [1759]. Een Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek: Om de kleine kinderen, op eene gemakkelyke Wyze, De verscheide Soorten van Letteren te leeren kennen en noemen […]. Amsterdam: K[ornelis] d[e] W[it], plate 5. KB National Library: KW 30 C 32 [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XI, ‘F: Fruit’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110 Weiße, Christian Felix. 1772. Neues A, B, C, Buch: nebst einigen kleinen Uebungen und Unterhaltungen für Kinder. Leipzig: Siegfried Leberecht Crusius, 109. Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library: Euro 1,844,627 [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XXI, ‘O: Olie’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110 Luyken, Jan, and Casper Luyken. 1694. Het menselyk bedryf: Vertoond in 100 verbeeldingen van ambachten, konsten, hanteeringen en bedryven, met versen. Amsterdam: Jan and Casper Luyken, 41. KB National Library: KW 132 G 43 [2] [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XXIX: ‘W: Wol’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110 [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XXV: ‘S: Schip’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110 [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, VII: ‘B: Burger’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110 [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, X: ‘E: Eendragt’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110 Alphen, Hieronymus van. 1778. Proeve van kleine gedigten voor kinderen. Utrecht: Widow Jan van Terveen and son, 11. Utrecht University Library: UBU EAZ 509 [Anonymous]. 1781. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek. Proeve eener kleine historie, voor kinderen. Amsterdam: Pieter Hayman, *3r. Leiden University Library: 1504 F 38

41

44 48

49 50

51 54 55 56 57 77

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  List of Figures 

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Fig. 4.4

Fig. 4.5

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 7.1

Ripa, Cesare. 1709. Iconologia, or, Moral Emblems, by Cesare Ripa. London: Benjamin Motte, 73. Utrecht University Library: ICON 166 Francq van Berkhey, Johannes le. 1781. Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen. 3 volumes. Leiden: Frans de Does Pieterszoon, volume 1, plate 1, between 50 and 51. KB National Library: KW BJ 25763 Francq van Berkhey, Johannes le. 1781. Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen. 3 volumes. Leiden: Frans de Does Pieterszoon, volume 3, plate XIII, between 24 and 25. KB National Library: KW BJ 25763 Loosjes Pz, Adriaan. 1791. Levensschetsen van Nederlandsche mannen en vrouwen, een schoolboek, uitgegeeven door de Maatschappij tot nut van ’t algemeen. Vol. 1. Haarlem: Adriaan Loosjes Pz, 42. KB National Library: KW 383 H 42 Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1780–1781. Handleiding tot de natuurlyke opvoeding of Robinson Crusoë, geschikt ten dienste der jeugd. Amsterdam: Anthony Mens Jansz, π1r. KB National Library: KW 1088 D 111 [Anonymous]. 1787. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen of Vaderlandsche avonden. Rotterdam: Jacobus Bronkhorst: opposite 93. KB National Library: KW 2115 E 47 Valéry, Magdaleine. 1599. La montaigne des pucelles, en neuf dialogues, sur les noms des neuf muses. Den maeghden-bergh, in negen t’samen spraken, op de namen vande neghen musen. Leiden: Jan Paedts Jacobszoon, frontispiece. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: H: P 2138 8° Helmst

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1   The Dynamics Between Literacy and Progress Dear Mother, I am so happy,    Now I will soon learn a trade […]    Oh, how I will care for you, Dear mother, when this happens! Lieve Moeder, ‘k ben zo bly,    ‘k zal nu haast een ambagt leeren […]    ô Hoe zal ik voor u zorgen,    Moeder lief, als dit geschied!1

This is Keesje, staged as the ‘obedient boy’ in one of the songs of Elisabeth Wolff and Agatha Deken’s Economische liedjes (Economic Songs, 1781). We meet him at a highly formative moment in his life: he is on the threshold of a career as an artisan. He is looking forward to earning money, taking care of his mother and contributing his wages to the household: ‘Mother, I will save everything I earn, to use it in the family’ (‘Moeder, alles wat ik win / Zal ik zuinigjes verspaaren, / […] Tot gebruik in ‘t huisgezin’).2 Keesje disposes of his toys and sets himself to reading Johannes Florentius Martinet’s Katechismus der Natuur (Catechism of Nature, 1777–1779), which he handles with great prudence (‘I never © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7_1

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crumple my Books’: ‘k Leg nooit kreuken in myn Boeken’).3 He assumes that in his future career as a plane maker he will benefit from his literacy skills (‘I am able to read, write and calculate, / That’s why I have a lot of advantages’: ‘Ik kan lezen, schryven, reeknen, / ‘’k Heb des magtig veel vooruit’).4 It is significant that Keesje is planning to create planes (‘schaaven’). In a metaphorical way, planes—tools used to smoothen rough surfaces—denote instruments that refine things and, one might say, people as well.5 In choosing the plane-makers craft, Keesje declares his desire to become an educated, skilled and well-mannered man. Literacy offers access to physical discipline and economic growth for a budding individual like Keesje. His reading, in turn, helps to improve the household as a larger community in which he participates. This dynamics between literacy and progress will be explored in this book. Lettering Young Readers analyses how and to what extent eighteenth-­ century children’s books sought to make young people literate, and how they invited their readers to use their literacy skills as a vehicle for societal, moral and intellectual progress. It focuses primarily on the Dutch Republic, where a strikingly robust literacy rate and an estimable, socially diverse educational system formed a fertile breeding ground for an exploding market for children’s literature. In the Dutch Republic, the development of independent and empowered young generations was high on the political and social agenda, while literacy has been identified as an important vehicle for the circulation of knowledge and democratic ideals in the eighteenth-­century Enlightenment.6 Lettering Young Readers analyses a wide range of books for children—primers as well as children’s novels, reading lessons, catechisms, travel stories and so on—in their national and international literary-historical contexts, in order to understand how literacy competences were largely transmitted to a promising group in society. It as such reveals how the medium of the book was adopted to solve one of the most pressing challenges of the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic: the training of young agents who could contribute independently to social progress and were equipped to strengthen a fatherland that was supposed to have been in decline. The overarching objective of this book is to offer a new perspective on eighteenth-century Dutch children’s literature. While scholars in the field of children’s literature generally assume that contemporary youth literature invites youngsters to consider moral dilemmas from various perspectives and that reading such books stimulates maturity and autonomy, they perceive historical children literature to have been a rather unequivocal and repressive instrument in the transmission of moral lessons and

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obedience.7 Lettering Young Readers, however, demonstrates that eighteenth-­century Dutch children’s books simultaneously regulated and empowered readers. As the Enlightened ideal of social progress fundamentally depended on active and responsible citizens, children’s books played a vital role in the creation of young agents. Rather than serve the passive absorption of knowledge and moral virtues, they contributed instead to the acquisition of profound literacy skills that were needed by readers to understand and preserve social hierarchies, to assess different types of knowledge and to place their own moral development in the service of communal social growth. At the same time, however, they restricted readers’ agency along the lines of age, gender and class. Through sophisticated interactions with international markets—which not only fed into but also profited from Dutch products—Dutch children’s books developed profound strategies to create young agents whose literacy enabled as well as restricted their efforts to organize themselves and the society they were to fully inhabit as adults.

1.2   The Agency of Young Readers This book contributes to our understanding of the degree of ‘agency’ that eighteenth-century young readers acquired through their literacy education and reading practices. Agency—the ‘idea that children can be seen as independent social actors’—is a key concept in childhood studies which now profoundly impacts the research agenda of social scientists.8 The introduction of the concept encouraged the attack on the dominant adult-­ centred approach and stimulated the study of children as one of society’s minority groups, which must be regarded ‘in their own right and not just as receptacles of adult teaching’.9 While ‘childhood agency’ as a theoretical concept was introduced only in 1998,10 the shift in viewing children as actors had begun in the 1970s. Before that period, children were largely studied as ‘becomings’ rather than ‘beings’, while childhood was considered to be an initial, incomplete stage of adulthood.11 This traditional dominant framework was gradually criticized from the 1970s onwards and eventually ceded its dominance. Sociology professors Allison and Adrian James connect this shift to a more general theoretical development within the social sciences in the 1970s: responding to social thinkers like Marx and Durkheim—who considered social structures as powerful frames determining people’s possibilities of thinking and acting—influential new theorists such as Anthony Giddens

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now emphasized the power people possess to change systems and institutions.12 However, the paradigm shift towards child agency was not merely a theoretical development, as Allison James emphasized that young people actually became more powerful social agents in society. The 1970s experienced a growing awareness of youth as a social group, and the 1960s had paved the way for very conspicuous forms of youthful rebellion against parental and adult authority.13 Thanks to these developments, we currently live in an ‘age of children’s agency’, to quote David Oswell’s The Agency of Children (2013).14 Childhood scholars indeed realize that we have to be careful not to perceive child agency as a late-twentieth-century invention: according to Oswell, it ‘has emerged and grown, certainly over the long twentieth century, but also slowly and incrementally over the last two to three hundred years’.15 It was Philippe Ariès who helped scholars to develop such an historical approach to child agency, Oswell stated. Ariès’s pathbreaking L’Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (1960) introduced ‘a way of understanding and perceiving children not as actual children in the “here and now”’, but as ‘children imbued with a historicity’.16 Ariès’s book indeed provided an influential ‘working model for historians’ and as such spurred a good deal of new scholarship on family and childhood in the 1970s and afterwards.17 Ariès invited his colleagues to perceive childhood as a developmental process—or rather an evolution, a history of progress—in which separate stages could be distinguished. He himself situated the emergence of the ‘child’—as a social category and as the subject of affection—in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, provocatively arguing that medieval society in Europe lacked any ‘sentiment de l’enfance’.18 Ariès’s somewhat schematic, evolutionary perception of childhood provoked much discussion among historians. Some refuted the idea of a sudden birth of childhood and affection after a dark era: according to such ‘structuralists’, the ‘black legend’ should be replaced by a white one, focusing on the continuity in parental care and love.19 But most childhood historians who questioned Ariès’s idea of an early modern discovery of childhood actually still subscribe to the perception that the history of childhood is a progressive process. They revised Ariès’s thesis by introducing new starting or breaking points—they traced the new conception of childhood back to the Middle Ages or even the ancient world, or presented the eighteenth century as the pivotal moment in the history of

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childhood—or by imagining the history of childhood as a narrative of gradual historical developments rather than abrupt shifts.20 I propose to escape from such linear and teleological perspectives on progressive child agency, by approaching agency as an empowering as well as disciplining discourse shaped in children’s literature. Within the context of current childhood studies on agency, children’s literature is a quite unconventional research subject, as literature is assumed to offer only idealized images of childhood produced by dominant adults and consumed, passively, by children.21 This perception of literature as a restrictive instrument for children has its origins in the eighteenth century itself. It was, for example, articulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), one of the pivotal pedagogical thinkers of his era. His Emile ou De l’éducation (Emile, or On education, 1762) made a plea for an active learning style that encouraged children to learn on the basis of their own curiosity and sensual experiences, and not on what they, as passive consumers, would learn from their parents, teachers and books. Emile discussed the ideal ‘natural’ education of the young Emile, who is stimulated by his tutor to explore and experience the world, to make observations and ask questions. Rousseau’s pedagogical ideal of an empirically based and curiosity-driven way of learning is perfectly illustrated by his metaphor of the child as a curious, inquisitive cat: Look at a cat entering a room for the first time. He inspects, he looks around, he sniffs, he does not relax for a moment, he trusts nothing before he has examined everything, come to know everything. This is just what is done by a child who is beginning to walk and entering, so to speak, in the room of the world.22

To substitute books for the children’s own sensual experiences, Rousseau assumed, is ‘to teach us to use the reason of others’.23 As transmitters of authoritative knowledge, books hamper the process of independent knowledge acquisition and turn children into passive consumers instead of agents. That is why Emile should be kept from this ‘plague of childhood’ and the ‘instruments’ of children’s ‘greatest misery’: ‘Books! What sad furnishings for his age!’24 Some scholars on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century children’s literature have already argued that reading practices were less restrictive than Rousseau assumed.25 Nina Christensen, for example, has refused to approach eighteenth-century Danish child readers as ‘imperfect creatures,

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inferior to adults’: the author of the youth magazine that she has analysed ‘expects his reader to be curious, eager to learn, able to reason, and able to express his or her thoughts and character in writing’.26 According to Marah Gubar, nineteenth-century child readers were approached as active readers involved in creative interpretation processes.27 With respect to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers, Edel Lamb’s Reading Children in Early Modern Culture (2018) has demonstrated that the children of that era developed formative, autonomous and sometimes disruptive reading practices as a means to produce their own aged and gendered identities.28 I argue that the reading practices provided and offered as training by eighteenth-century Dutch children’s books were restrictive as well as empowering. They reflect what I  call the ‘paradox of agency’: the phenomenon that the creation of agents always went hand in hand with the disciplining of young people. This paradox is often referred to by childhood historians who have revealed children’s agency in antiquity while also pointing to the conditions (such as gender and class) that simultaneously limited their potential to experience and interact.29 But today’s children, too, have no way to escape this paradox: critical scholarship approaches them as the autonomous co-producers of their own lives and their surrounding society (‘entrepreneurs of the self’).30 As such, their agency is spurred as well as controlled by dominant discursive regimes that govern ideas about what successful children should look, act and be like. The children’s realm is physically restricted as well: playgrounds and schools, for example, encourage children’s agency (since in such places they are invited to move and to participate in various forms of activity), yet they also restrict the sorts of experiences made available to children.31 Eighteenth-century children’s reading practices reflect a similarly ambivalent approach to the agency of youngsters. Rather than being permitted to be wholly free and independent, agentive child minds and bodies are shaped so as to increase their utility, productivity and effort. This simultaneous creation and regulation of child agency became a burning social issue in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic, as this two-pronged strategy was considered a vital element in countering the Republic’s supposed decline via the future efforts of agentive, responsible youths.

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1.3   Child Agency as a Burning Question in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Enlightenment The Dutch Republic—or Republic of the Seven United Netherlands—was founded in 1581, a result of the Dutch Revolt against the rule of the Spanish King Philip II. It was organized as a federal confederation of the several provinces, which delegated their representatives to the States General (the parliament). Powers were separated amongst these representatives and the ‘stadholder’, who was traditionally responsible for the maintenance of peace and order. In actual practice, however, the stadholders descending from the increasingly interrelated Houses of Orange and Nassau-Dietz, as well as the Grand Pensionary—who was officially the spokesman for Holland’s delegation to the States General but functioned as a prime minister—became the most prominent political figures. There ensued perennial debates, and even violent conflicts, about the separation of powers in the Dutch Republic. Though it can be characterized as an age of inland controversies, the seventeenth century was just as much a period when the Dutch Republic saw itself as a breeding ground for economic progress and social mobility and a country where the arts, sciences and overseas commerce could flourish—its now-famous ‘Golden Age’, although most people currently assume that the Republic’s glorious period is not without a long-overlooked dark side.32 During the eighteenth century, however, the Dutch Republic lost its pivotal international position, as the country was no longer so important in global trade and its internal unemployment and poverty increased. Inhabitants of the Dutch Republic were obsessed with the idea of social decline, although the historical slump, as economic and social-historical research has shown, was less extensive than contemporaries—and later historians—often assumed.33 Decline was not so much a historical reality as a dominant discourse that was largely spread through the circulation of books, pamphlets and tracts, and exerted its fundamental impact on the political climate of the later eighteenth century.34 While the Republic’s inhabitants were largely united in their wish for a general striving for social improvement until the late 1770s, they became deeply divided during the 1780s, cleaving into two camps: the ‘Orangists’ sought a sovereign and flourishing land under the guidance of Stadholder William V of Orange, whereas the ‘Patriots’ rejected this Orange dynasty as well as the power of the elites who were leading, it was supposed, lives of leisure. Holding these leaders responsible for the Republic’s economic and social decline,

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the Patriots pleaded for a radically new form of government that would be based on Enlightened, democratic ideals of freedom and equality. The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784)—further weakening the country’s international position and spiking unemployed levels—fostered anti-­ Orangist feelings within the Dutch Republic. In this situation of growing social upheaval and political disaffection, radicalized Patriots attempted a revolution and were eventually tempted to arrest William V’s wife Wilhelmina of Prussia in 1787. However, when Wilhelmina’s brother Ferdinand William II of Prussia came to his sister’s aid, the Patriots found themselves in an unbearable situation: many of them lost their public positions, and some decided to flee the country to France or the Southern Netherlands. They recovered their privileged positions in the wake of the Batavian Revolution of 1795, when the Dutch Republic was succeeded by the Batavian Republic: French armies invaded, the stadholder was deposed and fled with his family to England, and the Orange dynasty was replaced by a democratic government conducted under the auspices of the French regime. Partly due to differing opinions about the design of the new constitution, the Batavian Republic did not last long: in 1806, Napoleon, having lost confidence in the Republic, established the Kingdom of Holland, a vassal state led by his brother Louis.35 As Wijnand Mijnhardt and Joost Kloek have demonstrated in their Blueprints for a National Community (2004), the eighteenth-century Dutch discourse of decline was connected to an equally dominant discourse of progress, rooted in the eighteenth-century Enlightened idea that cultures were improvable and could bring themselves to perfection by standing on the shoulders of previous generations. The problem of social decline could be solved through collective efforts to restore the glory of the past. Responsible citizens could improve their own minds and their shared culture in tandem.36 As such, the idea of improvement was largely related to the concept of citizenship—a moral instead of legal category: every inhabitant of the Dutch Republic was considered to have the individual capacity to develop virtues and values and to uphold norms, and each could thus contribute to social progress.37 This definition and position of Dutch citizenship was typical for the second half of the eighteenth century (to be replaced in the early nineteenth century by the idea of citizenship as an instrument to preserve existing social structures) and was connected to the Republic’s approach to the European movement of the Enlightenment.38 Historians now largely assume that the Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic was

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mostly ‘moderate’ and ‘Christian’: instead of becoming a dogmatic secularization movement, it rather took shape as a constructive process whereby reason and faith jointly improved Christian-Enlightened civil morality. Although some Dutch intellectuals supported more radical Enlightened ideas, and conservative Christian voices were also disseminated, this ‘moderate Enlightenment’ dominated the socio-cultural climate of the Dutch Republic. ‘Moderate’ may suggest that this Dutch model was a poor substitute for the more radical Enlightenments developed in certain other Western European countries, but the Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic should be perceived as a movement based on a sincere faith in progress and in the power of creative, responsible citizenship.39 These discourses on decline, progress and citizenship also exerted an impact on ideas about children’s education.40 The topics are discussed, for example, in relation to one another in IJsbrand van Hamelsveld’s (1743–1815) De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie (The moral condition of the Dutch nation, 1791). Van Hamelsveld himself belonged to the Patriot camp: a theology professor and minister, he publicly contested the Orange authority and incited his audience to resist it. After the ‘Orange Restoration’ in 1787, Van Hamelsveld was discharged from his professorship and lost his civil rights. These recent disappointments undoubtedly contributed to the pessimistic, depressing character of De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie. At the same time, his writing was still suffused with his faith in a reparable society and his hope for social change. In the newly founded Batavian Republic, Van Hamelsveld held a visible position: he chaired the first National Conference (first government) in 1796 and was a member of the National Conference in 1797 as well.41 In De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, Van Hamelsveld argues that a society’s economic prosperity depends on the good manners and mores of its citizens. The prosperity of the Dutch people has never been automatic, Van Hamelsveld observes; the land is unfruitful and therefore unable to produce precious wares for trading.42 Nonetheless, Van Hamelsveld’s Dutch ancestors created a flourishing society, thanks to their unsurpassed level of morality: they were diligent, thrifty, sober and tolerant.43 They, in short, profited from their uniquely human competence to train and improve themselves: unlike animals, human beings are able to ‘extend themselves further and further, and to reach perfection by means of their restlessness’ (‘strekt […] zich steeds verder en verder uit, en kan rusteloos volmaakter worden’).44 They need only a ‘circle of activity’

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(‘kring van werkzaamheid’) in which they can be trained and guided by skilled people.45 And here, Van Hamelsveld argues, lies today’s main problem: the circle in which generations of Dutchmen stimulated one another towards perfection has been broken. Contemporary Dutchmen are the ‘degenerate progeny’ (‘ontaard nakroost’) of the famous men whose building of a prestigious land was grounded in their morality.46 There is only one way to solve this problem: new generations of Dutchmen— ‘children who will later form the nation’ (‘kinderen zullen ééns de natie uitmaken’)—should be raised carefully and taught so that societal prosperity can be achieved and sustained.47 Van Hamelsveld’s concerns suggest that child education was a pressing issue in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic, its importance rooted in the firm belief that social decline could and should be averted via the efforts of responsible, virtuous people. In particular, this tract makes a plea for the agency of children. Agency— meaning for Van Hamelsveld and his contemporaries ‘freedom’48—was one of the core values that had enabled the ancestors of his Dutch readers to build their flourishing nation. As Van Hamelsveld argues, traditional Dutch society had allowed a high degree of religious freedom (‘golden tolerance’: ‘gouden verdraagzaamheid’)49 as well as political freedom. This was especially the case ever since the forefathers had restored rule over their land from Spain during the Dutch Revolt (1568–1648) and had established the Republic of Seven United Netherlands, whose citizens were not subjected to the rule of a single king or leader: ‘every inhabitant ought to be as free as possible in a civil society’ (‘zoo vrij te zijn, als men, bij mooglijkheid, behoudens de goede orde en ondergeschiktheid in eene burgermaatschappij noodzaaklijk, zijn kan’).50 Such religious and political freedom exerted an enormous impact on the morality of the country’s inhabitants, according to Van Hamelsveld. Because someone who chooses his own religion is far more inclined to observe social regulations, a free society experiences a growth of charity and tolerance.51 Political freedom, Van Hamelsveld argues, also contributes to the sense of well-being and the diligence displayed by the inhabitants of a nation.52 Seen from this perspective, it is obvious why Van Hamelsveld made a plea for freedom in the raising of children: freedom not only is a driving force behind good behaviour but also fosters an inner motivation to practise virtuousness among young individuals. Van Hamelsveld believes that children should therefore be guided in their pursuits instead of being strictly disciplined, which would create surly, stubborn people of a ‘slavish nature’ (‘slaafsche geäartheid’). Such people

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contravene ‘the natural longing for freedom, that breeds in the free souls of Dutch-born people and should never be suppressed’ (‘de natuurlijke zucht tot VRIJHEID, welke neiging in de VRIJE zielen van geboren Nederlanders aangekweekt, en nooit onderdrukt behoorde te worden’).53 As Van Hamelsveld’s tract clearly demonstrates, eighteenth-century citizenship was preeminently characterized by the ideal of human agency and a faith invested in this value. The widespread Enlightened ideal of agency for children who were permitted to learn according to their curiosity and sense of responsibility, therefore, obtained a specific urgency and character in the Dutch Republic during the eighteenth century. Within this context, the cultivation of child agency was a pressing social and political issue, becoming an ideologically flavoured aspiration that was inflected by rapidly changing sociopolitical circumstances. I demonstrate how reading practices were developed to shape agentive but simultaneously disciplined children to fulfil larger sociopolitical ambitions.

1.4   A Comparative Perspective on Children’s Books as a Literacy Instrument I approach eighteenth-century children’s books as instruments to teach and represent the skills and attitudes involved in literacy. This scope reaches beyond individual reading experiences to which scholarship in the history of reading is often limited (an illustrative example for the Dutch context is the research on Otto van Eck as a late-eighteenth-century child reader).54 My approach is indebted to scholars who consider books to be tools that shape attitudes and skills bound up with reading and who have helped me develop a broad definition of what can be considered a ‘literacy guide’.55 I do not restrict myself to schoolbooks specifically developed to teach literacy at schools, such as the alphabet books and reading lessons used at ‘Duytse’ (Dutch) schools, which were attended by around two-­ thirds of Dutch children at the end of the eighteenth century.56 As I am interested above all in the fictional imagination of reading processes and in the discourses on literacy developed in various types of books, I include educational books on different subjects (e.g. geography and moral education) as well as fictional works. While involving such a wide range of genres, I agree with other scholars’ demands that we blur distinctions amongst literary studies and the history of education, fictional and non-­ fictional children’s books, and the tools used in domestic and public

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education.57 Consequently, my definition of ‘literacy training’ includes not only the development of functional literacy (i.e. the technical ability to read and write) but also the cultivation of social, interpretative and critical literacy skills that enabled as well as restricted children to organize themselves and to contribute fruitfully to social progress.58 Although the expanding Dutch eighteenth-century market for children’s books was becoming increasingly commercially attractive, it was smaller than its counterparts in German-, French- and English-speaking countries. The Dutch book market consisted only of around 12,000–18,000 families, who were able to buy books on a regular basis.59 Due to a small linguistic community and limited possibilities to address specific target groups, the Dutch market depended on international books and translations.60 I thus approach Dutch children’s books against the background of an eighteenth-century Western European children’s literature market, which is already known for its remarkably transnational character.61 I am interested not only in translations—comprising around 20 percent of Dutch school and children’s books62—but also in more indirect or implicit processes of adaptation. Until now, the transnational character of the Dutch market has been partly overlooked, as scholarly attention has mainly been fixed on the dissemination of German books and pedagogical ideas in the Dutch Republic (and, to a lesser extent, on French influences),63 while international scholarship generally focuses on exchanges among England, Germany and France.64 Neglected but significant phenomena to be discussed in this book are the Anglo-Dutch exchanges in the field of children’s literature, as well as the impact of Dutch examples on children’s books produced in other countries or languages. By developing a comparative, transnational approach to the Dutch children’s book market, Lettering Young Readers builds upon the bibliographical and scholarly work done by Piet Buijnsters in the late twentieth century. Until then, eighteenth-century children’s books were described only by a number of devoted collectors,65 while J.L. Daalders’s companion Wormcruyt met suycker (1950) represented them as meaningless, long-­ winded and preachy.66 Buijnsters, however, published an exhaustive bibliography on eighteenth-century school and children’s books together with his wife, Leontine Buijnsters-Smets, as well as a long survey article in the companion on Dutch children’s literature (De Bibelebontse berg, 1989), to demonstrate the richness and diversity of the genre, which also predates the publication of Hieronymus van Alphen’s famous Gedigten voor kinderen (Poems for children, 1778–1782).67 Now that the first phase of

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exploration and bibliographical description has been finalized, Buijnsters argued 25 years ago, other literary scholars should accept the challenge of interpreting these collected objects from cultural-historical and international-­comparative perspectives.68 Since then, however, there has been scarcely little such research. Granted, there has been some attention given to specific subgenres such as primers and youth magazines,69 historians of education have shed some light on books used in early modern schools in different regions of the country,70 and, more recently, a couple of studies were dedicated to the production and reception of eighteenth-­ century children’s literature.71 As bookshop advertisements and diaries were the main sources in this type of research, the books’ content mostly remained out of the picture. This, however, is precisely what Lettering Young Readers will focus on: the content of such readings, as well as the didactic and literary strategies employed in its international transmission, in order to understand the distinctive profile of literacy education developed within a Dutch society that was strongly dedicated to a sociopolitical programme of progress at the time.72 While analysing the (often comparative) processes of literacy education in children’s literature, I concretely focus on four strategies that these books use to teach literacy. First, books can offer direct instruction, when they offer, for example, reading lessons or alphabets (cf. Chap. 2 on ABC books). Second, many books reflect on the process or significance of reading and writing (cf. Chap. 3 on reflections on reading as a way of working, of Chap. 5 on reading as an instrument to establish truth). In the third place, books can represent literacy practices, for example by staging fictional readers and writers as examples to follow or reject (cf. Chaps. 6 and 7 on child characters who write and read letters). A fourth strategy, finally, concerns how books guide readers in their manner of reading and their attitudes towards it, for example by its structure and physical shape (cf. Chap. 2 on primers that stimulate their readers to read letters and worldly objects as systematic orders, or Chap. 4 on the physical experiences that books offered their readers). It is not my intention to connect specific books to just one of these teaching strategies. Instead, I aim to reveal the interaction among these four strategies, always relating them to the concept of agency. Which types of behaviour and action are stimulated by particular youthful reading practices and training? How do reading processes function as a way of understanding and controlling the world, and to what extent do they instead restrict such possibilities? How and to

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what extent are young readers invited to gain knowledge and power through the reading practices inculcated within these books?

1.5   Outline of the Book Lettering Young Readers discusses how children learn to read for two purposes: to preserve or change social orders (Part I) and to acquire knowledge (Part II). The first two parts of the book also reveal different stages in the teaching of reading. The first part, ‘Young Readers as Social Participants’, homes in on the child’s first alphabet and reading books to examine initial reading practices as instruments for social discipline and the creation of citizenship. The second chapter (‘The Order of the Alphabet’) demonstrates how the Dutch Republic, in continuous interaction with the international primer markets, developed a model of audiovisual ABC books that approached letters as instruments to understand the outside world as a system of consumer goods and, when inland political conflicts radicalized during the 1780s, as an interactive production system vital to societal flourishing. Although child readers are not represented as active participants within these systems, they are nonetheless entrusted with a vital role: through their understanding of the system, they become co-responsible for it. Behind the audiovisual alphabet didactics appears the ideal of social progress: the alphabets create future citizens who, once grown, will be able to contribute to that system by means of their words and deeds. The third chapter in this first part, ‘Reading as Work’, focusses on a wide range of Dutch books that enhanced the teaching of reading, to explore the discursive relationship between reading and work. By means of its comparative analyses, this chapter identifies significant differences between English and Dutch discourses: within the Dutch Republic, literacy did not function primarily as a form of individual property—as Locke had defined it—but was depicted as a working practice that spurred the creation of industrious citizens, equipped to participate in a society of collectively working people. The Dutch reading books can be considered as vehicles within the Dutch Enlightened programme, in which reading education served a vital role: it facilitated the development of industrious attitudes and functioned as an instrument to understand the organization of labour. The second part of this book, ‘Young Readers as Knowledgeable Citizens’, focusses on more advanced textbooks about geography, history

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and the natural world, aimed at teaching critical reading and knowledge skills. It explores how reading functioned as a practice of acquiring knowledge and truths within a knowledge culture that, rooted in the ideal of experiential learning, questioned the authority of the book. This second part reveals the ambiguous role children’s books played in developing knowledge culture. While helping children to participate in experiential knowledge processes and to extrapolate knowledge, they also prevented children from using their own empirical experiences. And although they sought to create critical readers who are able to assess whether knowledge was trustworthy, they simultaneously presented themselves as univocal instruments with which to establish settled truths. This second part again consists of two chapters that elaborate on specific case studies. The comparative German-Dutch analyses in Chap. 4, entitled ‘The Bounds of Empirical Modes of Reading’, highlights the Dutch appropriation of the larger Western European attempt to develop empirical modes of reading that fostered inquisitive, experiential knowledge processes amongst the young. The empirically based reading techniques revealed in this chapter were used to acquire knowledge about various invisible phenomena and places—God, but also faraway geographical regions and exotic natural phenomena that children were unable to see with their own eyes. The chapter illuminates a Dutch interest in modes of literacy that helped transform invisible worlds into tangible shapes and demonstrates that advancing readers were expected to acquire knowledge about visible and invisible worlds, as well as to make connections amongst the bits of knowledge thus obtained. The fifth chapter, ‘The Moral Assessment of Historical Knowledge’, analyses how late-eighteenth-century textbooks on the history of the Dutch fatherland helped young readers to develop their truth-finding reading skills and were spurred by two, somewhat competitive ambitions: on the one hand, there was the Enlightened pedagogical goal of providing children some degree of agency with which to assess knowledge critically, and, on the other hand, there was the political ambition of guiding new generations to the only valid interpretation of history and, subsequently, to prospective societal improvement. This chapter demonstrates how history textbooks for children succeeded in combining these two ambitions by turning the consideration of historical truths into a practice of moral assessment. A shared set of values and virtues shaped the foundation of a shared base of undisputable historical knowledge and as such created the groundwork for sociopolitical change from below.

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The third part of this book, ‘Young Readers as Epistolary Literate Writers’, discusses how children’s books initiated young readers into the art of writing on an advanced level of literacy. It approaches the epistolary children’s novel as a type of book that supplemented writing education in schools via its representation of writing youngsters who were, in fact, epistolary literate children. The epistolary children’s novel, a fictional model developed in the Dutch Republic that exercised an influence on the book production in other countries, is here interpreted as an innovative attempt to create young gendered citizens. Chapter 6, ‘From Individual Boyhood to Political Brotherhood’, approaches the international bestselling epistolary children’s novel De kleine Grandisson (The little Grandisson, 1782–1786) written by Margareta Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken (1735–after 1796), as an innovative attempt to enmesh writing and moral competences, and to represent moral progress as an individually accessible destination for growing boys as well as a stepping-stone to improve the Anglo-Dutch political brotherhood. As such, the novel reflects the idea that political developments depended on a measure of (gendered) moral virtuousness as well as creative writing skills. The last chapter, ‘The Making of Lettered Girlhood’, analyses how the paradoxical idea of literacy as an aspect of, as well as a threat to, ideal femininity was transmitted by means of children’s books addressed to young girls. It argues that the late-eighteenth-century introduction of the Dutch epistolary girls’ novel, developed in continuous interaction with the international book market within and beyond the Dutch Republic, fostered the representation of epistolary reading and writing skills as the foundation of girlhood as a category distinct from those of women and boys. As these novels exclusively consist of letters exchanged between young girls, they reflect a process of ‘peer mothering’ that served as an instrument to liberate as well as discipline girls. Taken together, the parts and chapters of Lettering Young Readers demonstrate how child readers, from varied social circumstances and within different educational domains, were empowered as well as regulated all along the trajectory of developing literacy.

Notes 1. Wolff, Elisabeth, and Agatha Deken. 1781. Economische liedjes. Vol. 1. The Hague: Isaac van Cleef, 47. 2. Wolff and Deken, Economische liedjes, 47. 3. Wolff and Deken, Economische liedjes, 52.

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4. Wolff and Deken, Economische liedjes, 48. 5. Cf. Tuinman, Carolus. 1727. De oorsprong en uytlegging van dagelyks gebruikte Nederduitsche spreekwoorden, tot opheldering der vaderlandsche moedertaal. Vol. 2. Middelburg: Michiel Schryver, 10. During the eighteenth century, the proverb ‘The fine plane still needs to go over it’ (‘De fyne schaaf moet’er noch over gaan’) was used when objects or people lacked polish. Alluding to this proverb, Justus van Effen, for example, characterized certain well-educated youths as men who had employed a fine plane to refine their skills and attitudes. See Effen, Justus van. 1735. De Hollandsche Spectator. Vol. 12. Amsterdam: Hermannus Uytwerf, 145–146: “t Zyn Heeren van ‘t geen men doorgaans een goede opvoeding noemt. … Niets ontbreekt hun reeds, dan dat over dit alles de fyne schaaf maar ga.’ 6. From the seventeenth century onwards, the Dutch Republic was known for its advanced and easily accessible educational system: every town and village had its own (Dutch and/or French) school: Frijhoff, Willem Th.M., and Marijke Spies. 2004. 1650: Hard-Won Unity. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 238; Boekholt, P.Th.F.M., and E.P. de Booy. 1987. Geschiedenis van de school in Nederland vanaf de middeleeuwen tot aan de huidige tijd. Assen and Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 17–66; Kloek, Joost J., and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt. 2004. 1800: Blueprints for a National Community. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 243–264. On the literacy rate: Kuijpers, Erika. 1997. “Lezen en schrijven: Onderzoek naar het alfabetiseringsniveau in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam.” Tijdschrift voor sociale geschiedenis 23, no. 4: 490–522; Frijhoff and Spies, Hard-Won Unity, 105, 257 and 236–237; Leemans, Inger, and Gert-Jan Johannes. 2013. Worm en donder: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700–1800: de Republiek. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 91. During the eighteenth century, the market for children’s literature developed into a flourishing literary subsystem: children’s books account for around 5 percent of the Dutch book production of the late eighteenth century: Salman, Jeroen. 2001. “Children’s Books as a Commodity: The Rise of a New Literary Subsystem in the eighteenth-­century Dutch Republic.” Poetics 28, no. 5/6: 399–421, esp. 80, note 28. 7. See for this development in the Dutch context: Ghesquière, Rita, Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer, and Vanessa Joosen, eds. 2016. Een land van waan en wijs: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse jeugdliteratuur. Amsterdam and Antwerp: Atlas Contact. In the French context: Brown, Penelope. 2007. A Critical History of French Children’s Literature. Vol. 2: 1830–present. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, esp. 4–6.

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8. Quote: James, Allison, and Adrian James. 2012. Key Concepts in Childhood Studies. London and New  York: Sage, 3. See also James, Allison. 2009. “Agency.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies, edited by Jens Qvortrup, William A.  Corsaro and Michael-Sebastian Honig: 34–45. Basingstoke and New  York: Palgrave Macmillan; Esser, Florian, Meike S. Baader, Tanja Betz and Beatrice Hungerland. 2016. Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New perspectives in Childhood Studies. London and New York: Routledge; Oswell, David. 2013. The agency of children: from family to global human rights. New York: Cambridge University Press. 9. Hardman, Charlotte. 2001. “Can there be an anthropology of children?” In Childhood 8, no. 4: 501–516, quote on 504. 10. James, Allison, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout. 1998. Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press. 11. James, “Agency”, 37; Lee, Nick. 2001. Childhood and Society: Growing up in an Age of Uncertainty. Buckingham: Open University Press, 42–43. 12. James and James, Key Concepts in Childhood Studies, 3–5. 13. James, “Agency”, 37. Cf. Brown, Timothy Scott. 2013. West Germany and the Global Sixties: The Anti-Authoritarian Revolt, 1962–1978. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Righart, Hans. 1995. De eindeloze jaren zestig: geschiedenis van een generatieconflict. Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers; Pas, Niek. 2003. Imaazje! De verbeelding van Provo 1965–1967. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. 14. Oswell, The agency of children, 3. 15. Oswell, The agency of children, 5. 16. Oswell, The agency of children, 9. 17. Hutton, Patrick H. 2004. Phillipe Ariès and the Politics of French Cultural History. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, quote on 103. 18. Ariès, Philippe. 1960. L’Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Plon. 19. An example of this structuralistic approach: Pollock, Linda A. 1983. Forgotten children: parent-child relations from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For the Dutch context: Peeters, Harry. 1966. Kind en jeugdige in het begin van de moderne tijd (ca. 1500–ca. 1650). Meppel: Boom. See for this scholarly discussion, with a special eye on the Dutch historiography after Ariès: Dekker, Jeroen J.H., and Leendert F. Groenendijk. 2011. “Philippe Ariès’ ontdekking van het kind: een terugblik na vijftig jaar.” Pedagogiek 31, no. 3: 199–215; Dekker, Jeroen J.H. 2006. Het verlangen naar opvoeden: Over de groei van de pedagogische ruimte in Nederland sinds de Gouden Eeuw tot omstreeks 1900. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 11–29. The terminology ‘black’ and ‘white legend’ was introduced by: Dekker, Rudolf. 1995. Uit de schaduw in ’t grote licht: kinderen

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in egodocumenten van de Gouden Eeuw tot de Romantiek. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. 20. Middle Ages: Orme, Nicholas. 2001. Medieval children. Yale: Yale University Press; Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle, and Didier Lett. 1997. Les enfants au Moyen Âge, V–XV siècle. Paris: Hachette; Kline, Daniel, ed. 2003. Medieval Literature for Children. London and New York: Routledge. Ancient world: Laes, Christian. 2014. Youth in the Roman empire: the young and the restless years? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Laes, Christian, Katariina Mustakallio, and Ville Vuolanto, eds. 2015. Children and Family in Late Antiquity: Life, Death and Interaction. Leuven: Peeters; Laes, Christian, and Ville Vuolanto, eds. 2017. Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World. London and New York: Routledge, Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Group. Eighteenth-century: Shorter, Edward. 1975. The Making of the Modern Family. New York: Basic Books; Dasberg, Lea. 1978. Grootbrengen door kleinhouden als historisch verschijnsel. Meppel: Boom. Gradual development: Stone, Lawrence. 1977. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; Cunningham, Hugh. 2005. Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman. 21. Cf. Flynn, Richard. 2016. “Introduction: Disputing the Role of Agency in Children’s Literature and Culture.” Jeunesse: young people, texts, cultures 8, no. 1 (forum on “Child Agency”): 248–253; Flynn, Richard. 2016. “What are we talking about when we talk about agency?” Jeunesse: young people, texts, cultures 8, no. 1 (forum on “Child Agency”): 254–265; Vallone, Lynne. 2013. “Doing Childhood studies: The View from Within.” In Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities, edited by Anna Mae Dunae: 238–254. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. 22. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1979. Emile: Or, on Education. Edited by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 125. 23. Rousseau, Emile, 25. 24. Rousseau, Emile, 116 and 159. 25. A profound introduction to the versatile reading practices of eighteenth-­ century children: Grenby, Matthew O. 2011. The Child Reader 1700–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 26. Christensen, Nina. 2009. “Lust for Reading and Thirst for Knowledge: Fictive Letters in a Danish Children’s Magazine of 1770.” In The Lion and the Unicorn 33, no. 2: 189–201, esp. 199. 27. Gubar, Marah. 2009. Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 28. Lamb, Edel. 2018. Reading Children in Early Modern Culture. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, esp. chapters 4 and 5.

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29. Vuolanto, Ville. 2017. “Experience, agency and the children of the past.” In Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World, edited by Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto: 11–24. London and New York: Routledge; Abingdon: Taylor & Francis Group; Golden, Mark. “The Second Childhood of Mark Golden.” Childhood in the Past 9, no. 1: 4–18. 30. Examples of scholarship that proposes to approach child agency as ambivalent are inspired by Foucault’s later conceptualization of power as social control: Smith, Karen M. 2014. The government of childhood: discourse, power and subjectivity. Basingstoke and New  York: Palgrave Macmillan; Vandenbroeck, Michel, and Maria Bouverne-de Bie. 2006. “Children’s Agency and Educational Norms: A tensed negotiation.” Childhood 13, no. 1: 127–143; Vandenbroeck, Michel. 2006. “Autonomous children, privileging negotiation and new limits to freedom.” The International Journal of Education Policy, Research & Practice 7, no. 1: 71–80; Valentine, Kylie. 2011. “Accounting for Agency.” Children & Society 25, no. 5: 347–358; Prout, Alan. 2004. “Children’s Participation: Control and Self-Realisation in British Late Modernity.” Childhood and Society 14, no. 4: 304–315; Dunae, Anna Mae, ed. 2013. Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, esp. introduction and part II; Gallagher, Michael. 2008. “Foucault, Power and Participation.” International Journal of Children’s Rights 16, no. 3: 395–406. 31. Kozlovsky, Roy. 2013. “The Architectures of Childhood.” In Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities, edited by Anna Mae Dunae: 124–144. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. 32. Prak, Maarten. 2005. The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: the Golden Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Helmers, Helmer J., and Geert H. Janssen, eds. 2018. The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 33. Vries, Jan de, and Ad van der Woude. 2005. Nederland 1500–1815: de eerste ronde van moderne economische groei. Amsterdam: Balans, 773–790 and passim. 34. Kloek and Mijnhardt, 1800: Blueprints for a National Community. Cf. the most recent history of Dutch eighteenth-century literature, that also marks the topoi of decline and social engineering as prominent literary themes: Leemans and Johannes, Worm en donder, 25, 712 and passim. 35. See for an English-language introduction to this political context: Kloek and Mijnhardt, 1800: Blueprints for a National Community, esp. 21–30; Schama, Simon. 1992. Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813. New York: Vintage Books. Cf. Sas, N.C.F. van. 2004. De metamorfose van Nederland. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University

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Press; Rosendaal, Joost. 2005. De Nederlandse Revolutie: Vrijheid, volk en vaderland 1783–1799. Nijmegen: Vantilt. 36. Kloek and Mijnhardt, 1800: Blueprints for a National Community, esp. 18; Janse, Maartje. 2002. De geest van Jan Salie: Nederland in verval? Hilversum: Verloren, 25–26. 37. Kloek, Joost J., en Wijnand W. Mijnhardt. 2002. “De verlichte burger.” In De Burger: Een geschiedenis van het begrip ‘burger’ in de Nederlanden van de Middeleeuwen tot de 21e eeuw, edited by Joost J.  Kloek and Karin Tilmans: 155–171. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 38. On nineteenth-century citizenship, Haan, Ido de. 2002. “Burgerschap, sociale stratificatie en politieke uitsluiting in de negentiende Eeuw.” In De Burger: Een geschiedenis van het begrip ‘burger’ in de Nederlanden van de Middeleeuwen tot de 21e eeuw, edited by Joost J. Kloek and Karin Tilmans: 231–276. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press; Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 2004. “De Akademie in het culturele landschap rond 1900.” In De Akademie en de Tweede Gouden Eeuw, edited by Klaas van Berkel: 15–41. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. From an international and socio-economic perspective, Maarten Prak traces the same development: Prak, Maarten. 2018. Citizens without nations: urban citizenship in Europe and the world, c. 1000–1789. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, esp. the introduction. 39. Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 1983. “De geschiedschrijving over de ideeëngeschiedenis van de 17e- en 18e-eeuwse Republiek.” In Kantelend geschiedbeeld: Nederlandse historiografie sinds 1945, edited by Wijnand W.  Mijnhardt: 162–205. Utrecht and Antwerp: Spectrum; Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 1983. “De Nederlandse Verlichting in Europees perspectief.” Theoretische geschiedenis 10, no. 3: 335–347; Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 1992. “The Dutch Enlightenment: Humanism, Nationalism, and Decline.” In The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment, and Revolution, edited by Margaret C.  Jacob and Wijnand W.  Mijnhardt: 197–223. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. On the Dutch Enlightenment as a Christian civilization process: Eijnatten, Joris van, and Fred van Lieburg. 2005. Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis. Hilversum: Verloren, 241. On more radical and more conservative voices: cf. Hanou, A.J. 1988. Sluiers van Isis: Johannes Kinker als voorvechter van de Verlichting, in de vrijmetselarij en andere Nederlandse genootschappen, 1790–1845. Deventer: Sub Rosa; Jongenelen, Ton. 1994. “De Socratische Oorlog (1768–1769): een terreinverkenning op de linkerflank van de Nederlandse Verlichting.” Geschiedenis van de Wijsbegeerte in Nederland 5, no. 1/2: 77–91; Israel, Jonathan. 2007. ‘Failed Enlightenment’: Spinoza’s Legacy and the Netherlands (1670–1800) (KB Lecture 4). Wassenaar: NIAS; Dietz, Feike. 2016. “Met fictieve peers op zoek naar de waarheid:

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Fictie als didactisch instrument in Verlicht-­religieuze catechismussen van Samuel van Emdre (1781–1798).” BMGN—Low Countries Historical Journal 131, no. 3: 3–25. 40. Cf. Los, Willeke. 2005. Opvoeding tot mens en burger: Pedagogiek als Cultuurkritiek in Nederland in de 18e eeuw. Hilversum: Verloren. 41. Van  Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland, 255–263; Bosma, Jelle. 1997. Woorden van een gezond verstand: De invloed van de verlichting op de in het Nederlands uitgegeven preken van 1750 tot 1800: Monografie & bibliografie. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 255. 42. Hamelsveld, IJsbrand van. 1791. De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie. Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, 144. 43. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 149. 44. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 108. 45. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 108. 46. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 26. 47. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 167–169. 48. Cf. Mulier Haitsma, E.O.G., and W.R.E. Velema, eds. 1999. Vrijheid: Een geschiedenis van de vijftiende tot de twintigste eeuw. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 49. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 147–151, quote on 149. 50. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 152. 51. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 149. 52. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 152–153. 53. Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 91–92. 54. Baggerman, Arianne, and Rudolf Dekker. 2005. Kind van de toekomst: De wondere wereld van Otto van Eck (1780–1798). Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek; Baggerman, Arianne. 2000. “Otto van Eck en de anderen: Sporen van jonge lezers in schriftelijke bronnen.” In Tot volle waschdom: Bijdragen aan de geschiedenis van de kinder- en jeugdliteratuur, edited by Berry Dongelmans, Netty van Rotterdam, Jeroen Salman and Janneke van der Veer: 211–224. The Hague: Biblion. 55. Bannett, Eve Tavor. 2017. Eighteenth-Century Manners of Reading: Print Culture and Popular Instruction in the Anglophone Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Williams, Abigail. 2017. The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home. New Haven and London: Yale University Press; Ellison, Katherine E. 2006. Fatal News: Reading and Information Overload in Early EighteenthCentury Literature. London and New York: Routledge; Lupton, Christina. 2012. Knowing Books: The Consciousness of Mediation in EighteenthCentury Britain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Crain, Patricia. 2000. The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from the

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23

New England Primer to the Scarlet Letter. Stanford: Stanford University Press; Eddy, Matthew D. 2013. “The Shape of Knowledge: Children and the Visual Culture of Literacy and Numeracy.” Science in Context 26, no. 2: 215–245. 56. Frijhoff, Willem Th.M. 1982. “Van onderwijs naar opvoedend onderwijs: Ontwikkelingslijnen van opvoeding en onderwijs in Noord-Nederland in de achttiende eeuw.” In Onderwijs en opvoeding in de achttiende eeuw: Verslag van het symposium, Doesburg 1982, edited by Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw: 3–39. Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA-Holland University Press, esp. 22. 57. Crain, The Story of A; Houston, Rab. 1988. Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education (1500–1800). London and New  York: Longman, esp. 2; Grenby, Matthew O. 2015. “Children’s literature, the home, and the debate on public versus private education, c. 1760–1845.” Oxford Review of Education 41, no. 4: 464–481; Grenby, Matthew O. 2013. “The Origins of Children’s Literature.” In The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature, edited by Matthew O.  Grenby and Andrea Immel: 3–18. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Brown, Gillian. 2006. “The Metamorphic Book: Children’s Print Culture in the Eighteenth Century.” Eighteenth Century Studies 39, no. 3: 351–362; Lerer, Seth. 2008. Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History, from Aesop to Harry Potter. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, chapters 4 and 5; Merveldt, Nikola von. 2019. “Fiktionalität des Faktischen Theoretische Überlegungen zum Kinderund Jugendsachbuch.” Jahrbuch der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichtsdidaktik 2019 (thematic issue on “Fakt, Fake und Fiktion”): 14–26. 58. In modern literacy studies, focusing on textual practices as well as audiovisual and digital mass media, such a broad and skilled-based definition of literacy is quite common. Media literacy scholars consider social practices, critical thinking skills and the awareness of the impact of media to be vital conditions for lettered citizens in society. For example, Livingstone, Sonia. 2004. “Media Literacy and the Challenge of New Information and Communication Technologies.” The Communication Review 7, no. 1: 3–14, esp. 11–12; Lankshear, Colin. 2011. “Ideas of Functional Literacy: Critique and Redefinition of an Educational Goal (1985).” In Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives, edited by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel: 3–20. New  York: Peter Lang; Silverblatt, Art, Nikole Brown, Donald C. Miller, and Julie Smith, eds. 2014. Media Literacy: Keys to Interpreting Media Messages. 4th ed. Santa Barbara: Praeger, esp. 3–14.

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59. Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 1990. “De Nederlandse Verlichting nagerekend: de verkoopcijfers van het oeuvre van Willem Emmery de Perponcher.” In Geschiedenis en cultuur: achttien opstellen (liber amicorum for H.W. von der Dunk), edited by Ed Jonker and Maarten van Rossum: 171–185, esp. 179–180. 60. Johannes, Gert-Jan. 2001. “The development of the literary field and the limitations of ‘minor’ languages: The case of the Netherlands 1750–1850.” Poetics 28, no. 5/6: 349–376. Scholars assume that roughly 20 percent of all Dutch books published in the eighteenth century were translations, though the number of translations was quite a bit higher in certain genres: no less than 80 percent of Dutch novels were translated works: Kloek, Joost J. 1997. Een begrensd vaderland. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 12. On translations on the children’s books market: Salman, “Children’s Books as a Commodity”. 61. Cf. Christensen, Nina, Charlotte Appel, Matthew O. Grenby, and Andrea Immel, eds. [In preparation]. Books for Children: Transnational Encounters. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; O’Sullivan, Emer. 2019.  “Translating Children’s Literature: What, for Whom, How and Why: A Basic Map of Actors, Factors and Contexts.” Belas Infiéis 8, no. 3: 13–35; Lathey, Gillian. 2010. The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature: Invisible Storytellers. London and New York: Routledge. 62. Salman, Jeroen. 2000. “‘Om tot presentjes aan kinderen te geven’: Het kinderboek in de achttiende-eeuwse boekhandel.” In Tot volle waschdom: Bijdragen aan de geschiedenis van de kinder- en jeugdliteratuur, edited by Berry Dongelmans, Netty van Rotterdam, Jeroen Salman, and Janneke van der Veer: 75–84. The Hague: Biblion, 84, table 4. 63. Cf. Salman, “Children’s Books as a Commodity”, 84–85 and table 4; Buijnsters, P.J. 1989. “Nederlandse kinderboeken uit de achttiende eeuw.” In De hele Bibelebontse berg: De geschiedenis van het kinderboek in Nederland & Vlaanderen van de middeleeuwen tot heden, edited by Harry Bekkering, Nettie Heimeriks and Willem van Toorn: 169–228. Amsterdam: Querido, 187; Kouwenberg, Annemieke. 2010. ‘De kennis der Duitsche taal is voor een geleerden hedendaags onontbeerlijk’: Duitse natuurwetenschappen en pedagogiek in Nederlandse genootschappen rond 1800. Amsterdam: APAHolland University Press, esp. chapter III. 64. Blamires, David. 2009. Telling Tales: The Impact of Germany on English Children’s, Books 1780–1918. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers; Lathey, The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature. 65. For example, [Rijn, Gerrit van]. 1883. Catalogus eener belangrijke verzameling kinderboeken, kinderspelen en kinderprenten. Utrecht: J.L. Beijers; Veen, C.F. van. 1980. “Een bibliografische excursie op het gebied van het 18e-eeuwse kinderboek.” Documentatieblad Werkgroep 18e Eeuw 45: 3–20.

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66. Daalder, D.L. 1950. Wormcruyt met suycker: Historisch-critisch overzicht van de Nederlandse kinderliteratuur. Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, esp. 54–55. 67. Buijnsters, P.J., and L. Buijnsters-Smets. 1997. Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800. Zwolle: Waanders; Buijnsters, “Nederlandse kinderboeken uit de achttiende eeuw”. Van Alphen has long been presented as the ‘father of Dutch children’s ­ literature’. On Van Alphen’s poems, see for example Alphen, Hieronymus van. 1998. Kleine gedigten voor kinderen. Edited by P.J. Buijnsters. Amsterdam: Athenaeum– Polak & Van Gennep; Saalmink, L.G. 1995. “Een vriend hunner jeugd en een vriend hunner kinderen: Over de drukgeschiedenis en het kopijrecht van de kindergedichten van Alphen.” De Boekenwereld 12, no. 2: 84–99; Vries, Anne de. 1981. “Hieronijmus van Alphen en de kinderen van zijn tijd.” Spektator 11, no. 2: 142–170. 68. Buijnsters, P.J. 1996. “Schatgraven in Niemandsland: De (her)ontdekking van het Nederlandse kinderboek uit de achttiende eeuw.” Nederlandse letterkunde 1: 317–327, esp. 325. 69. Linden, Jaap ter, Anne de Vries and Dick Welsink, eds. 1995. A is een aapje: Opstellen over ABC-boeken van de vijftiende eeuw tot heden. Amsterdam: Querido; Wingerden, Marjoke Rietveld-van. 1995. Jeugdtijdschriften in Nederland & Vlaanderen, 1757–1942: bibliografie. Leiden: Primavera Pers. 70. Uil, Huib. 2015. De scholen syn planthoven van de gemeente: Het onderwijs in Zeeland en Staats-Vlaanderen 1578–1801. PhD Diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, esp. attachment 8; Bottema, Jaap. 1999. Naar school in de Ommelanden: Scholen, schoolmeesters en hun onderwijs in de Groninger Ommelanden ca. 1500–1795. Bedum: Forsten & Profiel, esp. 55–63; Booy, E.P. de. 1977. De weldaet der scholen: Het plattelandsonderwijs in de provincie Utrecht van 1580 tot het begin der 19de eeuw. Haarlem: Gottmer, attachment 11; Booy, E.P. de. 1980. Kweekscholen der wijsheid: Basis- en vervolgonderwijs in de steden van de provincie Utrecht van 1580 tot het begin der 19e eeuw. Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, esp.  attachments 2 and 3; Roosenboom, H.Th.M. 1997. De dorpsschool in de Meierij van ‘s Hertogenbosch van 1648 tot 1795. Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, esp. attachment 3; Esseboom, C. 1995. Onderwysinghe der Jeught: Onderwijs en onderwijstoezicht in de 18e eeuw op het Eiland van Dordrecht. [s.l.]: [s.n.], esp. 32–34. 71. Baggerman, Arianne. 2014. “The infinite universe of eighteenth century children’s literature: Required reading and experiences of reading by fictional and real-life children around 1800.” In Childhood and emotion: Across cultures 1450–1800, edited by Claudia Jarzbowsky and Max Safley:

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106–121. London and New York: Routledge; Baggerman, “Otto van Eck en de anderen”; Salman, “‘Om tot presentjes aan kinderen te geven’”; Salman, “Children’s Books as a Commodity”. 72. Lettering Young Readers as such agrees with Hilton and Shefrin’s demand to locate the history of education and children’s literature within cultural history: Hilton, Mary, and Jill Shefrin. 2016. Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices. Farnham: Ashgate. Cf. a study dedicated to the American literary imagination of children in their role of citizens that would contribute to the creation of a new nation on the North American continent: Weikle-Mills, Courtney. 2012. Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640–1868. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. In Dutch research on the history of education, children’s education is generally studied as a societal domain separate from politics, although pedagogical historians have assumed that Dutch educators tried to release their children from constraints as well as to restrict them, cf. Dekker, Het verlangen naar opvoeden; Bakker, Nelleke, Jan Noordman and Marjoke Rietveld-van Wingerden. 2010. Vijf eeuwen opvoeden in Nederland: idee en praktijk 1500–2000. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum; Roberts, Benjamin. 1998. Through the keyhole: Dutch child-rearing practices in the 17th and 18th century: three urban elite families. Hilversum: Verloren.

PART I

Young Readers as Social Participants

CHAPTER 2

The Order of the Alphabet: The Representation of Consumption and Production in Audiovisual ABC Books

2.1   Introduction From 1960 onwards, ‘Veilig leren lezen’ (‘Learning to read safely’) has been the method most frequently used for the initial phase of reading education in contemporary Dutch primary schools. Since its introduction by a group of Catholic brothers, this method has been revised on a couple of occasions. Whereas ‘Boom-Roos-Vis’ (‘Tree-Rose-Fish’) were the first few words that pupils learned to read in 1960, children nowadays start their reading education with ‘Ik-Kim-Sim’ (‘I-Kim-Sim’). This revision was spurred by changing educational ideas: the latest version of ‘Veilig leren lezen’ intends to introduce only one new letter at a time and aims to relate it to the letters a child already knows.1 But this didactic shift also brought about a distinctly different perspective on children and their relation to the world around them. The method’s first version connected the alphabet’s letters to natural phenomena drawn from the children’s daily environment, but this most recent iteration invites the youngster to take the individual self as the main point of departure and urges the beginning reader to consider other children (‘Kim’ and ‘Sim’) in relation to this self. So, for developing children, ‘I’ has become the centre of their universe. This example illustrates that the methods used in the initial phase of reading education not only are influenced by didactical opinions but also reflect ideas about who the learning child is or should be and how this © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7_2

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youngster is related to the surrounding world. The underlying assumption that language and words are never neutral instruments to describe the outside world had been explicitly communicated to children in late-­ eighteenth-­century books on logic.2 Karel Philip Moritz’s Proeve eener korte beöeffenende redeneerkunde (Attempt at a Small Practical Logic, 1789)—translated from the German book Versuch einer kleinen praktischen Kinderlogik (1786)—argues that although people shape their own coherent versions of reality via the use of language, because language is the only available tool for depicting the outside world, linguistic utterances never coincide with the real world itself: ‘The naming of things shapes a world of circumstances and relationships on its own’ (‘De benaaming der dingen maakt wederom op zich zelf, eene Waereld van omstandigheden en betrekkingen uit’).3 According to Moritz, people use books to preserve and transmit the narratives they have created.4 This chapter regards the eighteenth-century ABC book, the prime tool with which almost every child in that era learned to read Dutch, as a medium that shapes narratives about the outside world. My approach is inspired by Patricia Crain’s and Edel Lamb’s interpretations of early modern English and American initial reading guides. They consider the primer as a medium that represents the alphabet as a system and that implicitly connects this alphabetic system to other systems beyond the book. Early modern primers, they argue, initiated children first and foremost into the ‘system of Christianity’: via the continuous repetition of letters, the alphabet achieved a ‘near-sacramental status’, while reading was transformed into a sacred ritual.5 What changed during the Enlightenment, according to Crain, was the type of system the alphabet reflected: the system of Christianity was replaced by that of a visible, profane world.6 What little research on Dutch ABC books there is has mainly focused on the striking continuities in the genre and the didactic developments among these books in the wake of the Enlightenment.7 Piet Buijnsters has discussed the eighteenth-century shift towards sense-oriented, playful ABC books, in which phenomena from the daily world of children made their entry.8 This chapter homes in on the significant interaction between the ABC books’ didactic developments and the external worlds they represent. By means of internationally comparative analyses, this chapter will demonstrate that the audiovisual alphabet developed in the Dutch Republic was inspired to a great extent by international examples, but it differed significantly from the famous performative model developed by Comenius (who lived in the Dutch Republic for several years). It shaped

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instead the alphabet as a reference system that organized the profane external world beyond the book. Whereas the first Dutch audiovisual alphabets (1750–1780) ordered the world as a system of consumer goods, Johan Hendrik Swildens’s (1746–1809) highly popular ABC book from 1781 represented the practices of consumption and production that were behind such consumer goods. In both variants, reading children are first and foremost conceptualized as responsible consumers within the worldly systems depicted by these alphabets. This role is not passive, though, as the understanding and appropriation of the external social system is perceived to be vital to its preservation and—in the case of Swildens—to be a crucial precondition for political reformation. So, in striking contrast to today’s youngsters and the self-oriented approach of contemporary reading education, eighteenth-century alphabet-learning children learned to approach the world as a communal system, dependent on a harmonious process of consumption and production.

2.2   Comenius as an Innovator? Johann Amos Comenius’s (1592–1670) Orbis Sensualium Pictus (Visible World in Pictures, 1658) is generally considered to be the international starting point for a new, sense-based alphabet didactics. In the Comenian picture alphabet, every letter is connected to a picture of a phenomenon taken from the visible world and functions as the phonic representation of animal cries and human sounds (Fig.  2.1).9 The picture of a dog, for example, is connected to a dog’s growling sound (‘rrr’), which refers to the letter ‘r’. Comenian picture alphabets clearly differed from the ABC books that were widely available at the time. The Dutch ‘Groot ABC book’ (large ABC book) or ‘Haneboek’ (rooster primer), modelled after the German Teütsche Kinder Tafel (1534) and the English ABC by Thomas Cranmer from around 1547, was identifiable by its diligent, wide-awake cock on the frontispiece. It had a fixed composition: 16 octavo pages (a thrice-folded paper sheet) offered alphabets in several letter types, lists of vowels and syllables, the Lord’s Prayer, the 12 articles of faith, the Ten Commandments, and several prayers and rules (Fig.  2.2).10 There were also ‘Kleine ABC books’ (small ABC books) of only eight pages of alphabets and prayers, as well as ‘hornbooks’, small wooden paddles inscribed with the alphabet and covered with a transparent sheet of horn.11 The copies and material that have come down to us show a certain amount of variation in

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Fig. 2.1  Comenius, Johann Amos. 1659. Orbis sensualium pictus: Hoc est, Omnium fundamentalium in mundo rerum, & in vitâ actionum, pictura & nomenclatura. = Joh. Amos Commenius’s Visible world: Or, A picture and nomenclature of all the chief things that are in the world; and of mens employments therein. Translated into English by Charles Hoole. London: for J. Kirton, 4–5. @ British Library Board: E.2116.(1.)

content—as Lutheran, Catholic, and Jewish versions of the ABC book were created as well—and frontispieces, but are notable above all for their continuity and uniformity.12 They evoke the image of a mechanical tradition of initial reading education, dedicated to continuous repetition and the rattling off of letters, syllables and religious lessons. The Dutch situation, however, behoves us to think beyond a sharp opposition between traditional memory-based learning on the one hand and innovative Enlightened didactics on the other. The suggestion of a strict contrast between these two forms of didactics is rooted in the

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Fig. 2.2  [Anonymous] 1781. Groot ABC boek: zeer bekwaam voor de jonge kinderen te leeren. Amsterdam: Adam Meyer. Utrecht University Library: UBU Rar. br. duod. 37

Enlightened critique of a memorization-based didactic model that was omnipresent in early modern Western European vernacular education but was considered to be at odds with the Enlightened striving towards educating children so that they would obtain knowledge and skills on the basis of their own empirical experiences, cognitive understanding and curiosity.13 Following Rousseau in her pedagogical tract Proeve over de opvoeding (Treatise on Education, 1779), Elisabeth Wolff (1738–1804) called on mothers to restrain themselves from inundating the child’s memory, since children had to develop their own distinctive cognitive skills: ‘Speak to their reason, not to their memory—A child is not a Bird after all; so that we teach a parrot to repeat, but approach a Child as a reasonable creature!’ (‘Spreekt tot hunne reden, niet tot hun geheugen—Een Kind is immers geen Vogel; dat men een Papegaay leer’ snappen, maar een Kind als een redelyk schepzeltje behandele!’)14 With regard to reading education in

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particular, the teacher Berend Brugsma (1797–1868) grumbled about the practice of mechanical reading, which resulted only in the ‘mere reproduction of sound’ (‘bloote voortplanting van geluid’) without contributing to the formation of a ‘thinking creature’ (‘denkend wezen’).15 Some of these Enlightened critics strategically attacked their ignorant predecessors in efforts to highlight their own powers of innovation. Their critique of the mechanical didactic method as passive and old-fashioned spurred the development of new reading didactics as well as the implementation of an official school policy (1806) and a ‘General Booklist’ (1810) prompting the replacement of old schoolbooks with contemporary alternatives,16 but these alternatives did not immediately replace traditional didactics and its associated materials: rooster primers were still being published and used during the nineteenth century.17 Only recently have scholars looked more critically at this Enlightenment era attack on passive parroting. Ann-Sophie Lehmann has convincingly demonstrated that Dirck Adriaensz Valcooch’s late-sixteenth-century handbook for schoolmasters of the ‘Duytse’ (Dutch) schools—the elementary schools where children learned to read and write Dutch—already reflected a practice of ‘sense-based learning’. Because Valcooch continuously used ‘visual, haptic, and auditorial means’ to further his pupil’s skills, Lehmann has argued, he developed a sensual didactics that was refined and institutionalized over the course of the Enlightenment.18 Indeed, Valcooch’s description of proper reading education appeals strongly to the child’s active body: the reading practice involves specific bodily positions—while reading the child has to stand upright, should hold the book, must point at words—and depends on the connection between the visual letter-character on the page and the loud, clear voice that transfers this image to sound. Significantly, this activity, of translating the word-picture to a phonic performance, is described with the verb ‘verclaeren’ (to explicate): it is depicted as an interpretative and performative practice instead of a passive process of absorption. When the children recite, whether they are spelling or reading, Then the book should be in their left hand, And he will hold the pen in his right hand. One will let three children stand behind their desk, When one of the three has recited, then the other will follow, While they are reading out, they will not mumble or daydream: But they will pronounce the words loud and clear,

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And point and stick the pen on every letter and word, They will not lift the pen from the word before they have explicated it. Als de Kinders opsegghen, ’t zy spelden of lesen, Soo moet het Boeck in de slincker handt wesen, Ende de pen sal hy in de rechter handt vaten. Dry kinderen sal men aen de banc staen laen, Als d’een van dryen heeft opgheseyt, sal d’ander comen, In ’t opsegghen sullen sy niet mommelen noch dromen: Maar luyde en helder die woorden uytspreken, Op elcke letter en woordt de pen stippen en steken, De pen van ’t woord niet houden eer sy ’t hebben verclaert,19

Although Valcooch’s book was the first Dutch handbook for schoolmasters, he was neither a pioneer nor an exceptional figure. Sensory alphabet education, in which sensory objects function as the ‘cue to the oral performance of recognizing and naming the individual letters’,20 was an age-old phenomenon.21 For example Erasmus, inspired by Horace, recommended the baking of letter-shaped cookies: ‘Bake the letter shapes, and when the child gives the right name for a particular letter, his reward is to eat it!’22 It is known that such advice was followed in the early modern period,23 including in the Dutch Republic: several cake tins for gingerbread alphabets have come down to us.24 Such ideas and practices were not too far afield from what one finds in Johannes Henricus Nieuwold’s (1737–1812) early nineteenth-century reflections on initial reading education. In his posthumously published tract Over het aanvankelijk onderwijs (On Initial Education, 1822), he held the conviction that nobody could learn by the mere use of the head: he considered bodily practices and active, playful handling to be vital preconditions for any thorough learning process: ‘Working with the hands is useful’ (‘Werk voor de handen is nuttig’).25 This is not to say that Nieuwold did not introduce certain innovative ideas: while children in this era usually learned to spell and read before attempting to master the art of writing, Nieuwold opted for integrated literacy education, arguing that writing offered pupils ‘some physical exercise’ (‘eenige ligchaamsbeweging’) and ‘what pupils create themselves will be less easily forgotten’ (‘Hetgene de leerlingen zelve vormen, vergeten zij minder’).26 It is, however, fruitful to

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be aware of the many continuities between pre-Comenian and post-­ Enlightenment literacy education in the Dutch Republic. A more specific reason to question the impact of Comenius on Dutch reading education, moreover, is the fact that Comenius’s Orbis Pictus was never translated into Dutch, even though the book had been translated into more than 12 languages and Comenius himself lived in Amsterdam for several years.27 Only a brief and, what is more, an unillustrated description of Orbis Pictus was included in Comenius’s collected works printed in Amsterdam (Opera didactica omnia, 1657).28 To the best of my knowledge, the only Dutch-language Comenius-like alphabet was published not in the Dutch Republic but in the Southern Netherlands. This alphabet was included in the Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes Almanach (New pleasant and useful St Nicholas almanac, 1798–1803), a combination almanac and ABC book, and as such a hybrid product not to be found in other Western European regions.29 Via its title and this frontispiece—featuring St Nicholas, who handed out presents and sweets to children—the Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes Almanach presents itself as imitating the popular almanac series St. Nicolaes Almanach (1766–1792), founded by the Hague publisher Pieter Servaas and continued by Johannes François Jacobs de Agé from 1789 onwards.30 According to its title page, this new almanac was published in Maastricht and sold by the brothers Gimblet in Ghent, cities more than 100 miles apart (Fig. 2.3). The Gimblet brothers presumably used ‘Maastricht’ merely as a secret address while publishing the almanacs themselves: several woodcuts in their almanac would later be reused by the Ghent publishing house Snoeck-Decaju, which regularly worked with the Gimblet brothers to produce almanacs and chapbooks.31 Moreover, the almanac’s frontispiece featured St Nicholas, who went to ‘the land of waes’ (‘‘t land van waes’): a region northeast of Ghent. The second part of this almanac (1801) includes the section ‘Figuerlyken en Leersaemen A,B,C, voor de jonge Jeugd’ (Figurative and instructive ABC for young youths),32 in obvious imitation of the Neues ABC buch (New ABC book) originally included in the Neu erfundener Lust-Weg zu allerley schönen Künsten und Wissenschaften (A Newfound Pleasant Approach to Several Fine Arts and Sciences, 1681). This Neu erfundener Lustweg, often reprinted in the late eighteenth century,33 was originally published by the Nuremberg publisher Balthasar Joachim Endter, whose father had been the first publisher of Comenius’s Orbis sensualium pictus.34

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Fig. 2.3  [Anonymous]. 1798. Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes almanach, voor het jaer ons heere Jesu-Christi 1798. Maastricht: Ph. and P. Gimblet, frontispiece. Ghent University Library: BIB.G.002521 v.1

Following its German example and the Comenian model, the pictures in the ‘Figuerlyken en Leersaemen A,B,C,’ refer to sounds instead of words. The letters are mostly connected to human sounds instead of the natural and animal sounds that Comenius mostly referred to. Comenius related the letter F to the blowing wind, for example, while the Neues ABC buch and ‘Figuerlyken en Leersaemen A,B,C,’ connected it to a human figure blowing out his mouth (Figs. 2.4 and 2.5). The reader is explicitly addressed as the young person who is to produce and perform these human sounds, and must mimic the depicted figures: ‘gij’ (‘you’), for example, screams ‘O, O’ when a cat chases a mouse.35 Audiovisual ABC books produced within the Dutch Republic, by contrast, were not so dependent on bodily performance. Although various in character and having been inspired by different international traditions, they shared the ambition to spur the children’s sense-based experience of the alphabet within the confines of the book, so as to help them approach the alphabet as a referential system connecting letters and words to

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Fig. 2.4  [Anonymous]. [c. 1740]. Neu erfundener Lust-Weg zu allerley schönen Künsten und Wissenschaften. Nürnberg: Johann Christoph Weigel, 7. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: M: Pb 597

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Fig. 2.5  [Anonymous]. 1801. Het tweede deel van den Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes almanach, voor het tegenwoordig jaer. Maastricht: Ph. and P. Gimblet, 9. Ghent University Library: BIB.G.002521 v.2

elements in the outside world. As such, they invite children to perceive and understand the external social reality as an order they need to maintain.

2.3   Dutch Audiovisual Alphabets as Orders to Consume and Value The audiovisual didactic model that achieved the greatest popularity in Dutch vernacular reading education offered an alternative template in which every letter was connected to a word beginning with that specific letter: ‘dog’ is related not to the growling sound the animal produces (‘rrr’, cf. Fig.  2.1), but to the first letter of the word (d). This didactic variant presents letters as referential signs related to the external world instead of sounds that were available in this world. This Dutch model for ABC books had been inspired by an English innovation of Benjamin Collins and John Newbery. Newbery (1713–1767), the famous London publisher who was transforming literacy education and children’s literature into a sensory playful process from the 1740s

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onwards, had published Little Pretty Pocket Book in 1744, in which images were connected to letters. The image-letter relationship was weak, however, as the letters were not connected to the children’s games depicted.36 The relationship between alphabet letters and images became much stronger when Newbery published, with Benjamin Collins, Royal Battledore (1746), a hornbook (paddle) in which every letter of the alphabet was connected to an animal or object.37 This hornbook, which became an impressive commercial hit, was soon—presumably in 1751—adapted into the highly successful book The Royal Primer (Fig. 2.6). During this period, the Amsterdam publisher Kornelis de Wit brought out the Groot A,B,C Boek (Great ABC book, c. 1750), which was clearly inspired by The Royal Primer.38 Although the extent of De Wit’s direct access to English examples via his network is not clear, we know that De Wit had some interest in and knowledge about the English book market: during the 1750s, he published several translations, including from English books.39

Fig. 2.6  [Anonymous]. [c. 1787]. The royal primer; or, an easy and pleasant guide to the art of reading. London: Isaiah Thomas, 8–9. Graphic Arts Collection, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library: Hamilton 118 s

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Fig. 2.7  [Anonymous]. [c. 1750]. Groot A, B, C, boek. Zeer bekwaam voor de jonge kinderen te leeren. Amsterdam: Kornelis de Wit, s.p. Leiden University Library: 1190 H 7

Both The Royal Primer and De Wit’s Groot A,B,C, Book combined picture alphabets, graphic letters in several letter types, lists of vowels and syllables, several religious texts (including prayers and the Ten Commandments), and a preliminary poem which explicitly cautions against adult ignorance (Figs. 2.6 and 2.7). In De Wit’s primer, however, the visual alphabet was combined with several pages containing small religious images, depicting the ten articles of faith and the Ten Commandments. These images have a mnemonic function, as had been the case in De Wit’s earlier publications with religious imagery.40 Such mnemonic images were removed completely from the second version of De Wit’s ABC book, Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek (Newly invented ABC book, 1759).41 They were replaced by four new visual

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alphabets featuring pictures derived from the children’s environment. As De Wit explains in his preface, these pictures were ‘of their Toys, or of things that Families use on a daily basis’ (‘van hun Speeltuig, of van dingen, welke in de Huisgezinnen dagelyks gebruikt worden’).42 These images do not serve as mnemonic devices but instead help to activate the letter’s phonic sound: ‘Someone who still doesn’t know the letter, / May ask the illustration of its name’ (‘Die de Letter nog niet weet, / Vraag het Beeldje hoe hij heet’).43 De Wit presents this audiovisual method as innovative and as ‘unknown in our Country until now, as far as I know’ (‘tot nog toe, myns wetens, in ons Land niet bekend’).44 De Wit’s Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek served as a model for the Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek (New Dutch Spelling Book, 1780) created by Willem Emmery de Perponcher (1741–1819), a nobiliary regent in the States of Utrecht: the book’s four picture alphabets contain several word-­ letter combinations and iconographic compositions that had already been used by De Wit.45 De Perponcher added an another, tactile dimension to his alphabet didactics in advising parents—in imitation to the German philanthropist Johann Bernhard Basedow46—to cut out the 25 images corresponding to the letters of the alphabet and to use them as playing cards: children should recognize and name the letters on their cards in order to earn a ‘garland’ or ‘cracknel’ (‘krans’, ‘krakeling’).47 Thus De Perponcher approaches the images not only as two-dimensional visual references to sounds but also as physical play-objects (‘book-toy hybrids’, in Heather Klemann’s words48) that children could hold and touch. As such, De Wit and De Perponcher gradually developed an audiovisual alphabet model in which each letter functions as a nonmimetic representation of something in the outside world. In the case of such ‘worldly alphabets’, Patricia Crain has argued with regard to English-language primers, the outside world is represented as a ‘vast quantity of things’, ‘a vast storehouse’ that is ‘knowable’, ‘obtainable’ and ‘up for consumption’, and in which every letter represents a certain value (‘A stands for …’).49 Following this line of interpretation, Dutch audiovisual alphabets can be characterized as storehouses of obtainable consumption goods as well. Or rather their Dutch creators developed a more radical consumer model, as the books invited children to understand the outside world as an organized system of value and exchange. The difference between the Dutch and English alphabets appears first and foremost to be visual. For his second ABC book—de Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek—De Wit selected pictures of toys and domestic

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consumer objects rooted in the children’s daily environment,50 while the Royal Primer mostly included pictures of animals and public functions. For example, whereas the Royal Primer combined K and ‘King’, De Wit refers to a ‘potty-chair’ (‘kakstoel’), ‘kettle’ (‘ketel’) and ‘clock’ (‘klok’). Moreover, these obtainable goods in the Dutch alphabets are represented as being part of a system of consumption. In De Wit’s Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek, the alphabet images are extended through pictures of numbers and coins, explicitly linking education in reading to training in numeracy and financial literacy. This combination of literacies had already been forged in, for example, Keach’s late-seventeenth-century Instructions for Children,51 but De Wit’s innovation resided in his attempt to relate digits as well as letters to the children’s everyday visual world. De Wit included a richly illustrated page in his primer, on which each digit is visualized by picturing the corresponding number of objects or animals: five mills, six ships and so on (Fig. 2.8). In the middle of the page, a man reads a book within the setting of a study. In this way, the Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C.  Boek created a connection between the abilities to read and to count—presenting them both as vital forces in the development whereby one becomes ‘learned’—and linked these literacies to objects in the external world. As a consequence, these worldly objects represent certain quantities and numerical values, such as the depicted coins on the next pages do as well: as the accompanying text explains, one sixpence (‘schelling’) levels with six stivers, one stiver levels with eight farthings (‘duiten’). In this way, De Wit’s Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek added a commercial layer to the idea of ‘value’ akin to what Crain has connected to eighteenth-century primers: De Wit’s ABC book represents a profane world of consumer goods obtainable and able to be exchanged by means of an internal financial order. De Perponcher’s Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek followed De Wit’s model of combining alphabets, digits and worldly goods. Distinctive here, however, is De Perponcher’s initiative in selecting pictures of body parts, such as a foot, an arm, a nose, ear or eye. This idea can be related to a tradition of human alphabets, but with the distinction that in De Perponcher’s case, the letter was not itself composed of human figures but referred to body parts.52 As an effect, limbs and the senses become elements of the represented external order of tangible objects that could be obtained and exchanged. The body parts, as such, invite the alphabet-­ learning children to access this outside order by means of their own hands,

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Fig. 2.8  [Anonymous]. [1759]. Een Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek: Om de kleine kinderen, op eene gemakkelyke Wyze, De verscheide Soorten van Letteren te leeren kennen en noemen […]. Amsterdam: K[ornelis] d[e] W[it], plate 5. KB National Library: KW 30 C 32

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feet and senses: through an entanglement with worldly objects, they can participate in a system of value and exchange.

2.4   Communal Exchange in Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek De Perponcher’s Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek was a bestseller in the 1780s, achieving far greater commercial success than De Perponcher’s books for adults had: two large print runs of 1080 copies sold out.53 This triumph, however, was nothing compared to the sales garnered by Johan Hendrik Swildens’s (1746–1809) Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd (Patriotic A-B Boek for Dutch Youth, 1781).54 In every respect, this primer was an ambitious publication, containing many engravings designed by Swildens himself after drawings by the eminent illustrator Pieter Wagenaar Jr.55 The Amsterdam publisher Willem Holtrop decided to print no fewer than 6325 copies, a very impressive print run at the time. Holtrop presumably hoped to equal the recent success of Johannes Florentius Martinet’s (1729–1795) Katechismus der Natuur (Catechism of nature, 1777–1779), which sold 6000 copies during its first year after publication.56 The print run of Vaderlandsch A-B Boek was subdivided into copies on luxurious and on thinner paper, with prices starting at 0.75 and going up to no less than seven guilders. The cheapest version—still more than twice as expensive as De Perponcher’s ABC book57— turned out to be the most popular: all its copies were sold. As for the expensive, luxurious version, two-thirds of the print run remained unsold, causing Holtrop to suffer a serious loss.58 Apparently the book was especially popular among families unable to spend much on books—or among well-to-do families that nevertheless preferred a cheaper edition. But although publisher Holtrop was stuck with expensive unsaleable goods, the 5376 sold copies is an impressive total, especially against the background of a relatively small book market in the Dutch Republic, with only around 12,000–18,000 families able to buy books on a regular basis.59 The book’s success led up to the publication of a new, even cheaper edition consisting of 2750 copies printed in 1785, embellished with woodcuts based on the original engravings.60 Not a single copy of this print run has been handed down to libraries or archives: were they read to pieces? The enormous success of Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek depended highly on the sociopolitical message it disseminated, aligning perfectly

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with the Dutch Republic’s rapidly changing political and social circumstances during the first half of the 1780s. While the ABC books discussed in the previous section were published during a period when the Dutch Republic was still largely united in a general Enlightenment striving towards social improvement, the Republic’s inhabitants became deeply divided during the 1780s.61 Swildens held a profoundly different view on the Republic’s political situation than his predecessor De Perponcher. Whereas De Perponcher, influenced by his own background as a nobiliary regent, wished to preserve the existing constitutional model and the powerful position of noblemen, Swildens used the printing press to disseminate his revolutionary political ideas to a large audience.62 As a committed, reform-minded Patriot, he attacked the powerful position of Stadholder William V of Orange and his allies among the nobility, pleading for a new form of government based on Enlightened, democratic ideals of freedom and equality. So, in contrast with De Perponcher, Swildens aimed to implement the ABC model in his striving for sociopolitical change. His primer was an instrument to attack Stadholder Willem V—as it criticized, for example, the practice of intestate succession and characterized the prince as ‘unworthy’ and ‘contemptuous’63—and served above all as an attempt to create a new type of Patriotist citizenship through the initial education of children in reading. Whereas some late-eighteenth-century authors used the ABC format only to transfer radical political ideas among adults (‘pseudo ABC books’),64 Swildens was a ‘popular philosopher’ who developed a pedagogical programme in which reading and politics were fundamentally enmeshed65: he approached the alphabet as a system that, in its turn, reflected an ideal coherent sociopolitical system. By means of an audiovisual process whereby they internalized this system, children would develop as growing citizens embodying the Patriot ideal of a communal society whose success would be owed to its inhabitants’ harmonious cooperation. As such, Swildens considered alphabet learning to be a vital stepping-stone to social change and progress. Swildens had developed his pedagogical programme during his journey to Saint Petersburg (1773–1778), an ambitious undertaking stemming from his interest in the reformist and educational ideas of Catherine the Great (1729–1696). Together with the school reformer Ivan Betskoi, Catherine developed a General Plan for the Education of Young People of Both Sexes (1764),66 followed later by a very successful primer (1781) as well as children’s books for her grandsons (1781, 1783).67 Swildens was particularly interested in her plan to produce a civil code for children for

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use in elementary schools.68 Although he did not succeed in developing such a politically oriented school textbook in cooperation with Catherine, the people and books he encountered during his years in Russia exerted an enormous impact on his pedagogical thought and practice, as he emphasized in a treatise that accompanied his primer’s publication: Verslag van den oorsprong en de Staatkundige oogmerken des Vaderlandschen A.B. Boeks (Treatise on the original and political objectives of the Patriotic AB Boek).69 In this treatise, Swildens argued that new schoolbooks for children of all social classes would be the only possible instrument to reverse the process of ‘dreaded decline’ (‘gevreesd verval’) and reach the ‘required high level of flourishing and prosperity’ (‘vereischte hooge trap van bloei en welvaaren’). He criticized the current state of education—restricted, he charged, to ‘reading, writing, arithmetic and the mechanical memorization of many religious dogmas’ (‘leezen, schryven, cyfferen en het machinaal van buiten leeren van eene menigte Leerstellingen der Religie’)—as well as the ‘studious people’ (‘studeerende Lieden’) who horde their knowledge for themselves and are concerned not about their fellow human beings but rather their own profitable ‘honorary positions’ (‘voordeelige Eerampten’). What the country needed was a schoolbook to teach all children ‘general fundamental truths and, above all, many Patriotic skills’ (‘algemeene Grondwaarheden en vooral veele Vaderlandsche Kundigheden’).70 To achieve this far-reaching ambition to combine the teaching of reading with social knowledge, Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek transformed De Wit’s and De Perponcher’s sense-based didactic approach by organizing his reading lessons partly from phonic properties,71 but most of all by an extension of the visual programme of the alphabet. The Vaderlandsch A-B Boek includes an alphabet composed of visual tableaus: the ‘F’ referring to ‘fruit’ depicts a domestic scene of a father picking apples, a mother peeling apples and a child eating an apple (Fig. 2.9). This visual approach was modelled after the Neues ABC Buch (New ABC book, 1772) by the German pedagogue Christian Felix Weiße, encountered by Swildens during his return journey from Saint Petersburg through several German regions (1773–1778).72 Weiße’s influence on Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek is unmistakable, as made plain by a comparison between Swildens’s F-Fruit tableau and Weiße’s O-Obst image (Figs.  2.9 and 2.10): both pictures display fruit-eating children, accompanied by a nearly literally translated text.73

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Fig. 2.9  [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XI, ‘F: Fruit’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110

Swildens’s emblem could be considered an extended version of Weiße’s example: Swildens positions the fruit-eating child within a domestic scene in which several people interact. He also enlarges the texts beneath the picture by the inclusion of not only a short moralistic poem (in the emblem genre called the ‘motto’) but also a longer prose text (‘subscriptio’). By appropriating this bimedial model—a realistic pictura with a motto and a subscriptio—Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek can be considered within the tradition of realistic emblematics, a genre developed in the early seventeenth-­century Dutch Republic that still enjoyed some prestige in the late eighteenth century, as the several reprints of Jan Luyken’s

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Fig. 2.10  Weiße, Christian Felix. 1772. Neues A, B, C, Buch: nebst einigen kleinen Uebungen und Unterhaltungen für Kinder. Leipzig: Siegfried Leberecht Crusius, 109. Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library: Euro 1,844,627

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Fig. 2.11  [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XXI, ‘O: Olie’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110

(1649–1712) emblem books confirm.74 Swildens’s emblems bear a resemblance to Luyken’s, as seen, for example, in the emblems on human activities and work in the regularly reprinted Spiegel van het menselyk bedryf (1698), produced by Luyken together with his son Casper (cf. the oil-­ pressers in Figs. 2.11 and 2.12).75 There is, however, a fundamental difference in function between Luyken’s and Swildens’s emblems. Luyken’s pictures should be interpreted allegorically, as was the common practice in the emblem genre: realistic tableaus function as mirrors to a transcendental divine world.76 In Swildens’s AB-Boek, by contrast, the pictures function on a literal level:

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Fig. 2.12  Luyken, Jan, and Casper Luyken. 1694. Het menselyk bedryf: Vertoond in 100 verbeeldingen van ambachten, konsten, hanteeringen en bedryven, met versen. Amsterdam: Jan and Casper Luyken, 41. KB National Library: KW 132 G 43 [2]

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first and foremost, they always help the reader to connect, visually and auditorily, an abstract letter of the alphabet to the profane world beyond it. This referential function of Swildens’s pictures differentiates Swildens’s and Weiße’s letter-emblems as well: whereas Weiße’s letter-emblems lead to a moral lesson for the learning child, Swildens turned the pictures into scenes showing several people interacting within a realistic environment so as to spur the children’s understanding of interpersonal dynamics and social structures. The difference could be explained by a comparison between the letter-emblems on ‘fruit’ introduced above: Weiße’s emblem conveys the ideal of moderation, while Swildens’s relates the fruit-eating child to the youngster’s parents, their activities and the domestic setting where such activities take place (Figs. 2.9 and 2.10). Father and mother each have their own roles and places: father gathers the apples outside the house, while mother peels the apples inside the house, in order to feed the child. The consumption of fruit is thus depicted as a food chain in which father, mother and child work together in fulfilment of their own distinct parts in an interactive process of consumption and production. So, in contrast to the audiovisual alphabets that De Wit and De Perponcher had created, the letters of Swildens’s alphabet do not offer readymade objects to consume but rather visualize the process of creating such objects of consumption by depicting the raw materials of which these objects are made and the human actors involved in such making practices. Consumption is portrayed not so much as a practice of financial value exchange as instead an interpersonal and systematically organized process of consumption and production. Instead of a society that is simply set up for consumption and use, this alphabet represents a collection of components and people that together constitute an ideal Patriot society. The alphabetic system exerted direct influence on the book’s content: in accordance with the alphabet, the society is represented as an orderly system in which everything has its own role, whereas the separate parts constitute a unity, and dynamic interactions are directed towards the vital needs of its inhabitants. The last letter-emblem explicitly reflects on the interconnected alphabetic and social systems: whereas the alphabet is initiated by the ‘A’ of Agriculture as representing ‘the beginning of all human activity’ (‘het begin van alle menschlyke bezigheden’), it ends with the foundational needs of the fatherland, which make up the basis of all human occupations: ‘reason’ and ‘virtue’. Swildens presents these means as the instruments necessary to prevent a society from declining: ‘our whole Fatherland would decline if reason and virtue be lost’ (‘ons geheele

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Vaderland moet vervallen met het verval van VERSTAND en DEUGD’).77 Reason and virtue are metaphorically depicted as ‘salt’ (‘zout’) that flavours and spices everything and ‘soap’ (‘zeep’) that makes people clean. As the society’s vital needs are depicted as forms of physical consumption, the alphabet and society are systems in which separate elements (letters vs. materials and working people) can, but only together, constitute a strong community in which production and consumption can take place. Several letter-emblems reflect on interdependence. The farmer (in emblem A: ‘Akkerman’/‘Farmer’), for example, supplies the raw materials that spinners, weavers and bleachers use to make linen, a product which could be traded by merchants and manufactured by sewers and spinners (L: ‘Linnen’/‘Linen’) and which serves as a basis for the production of paper (P: ‘Papier’/‘Paper’).78 This interdependence also expands the borders of the fatherland (defined as the ‘seven provinces and the neighbouring lands that belong to them’: ‘zeven Provintien met de aangrenzende Landen, die daartoe behooren’),79 as several letter-emblems consider the (financial) dependence on East Indian trade in spices or the international herring trade.80 Such a system of consumption exists by the grace of ‘Unity’ (‘Eendracht’), indeed one of the book’s central words and a term which functions on different levels81: the fatherland needs ‘good relations’ (‘goede verstandhouding’) with Indian people as well as harmonious cooperation among the different elements of the consumption process within the country.82 This harmony also shapes the domestic environment, as has been demonstrated by means of the F-emblem: father picks the apples and mother peels them. By means of such concord, ‘every family as well as the whole country flourishes’ (‘bloeit elk Huisgezin, en het gantsche Land’)83: the family is considered to embody vital links in society, and the society is itself compared to ‘a big household’ (‘een groot Huisgezin’).84 Family and society are two comparable systems that mutually interact: just as the cow produces milk and cream for the entire land, so the mother produces milk for her child and thus contributes to ‘social welfare’ (‘Welzyn der Maatschappy’).85 Only when everyone performs their own distinct tasks can little endeavours turn into huge enterprises (‘Herring, child, although small, could earn us a large profit’: ‘Haring, kind, als is hy klein, geeft ons groot gewin’86) and profit be made with ‘the least loss of time and energy’ (‘het minste verlies van tyd en kragten’).87 Efficiency is often depicted as the society’s driving force. In the Dutch Republic, Swildens’s book asserts, one finds materials, time and energy used in an efficient way: ‘In no other

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country is the right use of time of such great importance as it is in our country’ (‘In geen Land is het wél besteeden des tyds van zulk een groot aanbelang als in ons Land’).88 What role do children fulfil in this harmonious and efficient society? Fewer than half of the pictures portray children. These children consume food within a domestic environment (the apple, the mother’s milk and the family dinner89) or alternately consume knowledge and ideas. In several pictures a parent or teacher points to tableaus—for example wool that is sheared off or ships putting out to sea (Figs. 2.13 and 2.14)—that a child has to observe and understand within the context of the larger production system: wool is manufactured into clothing via a step-by-step process involving several people (spinners, weavers, knitters, etc.) labouring to earn their wages,90 and ships facilitate overseas trade and bring in the

Fig. 2.13  [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XXIX: ‘W: Wol’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110

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Fig. 2.14  [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, XXV: ‘S: Schip’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110

income necessary to the maintenance of the land forces protecting the country.91 ‘Dutch Mothers have to teach their children to exclaim Warships! Warships!, even within the cradle’ (‘Oorlogschepen! Oorlogschepen! Moesten daarom de Nederlandsche Moeders haaren Kinderen zelfs in de wieg leeren roepen’), the accompanying text advises. Apparently the articulation of such a word—‘warship’—is connected to the child’s understanding and internalization of the social system. This particular tutelary goal, in the end, is the main reason why children should learn the alphabet: competence in articulating letters and words allows children to

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understand the larger social system in which they participate, and to internalize the revolutionary message. Although the youngster is someone who should observe and understand the social system, the child does not participate in the activities themselves that are depicted to picture this wider societal context. This is not to say that we have to reduce the child’s behaviour into a passive role. Swildens instead shows activities that belong to childhood (playing outside and learning at school) and are considered to be the necessary preparations to adulthood.92 Letter-emblem B (‘Burger’/‘Citizen’) depicts a citizen company that practises the protection of the country and, as such, contributes to its political revolution (Fig.  2.15). By looking at the

Fig. 2.15  [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, VII: ‘B: Burger’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110

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picture, ‘the boys learn to do as their father do’ (‘De jongetjes leeren doen zo als hunne Vaders’) and exercise along with them when playing with their flintlocks (‘met het snaphaantje te speelen’)—a form of play that girls, in their turn, must observe in order to prepare for their own future role.93 So the practices of playing and observation depicted in the images are the preparation and exercises for growth into an adult citizen who can collaborate in the system. The children, although mere observers and players, are already vital members of that system. The letter-emblem E (‘Eendragt’/‘Unity’) proves that point (Fig.  2.16): by forming a circle around the monument ‘Unity is strength’ (‘Eendragt maakt magt’) and

Fig. 2.16  [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop, X: ‘E: Eendragt’. KB National Library: KW 1775 D 110

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thus bearing collectively the marble figures’ weight (‘Many shoulders bear a single burden’: ‘Veele schouders draagen hier eenen last’), the children demonstrate that they embrace and feel responsible for unity as a core value of the country.94 So the alphabetical system in Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek refers to a social order existing beyond the book, while the child’s internalization of its alphabet is a stepping-stone to the understanding and observation of that order. In contrast to the alphabets of De Wit and De Perponcher, Swildens’s letters are not presented as easily digestible consumer goods: products, rather, have to be made and distributed with effort, and alliances have to be actively forged. The society, in short, is not an autonomous system but depends instead on the united and efficient effort of all its participants. Although children, as observers, are positioned outside the system in order to internalize and understand it, they nevertheless are preparing themselves to be future participants and thus to be citizens who not only engage in consumption within this system but also contribute to its maintenance and progress.

2.5   Conclusion Inspired by several English and German examples, the Dutch Republic developed a model of audiovisual ABC books that approach letters as instruments that help to describe and understand the outside world as a system of consumer goods and, later on, as an interactive production system vital to a process of consumption and societal flourishing. Although the ABC books analysed in this chapter do not represent the children as active participants within this external society, the books facilitate the children’s acquisition of vital knowledge and understanding that they will need when they come to participate in it. So the children’s task to take in their ABC books through observation is not at all a passive role: through their understanding of the system, they become co-responsible for it. Behind the audiovisual alphabet, didactics appears the ideal of social progress: the alphabets create future citizens who understand the social system through the lettered system and, once grown, will be able to contribute to that system by means of words and deeds. Whereas in all cases the alphabet functioned as a referential system to construct a reality outside the book, Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek was innovative in its attempt to use the potency of the alphabetic order to imagine an ideal Patriot society envisioning prosperity and welfare to be

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the outcome of communal interactions among diligent, virtuous citizens. In this way, Swildens integrated initial reading education into a sociopolitical restoration programme that rapidly gained popularity in the early 1780s. As such, the alphabet became an instrument to disseminate this sociopolitical programme to new generations, and thus to change and improve the Dutch Republic from below. The implicit underlying argument is that alphabet reading supports a way of systematic social understanding—as the order of the alphabet could be perceived as a reflection of the desired social order—whereas the articulation of letters and words is vital to the internalization of the revolutionary message they can impart. This specific ABC model, in which the audiovisual didactics directly contributed to a programme of sociopolitical change, became highly popular during the 1780s, given that a considerable portion of book-buying families in the Dutch Republic purchased an edition of Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek. Swildens’s sociopolitical programme was further developed in his later publications. In his tract Over den tegenwoordige toestand der samenleving in onze Republiek en de middelen tot verbetering (On the current condition of our Republic’s society and the instruments of improvement, 1791), he presented the ideal that ‘all professions and livings would together form one well connected unity’ (‘alle Beroepen en Kostwinningen te samen één wèl aanééngevoegd GEHEEL […] uitmaaken’), as the ‘collective and harmonious working of all professions’ (‘gezellige harmonische werking van alle Beroepen’) will lead to social progress.95 Swildens was not at all the only figure in the Dutch Republic to connect social progress to work and especially to the organization of work and the interactions among people engaged in work. In the following chapter, I will demonstrate how advanced reading books and guides for children from the late eighteenth century shaped such an interconnected discourse on literacy, work and social progress. In the wake of Swildens’s ambitious project, these books added a political dimension to reading education by approaching literacy as a vital vehicle in the creation of industrious citizens.

Notes 1. Janssen, Ger. 2017. Ik ben van boom roos vis: over leren lezen. Tilburg: Zwijssen, esp. 121–151 and 235–247. 2. Buijnsters, P.J., and L. Buijnsters-Smets. 1997. Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800. Zwolle: Waanders, 99–100. The

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s­ eventeenth century already saw the rise of books on logic for older youths, cf. Frank Burgerdijk’s popular Logica, ofte Redenkonstig onderwys: Bos, E.P., and H.A.  Krop, eds. 1993. Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635): Neo-­ Aristotelianism in Leiden (Studies in the History of Ideas in the Low Countries 1). Amsterdam: Rodopi. 3. Moritz, Karel Philips. 1789. Proeve eener korte beöeffenende redeneerkunde voor de jeugd. Amsterdam: Matthijs Schalekamp, 95. 4. Moritz, Proeve eener korte beöeffenende redeneerkunde, 39–47. 5. Crain, Patricia. 2000. The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 24–26; Lamb, Edel. 2018. Reading Children in Early Modern Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 30–31. 6. Crain, The Story of A, chapters 1 and 2. 7. Linden, Jaap ter, Anne de Vries and Dick Welsink, eds. 1995. A is een Aapje: Opstellen over ABC-boeken van de vijftiende eeuw tot heden. Amsterdam: Querido. 8. Buijnsters, P.J. 1995. “Traditie en vernieuwing: Nederlandse ABC-boeken uit de achttiende eeuw.” In A is een Aapje: Opstellen over ABC-boeken van de vijftiende eeuw tot heden, edited by Jaap ter Linden, Anne de Vries and Dick Welsink: 55–72. Amsterdam: Querido. 9. Cf. Crain, The Story of A, 28–33. 10. Linden, Jaap ter. 1995. “In het lezen bekwaam: ABC-boeken voor het onderwijs”. In A is een Aapje: Opstellen over ABC-boeken van de vijftiende eeuw tot heden, edited by Jaap ter Linden, Anne de Vries and Dick Welsink: 7–17. Amsterdam: Querido, esp. 11. On its international roots: Stellingwerff, J. 1979. Kleine geschiedenis van het groot ABC-Boek of Haneboek met facsimile. [The Hague]: Staatsdrukkerij, 20, 29–30 and 24–41. 11. The earliest example of the small ABC book is a fifteenth-century block book, cf. Stellingwerff, Kleine geschiedenis, 15–16; Kronenberg, M.E. 1949–1951. “Een Pater Noster in blokdruk”. In Het Boek 30: 169–173. With regard to hornbooks, Andrew White Tuer (Tuer, Andrew White. 1896. The history of the Horn-Book. [s.l.]:[s.n.], 6 and 137) argues that it is ‘peculiar to English-speaking peoples’. Ter Linden, however, did mention some examples of Dutch horn-books: Ter Linden, “In het lezen bekwaam”, 9–10. 12. Cf. Ter Linden, De Vries and Welsink, A is een aapje; Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school-en kinderboeken 1700–1800, numbers 1–35. 13. During centuries, memorization was considered as a serious—and in some cases the only adequate—method to provide knowledge and to turn children into adults that could contribute to society: early modern reli-

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gious pedagogues assumed that knowledge can only be firmly embedded in people after perpetual repetition and memory training from childhood on. Carter, Karen E. 2011. Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, esp. chapter 2; Strauss, Gerald. 1978. Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, esp. chapter 4; Green, Ian. 1996. The Christian’s abc: Catechisms and Catechizing in England c. 1530–1740. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 14. Wolff, Elisabeth. 1977. Proeve over de opvoeding. Edited by H.C. de Wolf. Meppel: Boom, 53. 15. Brugsma, Berend. 1842. Kort overzigt der leer van de opvoeding en het onderwijs, voornamelijk met toepassing op de lagere scholen. 3rd ed. Groningen: W. Zuidema. 16. Schoemaker, Bobbie on the emergence of cognitive reading education during the nineteenth century: Schoemaker, Bobbie O. 2018. Gewijd der jeugd voor taal en deugd: Het onderwijs in de Nederlandse taal op de lagere school, 1750–1850. PhD Diss., Leiden University. Utrecht: LOT, 86–101 (the development of the national school policy), 152–155 (on the General Booklist) and part III (on the nineteenth-century developments towards cognitive and creative literacy education). The school policy can be found in: Hoorn, I. van. 1907. De Nederlandsche schoolwetgeving voor het lager onderwijs, 1796–1907. Groningen: P. Noordhoff. 17. P.J. Buijnsters, “Traditie en vernieuwing.” 18. Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. 2019. “An alphabet of colors: Valcooch’s Rules and the emergence of sense-based learning around 1600.” Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 68, no. 1: 168–203. 19. Valcooch, Dirck Adriaensz. 1875. Den reghel der Duytsche schoolmeesters: Eene bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het schoolwezen in het laatst der XVIe en het begin der XVIIe eeuw. Edited by G.D.J.  Schotel. The Hague: Ykema, 18. 20. Crain, The Story of A, 19. 21. Shefrin, Jill. 2009. The Dartons: Publishers of Educational Aids, Pastimes & Juvenile Ephemera 1787–1876. Los Angeles: Cotsen Occasional Press, 8–9. 22. Erasmus, Desiderius. 1985. “The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek: A Dialogue: De recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione (1528).” Translated by Maurice Pope in Collected Works of Erasmus. Vol. 26: Literary and Educational Writings, edited by J.K.  Sowards: 347–476. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985, 400. Cf. Crain, The Story of A, 19. 23. An English example is mentioned by Grenby, Matthew O. 2011. The Child Reader 1700–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194. Tuer

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discusses the tradition of Gingerbread Fairs on which alphabet gingerbreads were being sold: Tuer, The history of the Horn-Book, 260–262. 24. Tuer, The history of the Horn-Book, 265; Tierie-Hogerzeil, E. 1946. Hoe men het ABC begeerde en leerde. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 19–20. 25. We do not know when Nieuwold wrote this tract. Unfortunately, Nieuwold’s bibliographical history is rather unclear: books were printed without date and/or were posthumously published. Over het aanvankelijk onderwijs was published in: Nieuwold, Johannes Hendricus. 1822. Nagelaten verhandelingen. Vol. 1. Edited by H.W.C.A. Visser. Amsterdam: G.J.A. Beijerinck, 108–119, quote on 115. 26. Nieuwold, Over het aanvankelijk onderwijs, 112. 27. Cf. Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. [In preparation]. “‘What of the Painter?’, or Pictures in Action.” In Conceptualizations of knowledge, edited by Marieke Hendriksen and Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis. London and New  York: Routledge. 28. Groenendijk, Leendert F., and J.C. Sturm. 1992. Comenius in Nederland: Reacties op een grote Tsjechische pedagoog en hervormer in een land waar hij de laatste 14 jaar van zijn leven woonde (zeventiende tot twintigste eeuw). Kampen: Kok, 20–21; cf. Comenius, Johann Amos. 1657. Opera Didactica Omnia. Amsterdam: Laurens de Geer, part III, colom 827–830. According to the title-page, this work was published in 1657, but according to Blekastad, this should be 1658: Blekastad, M. 1969. Comenius: Versuch eines Umrisses von Leben, Werk und Schicksal des Jan Amos Komenský. Oslo and Praag: Universitetsforlaget, 568. 29. This has also been argued by Matthew O. Grenby at the closing conference of the international network  project ‘European dimensions of popular print culture’ (led by Jeroen Salman), held at Utrecht University on 8 June 2018. An example of such an ABC-almanac hybrid: [Anonymous]. 1797. A, B, C, almanach, voor kleine kinderen, voor het jaar 1797. Amsterdam: Z[acharius] Segelke. 30. Six editions of the St. Nicolaes Almanach are kept in the City Archive of The Hague: Hgst 2701–2706. On these almanacs: Buijnsters and Buijnsters-­Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800, 273–276; Salman, Jeroen. 2000. “‘Die ze niet hebben wil mag het laaten’: Kinderalmanakken in de achttiende eeuw.” Literatuur 17: 76–83. Although the almanacs were marketed as St Nicholas’s presents for children, Salman argued, on the basis of its radical political (Orangistic) sound and its sexual allusions, that they were actually addressed older readers. 31. Simons, Ludo. 1984. Geschiedenis van de uitgeverij in Vlaanderen. Vol. 1: De negentiende eeuw. Tiel and Weesp: Lannoo, 14. On the frequent use of secret addresses in the Southern Netherlands at the time, due to strict cen-

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sorship: Verschaffel, Tom. 2017. De weg naar het binnenland: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700–1800: de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, esp. 256. 32. [Anonymous]. 1801. Het tweede deel van den Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes almanach, voor het tegenwoordig jaer. Maastricht: Ph. and P.  Gimblet, 4–28. The alphabet has later been republished in [Anonymous]. [1809–1816]. Fakkellicht of onderwys der jeugd in de letter-­ kunde, verciert met vele plaetjens konstig gesneden. Ghent: Snoeck-Decaju. 33. Brüggeman, Theodor, Otto Brunken, and Susanne Barth. 1991. Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Von 1570 bis 1750. Stuttgart: Metzler, 504 and further. 34. Mortzfeld, Peter. 1998. Biographische und bibliographische Beschreibungen mit Künstlerregister. Vol. 3. Munchen: K.G. Saur, 4; Brüggeman, Brunken, and Barth, Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, 433 and further. 35. Het tweede deel van den Nieuwen aengenaemen en nuttigen St. Nicolaes almanach, 17. 36. I used a later reprint: [Anonymous]. 1787. A Little Pretty Pocket Book, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy, and Pretty Miss Polly. Worcester: Isaiah Thomas. 37. [Anonymous]. 1749. Royal Battledore, being the first introductory part of the Circle of the Sciences, &c. London: John Newbery and Benjamin Collins. This hornbook served as an addition to the Newbery and Collins’s joint book series for children: The Circle of the Sciences, cf. Fernand, Christine Y. 1997. Benjamin Collins and the Provincial Newspaper Trade in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 40–41. Between 1771 and 1780, more than 100,000 copies were sold, cf. Fernand, Benjamin Collins, 141. 38. [Anonymous]. [c. 1750]. Groot A, B, C, boek: Zeer bekwaam voor de jonge kinderen te leeren. Amsterdam: Kornelis de Wit. Buijnsters and Buijnsters-­ Smets assume that this Groot A,B,C, boek was published around 1750: Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800, number 36. In any case, De Wit’s Groot A,B,C, boek should be published before 1759, when De Wit published his Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek. 39. Cf. Locke, John. 1739. Verhandeling over de oeffening van den heiligen predik-dienst, en het bestier der kerke. Amsterdam: Kornelis de Wit. 40. Cf. Borstius, Jacobus. [1761]. Bybelsche print-­verbeeldingen volgens het geleiden van […] I. Borstivs zo als dezelve, in zijn vraageboekje, de historische vraagen uit de H. schrift, aan de kinderen voorstelt. Amsterdam: Kornelis de Wit. This was a reworking of Jacobus Borstius’s Kort begrijp der christelijcke leere (Abbreviated understanding of Christian faith, 1659), which was  the most popular and reprinted Calvinist catechism for chil-

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dren for 150 years, cf. Booy, E.P. 1980. Kweekhoven der wijsheid: basis- en vervolgonderwijs in de steden van de provincie Utrecht van 1580 tot het begin der 19de eeuw. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 49–50. 41. [Anonymous]. [1759]. Een Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C.  Boek: Om de kleine kinderen, op eene gemakkelyke Wyze, De verscheide Soorten van Letteren te leeren kennen en noemen […]. Amsterdam: K[ornelis] d[e] W[it]. The publication year is not mentioned on the title-page, but is confirmed by Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800, number 37. 42. Een Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek, A3v. 43. Een Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek, A5v. 44. Een Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek, A2v. 45. [Perponcher, Willem Emmery de]. 1780. Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek. Utrecht: Widow of J. van Schoonhoven. On De Perponcher’s pedagogical and other activities: Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 1990. “De Nederlandse Verlichting nagerekend: de verkoopcijfers van het oeuvre van Willem Emmery de Perponcher.” In Geschiedenis en cultuur: achttien opstellen (liber amicorum for H.W. von der Dunk), edited by Ed Jonker and Maarten van Rossum: 171–185. The Hague: SDU; Bulhof, Francis. 1993. Ma patrie est au ciel: Leven en werk van Willem Emmery de Perponcher Sedlnitky (1741–1819). Hilversum: Verloren. Examples of the similarities between De Perponcher’s and De Wit’s alphabets: De Perponcher’s A-Adelaar (eagle) is modelled after De Wit’s eagle in his third alphabet, and D-Duif (dove) is modelled after De Wit’s dove in his first alphabet 1. 46. De Perponcher, Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek, 10. 47. De Perponcher, Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek, 11. 48. Klemann, Heather. 2011. “The Matter of Moral Education: Locke, Newbery, and the Didactic Book-Toy Hybrid.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 44, no. 2: 223–244. 49. Crain, The Story of A, 85, 91 and 99. 50. Een Nieuwlyks Uitgevonden A.B.C. Boek, A3v. 51. Lamb, Reading children, 42; Keach, B. [s.d.]. Instructions for Children: Or, The Child’s And Youth’s Delight. Teaching An Easie Way To Spell And Read True English. 9th ed. London: printed for John Marshall. 52. The German renaissance print sculptor and printmaker Peter Flötner (1490–1546) has already developed a Menschenalphabet in 1534, in which each letter was composed of human figures, and that exerted its impact on the European culture of engravings and primers, cf. Boeckeler, Erika Mary. 2017. Playful letters: A study in early modern alphabetics. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 53–95. As far as we know, we lack any Dutch examples of such human alphabet primers, although we do have some penny prints with body alphabets.

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53. Mijnhardt, “De Nederlandse Verlichting nagerekend”, 178 and 183. A third edition of 790 copies was published in 1797. A usual print run was between 750 and 1000 copies: Dijstelberge, Paul. 2015. “Drukkers en verkopers van literatuur (1450–1800).” In Van hof tot overheid: Geschiedenis van literaire instituties in Nederland en Vlaanderen, edited by Jeroen Jansen and Nico Laan: 93–114. Hilversum: Verloren, esp. 104. 54. [Swildens, Johan Hendrik]. 1781. Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd. Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop. 55. On Wagenaar: Rijdt, R.J.A. te. 1992. “Geschrapt uit de annalen: Pieter Wagenaar Jr. (1747–1808).” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 40, no. 4: 385–390. On the engravers: Buijnsters, “Traditie en vernieuwing”, 66. 56. Baggerman, Arianne. 2002. “‘Looplezen’ rond 1800: Kinderen en het Boek der natuur.” Literatuur zonder leeftijd 16, no. 58: 188–209, esp. 194 and 196; Haas, Frieda de, and Bert Paasman. 1987. J.F. Martinet en de achttiende eeuw: in ijver en onverzadelijken lust om te leeren. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 64. 57. Mijnhardt, “De Nederlandse Verlichting nagerekend”, 183: De Perponcher’s book was sold for 0.35 guilders. 58. Boeles, W.B.S. 1884. De patriot J.H.  Swildens, publicist te Amsterdam, daarna hoogleraar te Franeker: zijn arbeid ter volksverlichting geschetst. Leeuwarden: A. Meijer, H. Kuipers and J.G. Wester, esp. 39–41 and 89. 59. Mijnhardt, “De Nederlandse Verlichting nagerekend”, 179–180. 60. Boeles, De patriot J.H. Swildens, 89. 61. An English-language introduction to the political situation of the Dutch Republic: Kloek, Joost J., and Wijnand W.  Mijnhardt. 2004. 1800: Blueprints for a National Community. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, esp. 21–30. 62. On Swildens’s position: Hake, Barry J. 2004. “Between patriotism and nationalism: Johan Hendrik Swildens and the ‘pedagogy of the patriotic virtues’ in the United Provinces during the 1780s and 1790s.” History of Education 33, no 1: 11–38; Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 2001. “Zang als wapen in een burgerlijk beschavingsoffensief: De patriot Swildens doorkruist de stad om beschaafde burgerliedjes te verspreiden.” In Een muziekgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, edited by Louis Grijp: 379–373. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. On De Perponcher’s position: Mijnhardt, “De Nederlandse Verlichting nagerekend”, 172. 63. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, VII, ‘B: Burger’ and 50. 64. Buijnsters, P.J. 1989. “Nederlandse kinderboeken uit de achttiende eeuw.” In De hele Bibelebontse berg: De geschiedenis van het kinderboek in Nederland & Vlaanderen van de middeleeuwen tot heden, edited by Harry Bekkering, Nettie Heimeriks and Willem van Toorn: 169–228. Amsterdam: Querido, 224–225.

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65. According to Hake, Swildens ‘should perhaps be best remembered in the historiography of the period for his contribution as a popular philosopher’: Hake, “Between patriotism and nationalism”, 38. 66. Great, Catharine the. 2006. The memoirs of Catherine the Great. Translated by Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom. New York: Modern Library, xxix. 67. Hellman, Ben. 2013. Fairy tales and true stories: The history of Russian literature for children and young people (1574–2010). Leiden and Boston: Brill, 9; Madariaga, Isabel De. 1998. Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-­ Century Russia. London: Longman, 285. 68. Boeles, De patriot J.H. Swildens, 24–28. 69. Boeles, De patriot J.H. Swildens, 42–43. Swildens’s treatise is partly copied in Boeles’s book. 70. Swildens in Boeles, De patriot J.H. Swildens, 20–22. 71. Swildens combined words possessing the same compound sounds, such as ‘ooi’, ‘ooit’, ‘nooit’, ‘hooi’ and ‘strooi’ (‘ewe’, ‘ever’, ‘never’, ‘hay’ and ‘throw’), and organized his reading lessons on the basis of a phonic basis. An inspirational source for this approach was Claude-Louis Berthaud, who has connected pictures to compound vowels in Le Quadrille des Enfans ou Systeme nouveau de lecture (1744) (cf. la lune—une; le soleil—eil). This didactic phonic method, already quite common in progressive French schools (cf. Darnton, Robert. 1986. “First Steps towards a History of Reading.” Australian Journal of French Studies 23: 5–30, esp. 18), was brought to the Dutch Republic with the publication of Jean Jacques Schneither’s manual Nieuwe leerwijze om kinderen binnen zeer korten tijd te leeren leezen en denken (1796), and the early -nineteenth-century introduction of the ‘reading machine’ of J. Ph. Dellebarre, which allowed pupils to build their own words by means of the vowels on the left panel and the consonants on the right. Cf. Lenders, Jan. 2006. “Van kind tot burger: Lager onderwijs en de vorming tot burgerschap in de negentiende eeuw.” In Tot burgerschap en deugd: volksopvoeding in de negentiende eeuw, edited by Nelleke Bakker, Rudolf Dekker and Angelique Janssens: 11–34. Hilversum: Verloren, esp. 24; Vries, Anne de. 1995. “Van ABC tot AapNoot-Mies en Boom-Roos-Vis: De poëzie van het eerste leesonderwijs.” In A is een aapje: Opstellen over ABC-boeken van de vijftiende eeuw tot heden, edited by Jaap ter Linden, Anne de Vries and Dick Welsink: 19–29. Amsterdam: Querido, esp. 21. De Perponcher’s Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek can be considered an early follower of Berthaud’s didactic method. 72. On the relationship between Swildens and Weiße: Boeles, De patriot J.H.  Swildens, esp. 39–41; Hake, “Between patriotism and nationalism”, 17–18.

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73. Cf. Weiße, Christian Felix. 1772. Neues A, B, C, Buch: nebst einigen kleinen Uebungen und Unterhaltungen für Kinder. Leipzig: Siegfried Leberecht Crusius, 109 (‘Wie herrlich schmeckt das Obst! Kind iß! Doch dencke dran / Daß auch das Gute selbst durch Mißbrauch schaden kann‘); and Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XI (‘Fruit, die ryp is, is u goed; doch gebruik met maat: / Zo ge onmaatig iets gebruikt, doet ook ‘t goede u kwaad’). 74. On the emergence of realistic emblematics: Stronks, Els. 2007. “Cupido leert de Nederlandse taal (1601), en burgert verder in (1613): realisme in Nederlandse (liefdes)emblemen.” Neerlandistiek.nl 07. On realistic emblematics and Luyken in the eighteenth century: Stronks, Els. 2009. “Geen prooi voor de sfinx: De lezer en het achttiende-eeuwse embleem.” Nederlandse letterkunde 14, no. 2: 104–132, esp. 106; Gelderblom, Arie Jan. 2007. “Who were Jan Luyken’s readers?” In Emblemata sacra: rhétorique et herméneutique du discours sacré dans la littérature en images = The rhetoric and hermeneutics of illustrated sacred discourse, edited by Ralph Dekoninck en Agnès Guiderdoni-Bruslé: 499–508. Turnhout: Brepols; Gelderblom, Arie Jan. 2003. “Leerzaam huisraad, vol van vuur.” In De steen van Alciato. Literatuur en visuele cultuur in de Nederlanden, edited by Marc Van Vaeck, Hugo Brems and G.H.M.  Claassens: 901–921. Leuven: Peeters. 75. Another example: Luyken’s Des menschen begin, midden en einde (1712), reprinted in 1772 and 1782, displays children’s playing and activities that were sometimes also depicted in Swildens’s book in a comparable composition: ‘J: Jeugd’. 76. Gelderblom, Arie Jan. 1998–1999. “Binnen en buiten: Symboliek in de emblemen van Jan Luyken.” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde: 18–35. Leiden: Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde. 77. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XXXII, ‘Z: Zout en Zeep’. 78. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, VI, ‘A: Akkerman’; Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek: XVIII: ‘L: Linnen’; Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XXII, ‘P: Papier’. 79. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XX, ‘N: Neêrland’. 80. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XV, ‘I: Indiaan’; Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XIV, ‘H: Haring’. 81. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, X, ‘E: Eendragt’. 82. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XV, ‘I: Indiaan’. 83. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, X, ‘E: Eendragt’. 84. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, VII, ‘B: Burger’. 85. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XVII, ‘K: Koe’; Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek: XIX: ‘M: Moeder’. 86. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XIV, ‘H: Haring’.

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87. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, VIII, ‘C: Cyfferen’. 88. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XXVII, ‘U: Uur’. 89. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XI, ‘F: Fruit’; Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XIX, ‘M: Moeder’; Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XXVIII, ‘V: Vader’. 90. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XXIX, ‘W: Wol’. 91. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, XXV, ‘S: Schip’. 92. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, VIII, ‘C: Cyfferen’. 93. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, VII, ‘B: Burger’. 94. Swildens, Vaderlandsch A-B Boek, X, ‘E: Eendragt’. 95. Swildens, Johan Hendrik. 1794. “Over den tegenwoordige toestand der samenleving in onze Republiek en de middelen tot verbetering.” In Over de verkeering met menschen, by A.A.F. von Knigge. Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, xxiii. Cf. Koolhaas-Grosfeld, Eveline. 1996. “‘Economische’ schilderkunst: De verbeelding van broederschap in de laat achttiende-eeuwse genre-schilderkunst, in het bijzonder van Adriaan de Lelie.” De Achttiende Eeuw 28, no. 1/2: 141–183, esp. 152–153.

CHAPTER 3

Reading as Work: The Creation of Industrious Citizens in Dutch Reading Books

3.1   Introduction This chapter explores the discursive relationship between reading and work in Dutch reading books from the last decades of the eighteenth century. Depicting reading as a way of working and as fostering a willingness to work, the reading books invite us to rethink a dominant hypothesis on the development of childhood in history, for example expressed by Peter Stearns in his Childhood in World History (2011): the emergence of ‘modern childhood’ from the eighteenth century onwards transported childhood ‘from work to schooling’.1 The older, traditional model of childhood conceptualized children as participants in the ‘family economy’ and as ‘economic assets’, which could be used and capitalized. The modern model, instead, embodied ‘the notion that young children should not work at all, in favor of going to school’: they became ‘absolute economic liabilities’ which needed parental investment.2 Instead of being profitable, children became people who exacted financial costs. In her book Reading Children. Literacy, Property, and the Dilemmas of Childhood in Nineteenth-Century America (2016), Patricia Crain complicates the perceived shift from work to learning.3 Instead of opposing reading and work, she connects learning and reading to an alternative mode of working and creating value: ‘The traditional labors of children had been determined by the child’s economic and social status; the work of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7_3

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schooling, of reading and writing, was increasingly (if unevenly) seen as the labor newly appropriated to and appropriate for children.’4 The emerging literate child, no longer an economic asset, established a ‘literacy contract’ as a kind of ‘voluntary consent’.5 Crain links this development to a larger shift in America from ‘bondage to contract’ over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as to the principle of autonomous selfhood that John Locke (1632–1704) articulated in his Second Treatise of Government (1660), denoting that all men possessed individuality: ‘Every Man has a Property in his own Person.’6 Not everyone was able to acquire property in the form of material goods and economic capital. But literacy became a new form of property, albeit symbolic rather than economic, that could now be internalized. Crain classes letters to be what the anthropologist Annette Weiner has called ‘inalienable possessions’: literacy, ‘meant to be an alienable property that can be absorbed into the person’, saved the child from ‘serfdom, pauperism, and slavery’, thanks to ‘his self-possession and tacit binding of the literacy contract’.7 After acquiring literacy, literate humans cannot lose the possessions that the mastery of reading and writing affords: they keep them even while distributing them to others.8 Little Goody Two-Shoes (1764/5) is exemplary in this regard as a children’s book that transmitted to its young audience this idea of literacy as symbolic property.9 When the poor orphan Margery acquired the competence to read and then taught literacy skills to other children, she laid the foundations of her future career as a school principal. Letters— which little Margery cut from pieces of wood in order to educate other children—functioned as portable goods that contributed to Margery’s agency and progress. As material objects, these letters could be acquired as well as exchanged: in an ‘economy of literacy’, Margery obtained literacy for herself and distributed it to other children without losing any of the property she had thus acquired.10 Reading turned out to be a manner of work, not the opposite of it. Following this line of research, this chapter analyses work-reading discourses in a wide range of Dutch books published between 1780 and 1800 that were used to enhance the teaching of reading. An essential aspect of these books to be considered is their status as Dutch adaptations of English literacy books: this fact is often neglected and sometimes their origin as English books has not even been recognized.11 In comparison to the alphabets and ABC books discussed in the previous chapter, the reading books and lessons in this chapter represent, roughly speaking, the next step in the acquisition of literacy by children. In my discursive analyses,

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‘reading’ and ‘work’ are not strictly defined but rather are approached as expanding semantic domains. ‘Reading’ often converges with ‘learning’ (the morphology of Dutch words is almost the same: ‘lezen’ and ‘leren’), and ‘work’, though used in the sense of ‘labour’ and ‘craft’, also denotes a general, active attitude of industriousness. By means of comparative analyses, this chapter identifies significant differences between the English and Dutch discourses on reading and work. Whereas Crain redefined Stearns’s work-reading opposition by analysing reading as an alternative mode of work that strengthened the individual’s power, the Dutch material conceptualizes children as social participants because of their ability to read and work. Within the Dutch Republic, literacy did not primarily function as a form of individual property—as Locke had defined it—but was depicted as a working practice that spurred the creation of industrious citizens who would be equipped to participate in a society of citizens collectively working together. As a consequence, the Dutch child is at once an ‘economic liability’ and an ‘asset’ in Stearns’s terminology: a locus of investment (since the child’s parents pay for schooling), the youngster is also someone who is working in the service of the country. This dual function is articulated, for example, in one of the most important pedagogical tracts published in the Dutch Republic: Proeve over de opvoeding (Treatise on Education, 1779) written by Elisabeth Wolff (1738–1804). In the preface by Wolff’s usual collaborator Agatha Deken (1741–1804), the household economy is represented as a reciprocal system in which all family members play their parts, helping one another and together empowering the family’s unity. So whereas mothers must spend household funds to pay for their children’s education, this investment pays for itself, as the family’s son can thus earn wages to be brought home every week.12 As the small economic unit of the family was considered to be a microcosm of the society as a whole, a tract like the Proeve over de opvoeding implicitly depicted children’s education as a financial investment contributing to the maintenance and expansion of society at large.13 This idea—that learning to read was connected to work and that industrious reading contributed instrumentally to societal progress—was largely reflected in Dutch reading books for children from the period 1780–1800. During these two decades, the Republic’s inhabitants were deeply affected by the idea of social and moral decline but developed opposing opinions about how to turn the tide and progress forward socially. This chapter demonstrates how literacy was accepted as a crucial aspect of this

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programme of social reform. Exact interpretations of the work-reading discourse in children’s books varied, reflecting different moments of publication as well as a range of sociopolitical convictions on the part of authors and book publishers. Nonetheless, the reading books of this era reflect a rocklike belief that literacy education was a vital instrument in the creation of industrious citizens and that this sense of citizenship would be the driving force behind moral improvement and social progress in the Dutch Republic.

3.2   Reading and the Virtue of Industriousness Dutch reading books continuously reflect the idea that reading served to impress a sense of virtuous citizenship upon children: while reading, youngsters learn what it means to be virtuous and acquire the necessary norms and values associated with such moral and social rectitude. This theme is largely elaborated in the many reading books published in relation to the activities of the Society of the Common Good (Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen). Founded in 1784 in Edam, this society soon opened local branches in other cities and provinces, such as Groningen, Friesland and Zeeland. The branches were all dedicated to the education and improvement of children and lower-class people, seeking to give them full positions in a society driven by Enlightened principles such as knowledge-­ sharing, independence and critical reflection.14 The Schoolboekjen van Nederlandsche deugden (Schoolbook of Netherlandish Virtues, 1788), written by Society founder Martinus Nieuwenhuyzen (1759–1793),15 for example, explicitly highlights the relationship between reading and becoming a good citizen.16 Protagonist Jan is urged to use ‘this schoolbook’ as a tool to become citizen, while young readers reading the Schoolboekjen van Nederlandsche deugden along with Jan are in fact actively working to develop their own citizenship. JAN. […] I would like to become a great Dutchman! MOTHER.  Very well!—but won’t you like to become a good Dutchman as well! JAN. Oh, I would really like to! MOTHER. Yes, but in order to become that, you also have to know the duties which a Citizen has to fulfil. JAN. Oh dear Mother! please promptly tell me them; then I will learn them early. MOTHER. If you want to know them, study this schoolbook diligently […]

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JAN. […] ik zou wel gaarn een groote Nederlander worden! MOEDER.  Bestig!—maar zoudt gij dan ook niet gaarne een goede Nederlander worden! JAN. ô Zoo gaarn! MOEDER. Ja maar, om dat te worden, moet gij ook die plichten weeten, die een Nederlander betrachten moet. JAN.  ô Moederlief! zeg ze mij schielijk; dan zal ik ze vroeg leeren. MOEDER.  Wilt gij ze weeten, leer dan vlijtig in dit schoolboekjen […]17

This schoolbook was reprinted several times. From 1798 onwards, after the Batavian Revolution and the proclamation of the Batavian Republic (1795), these reprints appeared under the slightly changed title Schoolboekjen van vaderlandsche deugden. In this new edition, mother urges Jan to become a ‘good citizen’ instead of ‘good Dutchman’: ‘Before, we called this country the Netherlands’ (‘Dit land noemde men eertijds NEDERLAND’), but now there are ‘Batavians or Batavian citizens’ (‘BATAAVEN, of BATAAFSCHE BURGERS’) living here.18 This shift clearly illustrates that changing political circumstances in the last decades of the eighteenth century exerted a direct influence on the content of reading books. But although the political ambitions driving the education of reading and civic morality changed significantly—the first edition from 1788 was devoted to instilling Patriot citizenship, while the 1798 edition ratified the ideals of the newly established Batavian Republic—the general message about the function of reading remained constant: reading supports the socialization of virtuous citizenship. One recurring idea links virtuousness to industriousness: to be diligent is to be useful for society. In the example quoted above, Jan’s development as a virtuous Dutchman is explicitly connected to his diligent reading. When Dutch translations of English literacy books stressed the significance of virtuousness in comparison to the original, they highlighted industriousness as a vital virtue. This becomes clear when we compare Willem Emmery de Perponcher’s (1741–1819) Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek (New Dutch Spell Book, 1780) and Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s (1743–1815) Lessons for Children (1778–1779), a series of four reading primers published by the London children’s literature publisher Joseph Johnson, filled with conversations between mother and (Barbauld’s own foster son) Charles.19 While it has been acknowledged that Barbauld’s famous Hymns in Prose for Children (1781) were translated into Dutch at

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least four times,20 scholars of Dutch youth literature did not realize that De Perponcher—one of the translators of her Hymns—also translated parts of her Lessons for children and included them in his Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek. While English readers of Barbauld’s Lessons for children and Dutch readers of De Perponcher’s Speldeboek all learned to be boys instead of animals (‘Cows eat grass, and sheep eat grass, and horses eat grass. / Little boys do not eat grass: no, they eat bread and milk’21), De Perponcher elaborated on the virtuous behaviour appropriate for boys. When the table is set for dinner (‘Lay the cloth. Where are the knives and forks, and plates?’22), De Perponcher seizes the opportunity to promote cautiousness: ‘Kareltje must not touch a knife. Kareltje would cut himself’ (‘Kareltje moet geen mes aanraken. Kareltje zou zig snijden’).23 And while the Dutch and English versions both urge Charles or Kareltje to be moderate (‘Do not eat all the gingerbread now. It will make you fall sick’24), De Perponcher spends a bit more words on the effects of being greedy: ‘Don’t eat the whole gingerbread. You will sick when you eat too much of it; and you will need to fast the whole day to become healthy again’ (‘Eet je koek nu niet geheel op. Daar zou je ziek van worden, als je ‘er te veel van at; en dan zou je een geheele dag moeten vasten, om weer gezond te worden’).25 De Perponcher highlighted his propaganda of virtues by adding a few Dutch poems by Hieronymus van Alphen (1746–1803) to his translated lessons. For example, he selected Van Alphen’s famous children’s poem on the plum tree, depicting Jantje as a boy able to control his desire for sweet plums.26 In addition, he reused a poem in which diligent learning is connected to the development of manhood: ‘I want to learn my lessons, […] Then I will soon become a man’ (‘Mijn lessen wil ik leeren, / Dan worde ik haast een man’).27 The boy firmly resolves to reject laziness, because thousands of futilities (‘duizend nietigheden’) will not turn to profit (‘’k Heb daar geen voordeel van’).28 The situation of not working (and thus of lacking any profit) is opposed to the work (or rather diligent learning) that develops a full male person. In comparison to Barbauld’s original work, De Perponcher added elaboration about the teaching of virtues and explicitly linked such instruction to the development of a gendered form of adulthood connected with industriousness. The relationship between reading and industrious virtuousness has probably never been as significant as it was presented in De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek (The renowned history of Giles Gingerbread, 1791), translated from John Newbery’s (1713–1767) Renowned History

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of Giles Gingerbread: A Little Boy Who Lived upon Learning (1764). In general, the Dutch version follows the original story. At the beginning of the book, father Gaffer Gingerbread (in Dutch: Govert Zoetekoek) tries to stir up the ambitions of his son Giles (in Dutch: Gilles). He tells the history of Sir Toby or Heer Tobias, who, once a very poor and hungry boy, became a successful man, thanks to his virtuousness and willingness to work. This general idea had already been stressed in the bookseller’s preface, included in both the English and Dutch versions of the book: we need not share much about the background of our book’s hero, because his virtues are far more important than his kinship or place of birth.29 After hearing Tobias’s story, Gilles—for the first time—became very willing to make himself into a literate boy himself. He learns to read by eating the letters and books that his father, a baker, made of gingerbread: ‘No Boy loves his Book better than I do, but I always learn it, before I eat it.’30 By consuming his daily portion of baked books, Gilles became someone who literally and metaphorically lived upon his literacy: Giles was fond of his Book, and his father gave him new ones every Day, all of which he ate up; so that it may be truly said, he lived upon Learning.31 Gilles hieldt veel van zyn boek, en zyn Vader gaf hem dagelijks een nieuw, welken hy allen opät, zo dat men met waarheid van hem zeggen mag, dat hy van ’t leeren leefde.32

The acquired literacy is, in fact, an extension of the individual self in ways both physical and mental: the boy becomes bigger and—above all—more virtuous. In the Dutch edition, this ‘virtuous internal capital’ was even highlighted. A dedication to the readers in the Dutch adaptation—not available in the English original—stresses the book’s aim to stimulate virtue and to appreciate it above richness.33 The book’s closing poem shows a comparable intervention: whereas the English poem stresses Giles’s habit of longing,34 the Dutch version represents Gilles’s diligence and virtuousness as the core of his honourable manhood: See here, with how much diligence,     The Little Gilles learns, Thus he will become in a while     A Man, honoured by everyone.

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Ziet hier, met welk een vlyt     De Kleine Gilles leert, Dus wordt hy met ’er tyd     Een Man, van elk geëert.35

So Giles Gingerbread’s characteristic representation of literacy as a physical practice of internalization (eating, chewing and tasting) is, in its Dutch adaptation, more explicitly connected to nonmaterial mental growth as the bedrock of social, moral and economic progress. While reading, the Dutch Gilles has developed his virtuous, industrious manhood. We see, then, that Dutch reading books explicitly connect reading to virtuousness, and especially to the virtue of industriousness, which was portrayed as the masculine foundation of good citizenship.

3.3   Reading as Work Instead of Play For De Perponcher, children have to be convinced that it is necessary to become virtuous and skilled; to this end, they need to approach their reading and learning as their ‘work’.36 This idea is repeatedly expressed in Dutch reading books: because reading was dedicated to the creation of virtuous, industrious citizenship, it was considered to be serious, compulsory work, and not a matter of play. The books explicitly represented reading as an activity distinct and distant from play and highlighted the vital significance of the former pursuit. The popular children’s poems by Hieronymus van Alphen, for example, developed such a discourse. In ‘Het vrolijk leeren’ (Cheerful Learning), the protagonist opposes his books to his toys: ‘I exchange my hoop and my peg top for books’ (‘Mijn hoepel, mijn priktol verruil ik voor boeken’) (Fig. 3.1).37 In ‘Klaartje en Keetje’, Keetje urges Klaartje to stop playing and start reading. Dolls are put aside: Never to work, never to read, Always being in the garden, Is that where you are living for? Dear Klaartje, stop playing; Ah! the time you spend on your dolls should annoy you.

Nooit te werken, nooit te lezen, Altoos in den tuin te wezen, Is het daarom dat men leeft?

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Fig. 3.1  Alphen, Hieronymus van. 1778. Proeve van kleine gedigten voor kinderen. Utrecht: Widow Jan van Terveen and son, 11. Utrecht University Library: UBU EAZ 509 Klaartje lief, hou op met spelen; Ach! de tijd moet u verveelen, Dien gij aan uw poppen geeft.38

The poem’s opening puts reading and work on the same footing: ‘Never to work, never to read’ (‘Nooit te werken, nooit te lezen’). Playing, though, is soon compared to boredom, and thus the situation of not working: ‘the time you spend on your dolls should annoy you’ (‘de tijd moet u verveelen, / Dien gij aan uw poppen geeft’).

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This opposition—learning to read as a way of working, on the one hand; playing as a way of not working, on the other hand—is often repeated in Dutch literacy books, for example in the reading guide Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt (The Reading has been made easy, 1788) by Johannes Hazeu (1754–1835).39 Hazeu—author, bookseller and printer in Amsterdam—is mostly known for his devotional songs, but he also wrote several children’s books.40 Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt, his first primer, offers beginning readers accessible conversations between Hendrik and his sister Mietje. Hendrik urges Mietje to learn, but Mietje questions Hendrik’s own diligence. To her great dissatisfaction, Hendrik seems to be attracted to playing instead of learning. Sister: Do you know your lesson? Brother: But Sister, you know that I love to play. Sister: Yes, I do know that; but do not play that much; or do you value your play above your lesson?—you have to do your best, just as I have to. Zus. […] kent gij uw les? […] Broer. Maar Zus/ gij weet wel/ ik speel graag.— Zus. Ja/ dat weet ik wel; maar speelt dan ook

zoo veel niet;— of is het spel u meer waard / als uw les?— […] gij moet ook uw vlijt doen / zoo wel als ik moet doen.—41

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This conversation opposes the pleasure of play with the value—explicitly connected to diligence—of learning. In this way, learning to read was presented as a mode of careful working, as opposed to playing, a form of laziness. This repeated playing-reading opposition, which stresses the social significance attached to industrious reading in the Dutch Republic, was not so visible in the English context. Inspired by Locke’s pedagogical ideals, in which playing was considered to be a vital stepping-stone to empirically based learning, English pedagogues and publishers rather developed book-toy hybrids facilitating the processes of both playing and reading.42 John Newbery’s Child’s New Play-thing (1742), for example, contained playing cards that pictured the letters of the alphabet, while his Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744) came with a ball for boys and a pin-cushion for girls, and with letters and words to be cut out.43 As a meaningful difference, the Dutch book market did not produce this type of book-toy hybrid, while Dutch authors sometimes threw the playing-reading opposition into their adaptations when translating English examples. This is illustrated by the already discussed Dutch translation of the Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread. While a father aims to spur his son to read in the first sentences of both versions, only in the Dutch adaptation does he urge Gilles to leave his toys behind, since ‘you can not live from playing’ (‘dat men van ’t spelen niet leven kan’).44 He tries to push Gilles to learn and to read diligently (‘leeren, en vlytig’ zijn: to learn and be diligent). Playing is again opposed to the useful and valuable behaviour that reading is supposed to be.

3.4   Becoming a Reading Worker Just as Dutch books portray reading as a type of work directed towards the development of industriousness, they also depict reading as a stepping-­ stone to the children’s adult working life. In Nieuwenhuyzen’s Schoolboekjen van Nederlandsche deugden, for example, a child declares that his literacy skill will once enable him to work: ‘And once I am grown / I want to work diligently / Just like my Father’ (‘En, worde ik eenmaal groot, / Dan wil ik ijvrig werken, / Gelijk mijn Vader doet’).45 This argument is elaborated more extensively in Hazeu’s Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt. Protagonists Hendrik and Mietje increase their potential job opportunities along with their literacy.46 The reader follows their learning pathway, as Hazeu has explained in his preface: children will first read one-syllable words, then encounter longer words, divided into syllables.47 Just as Hazeu’s readers used Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt to improve their reading competences, Hendrik’s and Mietje’s reading skills

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are augmented as well. Their uncle offers them a book depicting trading, in order to connect their growing reading ability to workmanship: while reading, the children experience the craftsmen’s willingness to work and reflect on their own future careers: Uncle:

In this little book, you can see what a human being needs to do, and could do, to maintain his temporary life and existence. Hendrik: Yes Uncle!—I do see that;—How do these people work! Do you see that, Sister!—there is a cooper, how well is he knocking! Uncle: When you are home again, you need to observe all these prints, and search for a trade you would like to learn; and ask your Father and Mother, if they would like it if you are going to learn such a trade. Hendrik: But, Uncle! Do I not have to learn reading and writing first? Uncle: That is incontestable;—because that is useful in every Trade. Oom. […] In dit boekje kunt gij zien, wat een mensch niet al doen moet, en doen kan, tot onder-hou-ding van zijn tijde-lijk lee-ven en be-staan.— Hen-drik. Ja, Oom!— ik zie het wel;— wat wer-ken die men-schen!— Ziet gij wel, Zus!—daar staat een kuiper, wat klopt dien man!— Oom. Gij moet, Hendrik, als gij te huis ge-ko-

men zijt, al die Prent-jens eens be-schou-wen; en zoe-ken dan een Am-bagt uit, het welk gij wil lee-ren; en vraagt dan aan uw’ Va-der en Moe-der, of het met haar ge-noegen is, dat gij zulk een Ambacht leert.— Hen-drik. Maar, Oom!— moet ik niet eerst lee-zen en schrijven ken-nen?— Oom. Dat is zon-der te-gen-spraak;— want dat komt in al-le Handwer-ken te pas. 48

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Hendrik and his parents agree: once he masters the skills of reading and writing, he will be able to learn a trade. After much dedicated training, Hendrik writes his father a letter, testifying to his literacy skills. His teacher, testing Hendrik’s progress, now judges Hendrik to be competent: ‘because you are very committed to learning a craft; tell your Father, that I say, that you are competent to do that’ (‘dewijl gij veel liefde schijnt te hebben tot een Hand-werk te leeren; zegt dan aan uw Vader, dat ik zeg, dat gij daar toe bekwaam zijt’).49 This representation of labour as the outcome of properly developed literacy is directly connected to the often-promoted ideal of a ‘reading labourer’. This ideal was frequently expressed in schoolbooks produced by the Society for the Common Good, dedicated to the education of both youths and the lower classes. A significant example is the Levensschetsen van vaderlandsche mannen en vrouwen (Outlines of Lives of Men and Women of the Fatherland, 1798) by Adriaan Loosjes Pz (1761–1818), the brotherin-law of Martinus Nieuwenhuyzen and the founder of the Society’s Haarlem branch. Loosjes’s Levensschetsen depicts virtuous fatherlanders as examples for reading children. The second volume, consisting of chapters on famous forefathers such as Erasmus and Piet Hein, concludes with the life story of Hubert Korneliszoon Poot (1689–1733). Poot, a farmer as well as a poet, was a literary phenomenon during the eighteenth century.50 The young reader of the Levensschetsen meets the wonderful Poot from the perspective of a boy, Eduard, who initially judges farmers to be ‘miserable, ignorant people, not much wiser that the pigs they are driving’ (‘ellendige domme menschen, die niet veel wijzer zijn dan de varkens, die zij drijven’).51 His father Leonard, however, convinces his son of the ‘excellent competences […] in several sciences, and fine arts’ that the farmers could have (‘uitsteekende bekwaamheden […] in onderscheiden wetenschappen, en fraaije kunsten’).52 He tells of Poot, who went to school and devoted all his leisure to reading and writing, and thus gradually developed into a praiseworthy poet: many people were very amazed, and from all regions they came to visit Poet Poot. People then encountered a man, who worked on the field every day, spent only his spare hours on Poetry, and who, when writing verse, is nearly unequalled because of his rich and flowing style. veele menschen stonden zeer verwonderd, en van alle kanten kwamen zij den Dichter Poot bezoeken. En dan vondt men een man, die dagelijksch met zijn akkerwerk bezig was, en alleen zijn snipperuuren aan de Dichtkunst besteedde, wanneer hij versen maakte, die in zinrijkheid en vloeibaarheid bijna geen wedergae vinden.53

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After hearing his father’s story, Eduard revises his opinion about farmers: ‘I promise in future to behave friendly and politely towards farmers, just like I do towards other people’ (‘ik beloof u dat ik mij in ’t vervolg even vriendelijk en beleefd omtrent de Boeren als omtrent andere menschen, gedragen zal’).54 By this conclusion, Loosjes’s Levensschetsen offers the young reader an important lesson: literacy and labour do not exclude each other, but their joint practice results in virtuousness and industriouness. That is why farmers and workmen—if lettered—deserve just as much respect as high-placed persons do.

3.5   Reading Towards an Understanding of the Organization of Work Thus books published by the Society for the Common Good related reading not only to the future working lives of children but also to the labour performed by people such as farmers. Along these lines, reading could also serve as a fundamental reflection on the value and organization of work in society as a whole—as, for example, in the Society’s Lees-oefeningen voor eerstbeginnenden (Reading exercises for early starters, 1796), an adaptation of Barbauld’s Lessons for children that has never been recognized as a translation.55 In comparison to the original, reflections on work have been more fully elaborated in this translation: the observation that Wimpje’s bread is made from corn grown on the land has been taken from Barbauld, but the Dutch edition adds a fragment about a baker making gingerbread with honey produced by bees.56 In this way, reading children learn not only about their food’s origin but also about the ways that artisans and craftsmen use certain ingredients to make new products. Reading, thus, could help to foster children’s awareness of their industrious human environment. Such potency possessed by reading is extensively elaborated in a book that, once again, is indebted to Barbauld’s Lessons for children: the first volume of De Perponcher’s Onderwijs voor kinderen (Education of Children, 1782), meant for children aged three to five. In this book—which title referred to Barbauld’s work—some of Barbauld’s reading lessons were included, while De Perponcher also took some inspiration from children’s books produced by German pedagogues such as J.H. Campe and Johann Bernhard Basedow.57 Most of the chapters of Onderwijs voor kinderen, however, are written by De Perponcher himself. In these new sections, he developed a semantic line that is absent

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from Barbauld’s Lessons: children learn to understand the practice and organization of labour. Via both its didactics and this semantic line, Onderwijs voor kinderen can be considered a sequel to De Perponcher’s Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek (1780), in which he taught children to relate the alphabet’s letters to products and phenomena in their daily environment. One of the protagonists of Onderwijs voor kinderen explicitly refers to the picture of the cask she saw in her ‘spell book’ (‘spelleboek’). Reading Onderwijs voor kinderen, she now has the opportunity to see how such a cask is actually used in the making of cream: a woman stamps her feet in a bucket of milk to create butter, a process that continues until ‘one has sufficient cream’, followed by her ‘emptying it in such a cask’ (‘En als men genoeg zulke room heeft, dan giet men die in zulk eene ton’).58 Onderwijs voor kinderen is not especially comparable to the books produced by the Society of the Common Good, although both discuss the relationship between reading and work. The Society and De Perponcher alike sought to enlighten and educate their fellow Dutch citizens and, as such, contribute to the betterment of society, but each developed a markedly different interpretation of the type of improvement the Republic needed. The Society of the Common Good was established during the 1780s out of a revolutionary, Patriot striving for social reform and the firm belief that such necessary change could be achieved only from below, by means of the education of children and lower-class people. De Perponcher, for his part, was a nobiliary regent in the States of Utrecht who propagated the preservation of social structures and hierarchies in the Dutch Republic. His political career was driven by the conviction that the mixed constitutional model of the Dutch Republic, in which the stadholder and the States General (parliament) collaborated harmoniously, was indeed the Republic’s preferred model and that aristocrats fulfilled a central position in this political order. When he published Onderwijs voor kinderen in 1782, he still supported the Patriots, as he assumed that a power-hungry stadholder endangered his desired political order. Two years later, however, he decided to side with the Orangists, since he had come to believe that the Patriots’ ambitions to change the constitutional model had become too radical.59 De Perponcher’s continuing preference for stability as well as his privileged position in the Republic’s elite class exerted its impact on Onderwijs voor kinderen: this book approaches reading not as an instrument of social change but as a way to understand the existing organization and division

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of labour in society, based on the assumption that this understanding was vital to the preservation of social and political harmony. Onderwijs voor kinderen depicts privileged children, raised within well-to-do families who are able to hire servants and have workmen build their houses, who can thus limit themselves to the mere understanding of working processes. When protagonist Jacob meets a boy who works at spinning, he learns that he does not have to do this type of manual labour and only has to apply himself diligently to his own kind of work: ‘you have to learn diligently, that is your work now, you have to take care of that’ (‘jy moet nu naarstig leeren, dat is thans jou werk, daar moet jy wel in oppassen’).60 Instead of performing manual labour, De Perponcher’s protagonists gradually discover and understand how, by whom and from what kind of material various objects are created, and are prompted to reflect on the way ecological, social and economic structures are intertwined with these processes. In this way, children—within and beyond the book—are able to discover how each individual plays their own roles within the ecological, social and economic system that involves everyone. De Perponcher starts his narrative with a dialogue between Pauline and her mother on the socks that mother has knit for her daughter. During their conversation, they discuss the origins of these socks: mother knit them by means of a thread, which was made of the wool produced by sheep. M[other].  […] But do you know what your Mummy knit these socks out of? P[auline]. No, Mummy. M. Mummy knit them with this yarn, that one, which you can see on the ball.—And do you know what that yarn was made from? P. No Mummy, I don’t know that either. M. From wool that grows on the bodies of sheep. People cut it like they cut your hair. After people shear the wool, they clean it, and spin this kind of yarn from it. Then we can use it to knit socks for Pauline, hats for Jacob, or undervests for Henriette. M. P.

[…] Maar weet je wel waar Mama die koussen van gebreid heeft? Neen Mama.

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M. Die heeft Mama gebreid van deezen draad, dien je daar, op dat kluwen, ziet.—En weet je waar die draad van gemaakt is? P. Neen Mama, dat weet ik ook al niet. M. Van wol, die op het lyf van de schaapjes groeit, en die men ’er af snydt, omtrent zoo als men jou ’t hair af snydt. Wanneer men dan die wol afgesneeden heeft, maakt men ze schoon, en men spint ’er zulk eenen draad van, en dan kan men ’er koussen voor Pauline, of mutsjes voor Jacob, of borstrokjes voor Henriette van breiden.61

The sheep on the grasslands differ from the single toy sheep Pauline possesses: ‘the Man who made this little sheep, stuck them [=the wool] on it’ (‘de Man die dat schaapje gemaakt heeft, die heeft ze ’er op geplakt’), while the wool of living sheep has been grown naturally.62 After discussing socks and toys, the protagonists fix their attention on the table, another created object. Mother considers, in great detail, the process of woodworking involved in making this table. Pauline, in her turn, wonders how the carpenter had come to obtain this material: P[auline]. And where does the carpenter get the wood? M[other]. He buys it from the wood-seller. P. Does the wood-seller make wood? M. No, no human being is able to make wood. Wood grows on trees, and therefore, when people need wood, they go to the field or the forest, and chop down a tree using an axe. Then, using a saw, they saw it into pieces, as long or as short, as thick or as thin as they want.—Afterwards, they put them out to dry, and when they are dry, the carpenter makes tables from it, and benches, and cupboards, and doors, and shutters, and beams, and strip floorings. People can make this all from wood, but cannot make the wood itself, because it grows on trees; there is no other wood available, than the wood growing on the trees. P. En waar haalt de timmerman dat hout van daan? M. Dat gaat hy, by den houtkooper, koopen. P. Maakt de houtkooper dan hout? M. Neen hout kan geen mensch maaken. ’t Hout groeit aan de boomen, daarom, als men hout hebben wil, gaat men in ’t veld, of in ’t bosch, en daar hakt men dan, met eene byl, een

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boom om, die men vervolgens, met eene zaag, aan verscheide stukken zaagt, zoo lang of zoo kort, zoo dik of zoo dun, als men ze hebben wil.—Daarna zet men die stukken te droogen, en als zy droog zyn, dan kan de timmerman ’er tafels, en banken, en kasten, en deuren, en blinden, en balken, en planke vloeren van maaken. Dat kan men alles maaken van hout, maar ’t hout zelve kan geen mensch maaken, dat groeit aan de boomen; en ’er is geen ander hout te krygen, dan ’t geen ’er aan de boomen groeit.63

Pauline’s curious attitude and smart questions turn out to be vital for this learning process, as mother explains: ‘When there is something, my dear Pauline, that I say to you and you do not understand, you always have to ask me that, by saying: Mum, I don’t understand this, what is that?’ (‘Als ’er zoo iets is, myn lieve Pauline, in ’t geen Mama teegen je zegt, dat je niet verstaat, dan moet je het altyd vraagen, en zeggen, Mama, ik begryp dat niet, wat is dat?’).64 While talking and asking, Pauline acquires some understanding of how and by what kind of materials things are produced and to what extent objects are naturally grown or human-made. She learns that human beings are unable to produce everything that surrounds us (they cannot, for example, make wool or wood) and that some people are preeminently equipped to produce specific objects (mother knits socks and the carpenter makes tables).65 As the book goes on, De Perponcher gradually changes focus from the process of making to the economic system in which created products function. Mother, for example, defines the ‘market’ as a physical place where people can exchange goods for money and buy materials to make new products.66 This representation of the making process as a market process has two important consequences. First, money turns out to be an important restrictive instrument in the process of making and working. When Jacob sees a man who has transported his goods over water and asks his father why this man did not use a wagon to bring his wares to market, his father explains that money has restricted availability. The man may prefer to ride a wagon. But he would first need to buy not only the wagon itself, but also a couple of horses; and that will cost money. He would also have to build small stable to house these horses; that will cost money as well. And then he would also need to buy food to feed the horses, every day and again; and that will eventually cost even more money.

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[M]isschien zou die man ook wel liever, op een wagen, ryden. Maar dan zou hy eerst, behalven den wagen zelven, nog een koppel paarden moeten koopen; en dat kost geld. Daar by zou hy ook een stalletje moeten laaten bouwen, om die paarden in te zetten; en dat kost ook geld. En dan zou hy nog, alle dag, eeten moeten koopen, om aan die paerden te voeren; en dat kost op den duur nog meer geld.67

On financial grounds as well, some farmers bring their own wares to the market instead of sending them with the skipper, as Jacob learns: ‘then they have to pay for this, while they rather want to save their money’ (‘dan zouden zy hem daar weer geld voor moeten geeven, en dat willen zy liever uitspaaren’).68 De Perponcher’s children also encounter such financial assessments that pertain to their own lives. When Mietje breaks her teapot (‘trekpotje’), she learns that toys cannot be bought unrestricted, and thus she must be more careful in the future: M.[=Mietje, FD] Aren’t Daddy and Mummy able to buy another one? Mr. [=Mother, FD] Yes, Daddy and Mummy could buy another one, but that will cost money; and you must not think that Daddy and Mummy can make as much money as they would like. Daddy and Mummy just have a certain amount of money for the whole year; and when it is used up, then we can no longer cook: Daddy and Mummy will have nothing to buy bread, meat and beer; and Daddy and Mummy, and their children, would become desperate and go hungry. Most importantly, Daddy and Mummy would not be able to buy new toys for the children, and you wouldn’t like that, wouldn’t you? M.[=Mietje, FD] Maar kunnen Papa en Mama ‘er dan geene anderen koopen? Mr. [=Mother, FD] Ja, dan kunnen Papa en Mama ’er wel andere koopen, maar dat kost geld; en je moet niet denken dat Papa en Mama zoo veel geld krygen kunnen, als zy maar hebben willen. Papa en Mama hebben maar eene zeekere som, voor ’t heele jaar; en als die op is, dan is ’t kooken gedaan; dan hebben Papa en Mama niets meer, om brood, en vleesch, en bier te koopen; en dan zouden Papa en Mama, en de kindertjes, zeer verleegen zyn, en honger moeten lyden. Maar vooral zouden Papa en Mama dan geen speelgoed, voor de kinderen, meer kunnen koopen, en dat zou je immers spyten?69

What is needed, as the children learn, is a careful assessment about which products to acquire and how much money to be spent. As a consequence

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of this situation, the availability of money exerts its impact on the demand for goods and the production of new wares. A second consequence of the representation of the making process as a market process is that people with different craft skills and characteristics are shown to be dependent on one another. Mother explains that the house in which she and Pauline lived had been built by several people, such as carpenters, bricklayers and glaziers. Each worked on his own part, and together they produced this beautiful house. And since they were paid for their activities, they were able to buy food—for example bread made by a baker.70 In this way, the different making processes each helped to preserve the others within a market system. Someone who makes money by selling created products is able to buy goods produced by other people, who, in turn, can pay others to work for them. This situation of social differentiation should be praised, according to Onderwijs voor kinderen, because manual workers help well-to-do families while they are earning the wages with which they will buy food: ‘thus we are all doing well’ (‘zoo gaat het ons allen wel’).71 As such, Onderwijs voor kinderen reinforces the already existing socioeconomic hierarchy in society.

3.6   Reading and the Preservation of Social Hierarchies A recurring idea conveyed in Dutch reading books is the suggestion that every individual is a vital link in a harmonious social chain: every human depends on other humans, as all work activities are connected. This idea is reflected not only in Onderwijs voor kinderen, written by a privileged, elite regent who took a personal interest in the preservation of existing social structures, but also by the reform-driven books published by the Society of the Common Good: they honour hard-working labours without encouraging them to rise above their social roles. So although the analysed reading books represent different social positions and sometimes even competing political ideas, they resemble each other in their shared view that literacy should not be perceived to be, nor used as, a tool to rise above one’s allotted social position. Instead of total equality, the Dutch books accept and propagate a society in which one person works for another and in which economic prosperity is the result of social disparity throughout the whole.

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In this respect, the Dutch material slightly differs from the English: rather than promoting individual social-economic growth, the Dutch books stress the value of workmanship and encourage everyone to perform their appropriate labours as optimally as possible. When we compare translated reading books with their English original, we recognize the— minor but meaningful—differences. In the Dutch translation of Giles Gingerbread, for example, the labour motif has been stressed. Gilles’s father is ‘a pretty good Scholar’ as well as a skilled workman, and as such embodies the perfect merging of a disciplined mind and body.72 As an effect, Gilles’s literacy skills are rooted in parental guidance as well as professional labour: the letters Gilles eats are created by a professional baker ‘by trade’ (‘van handwerk’) so that Gilles’s literacy ability is directly connected to how-to skills.73 In the Dutch edition, the father’s character as a workman has been further elaborated by adding a short moralistic story about a workman and his son.74 While reading and discussing the meaning of this lesson, Govert compares the industrious father and his son to himself and Gilles: ‘Follow this example, my dear Gilles! And imagine how miserable you would be when your father did not tenderly care for you’ (‘Spiegel u hier aan myn waarde Gilles! en bedenk hoe ongelukkig gy zyn zoud, wanneer uw Vader zo teder niet voor u zorgde’).75 The motif of the division of labour has been added to the Dutch Gilles Zoetekoek as well. While the English edition opens with an image of father Gaffer Gingerbread who sells his bread as a peddler, the Dutch edition depicts the selling of books instead of baked goods, practised by a new character: Govert’s nephew Jasper (Fig. 3.2). As an effect of this expansion of the Zoetekoek family, the characters in the Dutch edition each have their own professions to perform: the baker bakes and the bookseller sells books. While the labour theme was made more visible, the Dutch edition played down Giles Gingerbread’s dominant image of literacy acquisition as a way for people to rise above their own social positions. In the first sentences of the English book, Giles gapes in admiration at Sir Toby’s coach and tries to climb the vehicle. The verb ‘to climb’ is repeated several times, stressing Giles’s longing for a higher position.76 The coach as the object of his desire prompts the reader to relate progress to economic capital and the enjoyment of luxury goods. The Dutch Gilles, in contrast, aims to ‘ride’ instead of to climb it (‘ryden’)77: progression is compared to continuation instead of growth.

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Fig. 3.2  [Anonymous]. 1781. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek. Proeve eener kleine historie, voor kinderen. Amsterdam: Pieter Hayman, *3r. Leiden University Library: 1504 F 38

De Perponcher’s translation of Barbauld’s Lessons for children displays a similar pattern. The English version stages mother ‘[m]aking frocks for little Charles’s while looking forward to the future when Charles will wear trousers rather than frocks’: ‘When Charles is a big boy, he shall have breeches.’78 Within the early modern period, ‘breeching’ marked an important rite de passage for boys. Children—boys as well as girls—wore dresses until they were six or seven. From then on, boys wore breeches, and thus their clothing expressed their male identity. In the first years of their lives, as Karin Calvert has argued, children’s clothing was related not so much to a specific gender role as to subordination: children wore the same sort of clothing that women did, marking their shared inferiority.79 When boys abandoned their dresses for breeches, ‘[a] boy […] would outgrow his subordinate position and take his place among the ruling

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adult males’.80 The discourse on breeching in Barbauld’s Lessons could thus easily be related to the thematic line of social growth. References to horses as status symbols contribute to this thematic line as well: ‘he [=Charles] shall have a pretty little horse of his own, and a saddle, and bridle, and a whip, and then he shall ride out with papa.’81 In sum, little Charles is faced with the idea of his growing power and standing. This idea of the future, however, is not adopted in De Perponcher’s Dutch translation. The references to breeches and horses were cut, and the open spaces were used to caution Karel about the fire.82 This fits the larger pattern that the Dutch books supported the creation of virtuous citizenship rather than social climbing.

3.7   Conclusion The reading books analysed in this chapter can be considered as vehicles within the Dutch Enlightened programme of propagating virtuousness and industriousness to spur social progress. Education in reading served a vital role for this programme: it facilitated the development of industrious attitudes and functioned as an instrument to understand the organization of labour. The different discursive strategies analysed in this chapter strengthened one another: since reading was distinguished from play as a mode for developing industrious citizenship, it could function as a means to reflect on and contribute to the function of work in society. While the discourse on reading as work at first sight offers a suggestion of equality—we are the same because we all read and work—it in fact functioned as an instrument to strengthen an unequal social order, a hierarchy that readers needed to maintain. Both their competence in reading and the content of their books helped children to understand and internalize the ecological, economic and social system in which they were to take up their own positions and assume their proper type of work. The books in fact accept and promote social differences—characteristically for late-­ eighteenth-­ century Dutch literature, as Inger Leemans and Gert-Jan Johannes have argued in their literary history of the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. The Economische liedjes (Economic songs, 1781) by Elisabeth Wolff and Agatha Deken is a more often quoted example of this larger pattern. The songs present representations of people from different classes, to make their readers aware of their own codes of conduct and social duties. The Economische liedjes represents a social order which had to be maintained and could survive when each person—servant, gardener,

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mother and so on—plays his or her own role and performs their work in ways that are always appropriate for their class and that contribute to fatherlandish harmony.83 Together, when they all roll up their sleeves, they will improve their society. The reading books spread a similar message, transmitting it in developmentally appropriate forms to children and promoting literacy as the vital precondition for the achievement of any progress. So Crain’s suggestion that we should consider literacy as an alternative, symbolic capital strengthening individual power is, for the Dutch situation, a somewhat unsatisfactory approach, since the young reader is first and foremost dedicated to placing himself in the service of a collective system in which all people work on their own level and from their own social position. Literacy manifested itself as an empowering as well as disciplining competence. It offered youths a tool to work on the virtuous, industrious self—but this self eventually needed to conform to its intended role in society. Now that we understand the differences between English and Dutch traditions of literacy books and discourses, we can interpret why John Newbery’s bestseller Little Goody Two-Shoes (1764/1765), in which the orphan Margery developed the competence to read and acquired the position of a school principal, was never translated into Dutch. This book portrayed literacy as an individual, autodidactically acquired property, as child’s play, as well as an instrument for social climbing.84 Newbery’s quite similar story Giles Gingerbread was better equipped for the Dutch book market, especially after a couple of significant revisions in its Dutch adaptation: unlike Margery, the Dutch Gilles Zoetekoek is taught by a skilled workman who offered her manually created letters, expanded himself in both a physical and a mental way by eating gingerbread letters and explicitly preferred reading to playing.85 This connection of learning literacy to internal virtuousness, industriousness and labour seems to have been a successful mix on the Dutch book market, contributing to the larger ambitions that the Dutch Republic’s inhabitants were subject to.

Notes 1. Stearns, Peter. 2011. Childhood in World History. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 72. 2. Stearns, Childhood in World History, 72.

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3. Crain, Patricia. 2016. Reading Children: Literacy, Property, and the Dilemmas of Childhood in Nineteenth-Century America. Stanford: University of Pennsylvania Press. 4. Crain, Reading Children, 6. 5. Crain, Reading Children, 7 and chapter 4. 6. Crain, Reading Children, 5; Locke, John. 2016. Second Treatise of Government. Auckland: The Floating Press, 25. 7. Crain, Reading Children, 7, 30 and 37. Crain is inspired by Weiner, Annette. 1992. Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-WhileGiving. Berkeley: University of California Press. 8. Crain, Reading Children, 30. 9. Crain, Reading Children, chapter 1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in: Crain, Patricia. 2006. “Spectral Literacy: The Case of Goody Two-Shoes.” In Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550–1800, edited by Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore: 213–242. London and New York: Routledge. Cf. Grenby, Matthew O., ed. 2013. Little Goody Two-Shoes and Other Stories: Originally Published by John Newbery. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 10. Crain, Reading Children, 228. 11. There may be scholarly consensus that children’s literature in eighteenth-­ century  Western Europe was spurred by many translations and transnational contacts, but current research hasn’t yet revealed the significant Anglo-­Dutch exchange in the field. While scholars mainly fixed their attention on the wider dissemination of German and French children’s books in the Dutch Republic, they also have identified a couple of children’s books that crossed the Channel. Especially the Philosophie der tollen en ballen (1768), an early translation of Newbery’s Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies (1761), has received some attention: [Anonymous]. 1768. Philosophie der tollen en ballen, of Het Newtoniaansche zamenstel van wysbegeerte. Middelburg: Christiaan Boehmer. Cf. Zuidervaart, Huib. 2010. “Science for the public: the translation of popular texts on experimental philosophy into the Dutch language in mid-eighteenth century.” In Cultural Transfer Through Translation: The Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by Means of Translation, edited by Stefanie Stockhorst: 231–262. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, esp. 252; Sturkenboom, Dorothée. 2004. De elektrieke kus: Over vrouwen, fysica en vriendschap in de 18de en 19e eeuw: Het verhaal van het Natuurkundig Genootschap der Dames in Middelburg. Antwerp and Amsterdam: Augustus, 13; Dietz, Feike. 2019. “Het achttiende-eeuwse jeugdboek als instrument van Zeeuwse genootschappelijkheid: kennisverspreider, stimulator en toegangspoort.” In Een hoger streven: Bouwstenen voor een geschiedenis van het Zeeuwsch Genootschap, 1769–2019, edited by

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Arjan van Dixhoorn, Henk Nellen and Francien Petiet: 137–160. Vlissingen: Archief. 12. Deken, Agatha. 1977. “Het nut der Proeve.” In Proeve over de opvoeding, by  Elisabeth Wolff, edited by H.C. de Wolf: 31–46. Meppel: Boom, esp. 43–44. 13. The characteristic late-eighteenth-century merging of economy and households on the levels of family and society has already been analysed by several Dutch historians in the domains of literature, art, culture and ideas: Krol, Ellen. 1991. “Over ‘den Meridiaan des huisselyken levens’ in Sara Burgerhart.” Spektator 20: 237–244; Kloek, Joost J. 1987. “Letteren en landsbelang.” In Voor vaderland en vrijheid: de revolutie van de patriotten, edited by F.  Grijzenhout, Wijnand W.  Mijnhardt and N.C.F. van Sas: 81–95. Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw; Koolhaas-Grosfeld, Eveline. 1996. “‘Economische’ schilderkunst: De verbeelding van broederschap in de laat achttiende-eeuwse genre-schilderkunst, in het bijzonder van Adriaan de Lelie.” De Achttiende Eeuw 28, no. 1/2: 141–183; Leemans, Inger, and Gert-Jan Johannes. 2013. Worm en donder: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700–1800: de Republiek. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 541–544; Buijnsters, P.J. 1992. “‘De kleine Republiek’: Het gezin in de Nederlandse literatuur van de achttiende eeuw.” De Achttiende Eeuw 24: 87–103; Sturkenboom, Dorothée. 2005. “Om de eer van het koopmanschap: De verleiding van het grote geldverdienen op het Nederlands toneel voor 1800.” In Praagse Perspectieven 3: Handelingen van het colloquium van de sectie Nederlands van de Karelsuniversiteit te Praag op 17 en 18 maart 2005, edited by Zdenka Hrncírová, Ellen Krol, Nienke van de WaalKrupa and Heleen Dongelmans-MacLean: 13–32. Prague: University Press; Sturkenboom, Dorothée. 2006. “Staging the Merchant: Commercial Vices and the Politics of Stereotyping in Early Modern Dutch Theatre.” Dutch Crossing 30, no. 2: 211–228. 14. Mijnhardt, Wijnand W., and A.J.  Wichers, eds. 1984. Om het Algemeen Volksgeluk: Twee Eeuwen Particulier Initiatief 1784–1984: Gedenkboek ter gelegenheid van het tweehonderdjarig bestaan van de Maatschappij Tot Nut Van ’t Algemeen. Edam: Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen; Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 1988. Tot heil van ’t menschdom: culturele genootschappen in Nederland, 1750–1815. Amsterdam: Rodopi, chapter VI. 15. An introduction on Nieuwenhuyzen as a pedagogue: Helsloot, P.N. 1993. Martinus Nieuwenhuyzen 1759–1793: Pionier van onderwijs en volksontwikkeling. Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, esp. chapters 3 and 4. 16. Nieuwenhuyzen, Martinus. 1788. Schoolboekjen van Nederlandsche deugden: Uitgegeeven door de Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen. Amsterdam: Harmanus Keyzer, Arend Fokke Simonsz and Cornelis de Vries. 17. Nieuwenhuyzen, Schoolboekjen van Nederlandsche deugden, 7.

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18. Nieuwenhuyzen, Martinus. 1798. Schoolboekjen van vaderlandsche deugden. Amsterdam: Hermanus Keyzer, Cornelis de Vries and Hendrik van Munster, 5. 19. Barbauld raised the son of her brother-in-law; the different parts of the Lessons grew in tandem with his development: Lessons for Children of two to three (1778), Lessons for Children of three, 2 vols (1778) and Lessons for Children of three to four (1779). Publisher Joseph Johnson will be further discussed in Chap. 6 of Lettering Young Readers. De Perponcher’s Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek is discussed in Chap. 2. 20. Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1781. Hymns in Prose for Children. London: Joseph Johnson. The Dutch translations (cf. Buijnsters, P.J., and L. Buijnsters-Smets. 1997. Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800. Zwolle: Waanders, numbers 613–616): Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1783. Lofzangen in prosa, Voor Kinderen. Translated by Willem Emmery de Perponcher Sedlnitzky. Utrecht: Widow of Johannes van Schoonhoven; Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1788. Lofzangen voor kinderen; vooral, over de heerlijkheid in de werken der Natuur. Translated by Johannes Tissel. Dordrecht: Johannes Tissel; Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1795. Lofzangen in onrijm voor kinderen. Translated by Johannes van Bemmelen. Leiden: Abraham and Jan Honkoop; Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1797. Lofzangen In Prosa, Voor Kinderen. Middelburg: Henrik van Osch and Johannes Jacobus van de Sande. 21. Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1787. Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old. London: Joseph Johnson, 11; [Perponcher Sedlnitzky, Willem Emmery de]. 1780. Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek. Utrecht: Widow of Johannes van Schoonhoven, 37: ‘De Koeijen eeten gras, de schaapen eeten gras, de paarden eeten gras. / Kleine jongens eeten geen gras, zij eeten brood, en drinken water en melk.’ 22. Barbauld, Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old, 21. 23. De Perponcher, Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek, 41. 24. Barbauld, Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old, 48. 25. De Perponcher, Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek, 52. 26. De Perponcher, Nieuw Nederduitsch Speldeboek, 92–97. 27. Alphen, Hieronymus van. 1998. Kleine gedigten voor kinderen. Edited by P.J. Buijnsters. Amsterdam: Athenaeum—Polak & Van Gennep, 29. 28. Van Alphen, Kleine gedigten voor kinderen, 29. 29. [Anonymous]. 1781. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek: Proeve eener kleine historie, voor kinderen. Amsterdam: Pieter Hayman, ix–x; [Anonymous]. 1766. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread: A Little Boy who lived upon learning. London: John Newbery, 4.

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30. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, 23. Cf. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 15–16: ‘geen Jongen houdt meer van zyn boek dan ik, maar ik leer het altyd eer ik ’t opeet’. 31. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, 30. 32. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 24. 33. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, iv. 34. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, 31. 35. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 25. 36. Perponcher Sedlnitzky, Willem Emmery de. 1784. Nieuwe aardryksbeschryving voor de Nederlandsche jeugd. Utrecht: Widow of Johannes van Schoonhoven, xvii–xviii. 37. Van Alphen, Kleine gedigten voor kinderen, 25. 38. Van Alphen, Kleine gedigten voor kinderen, 73. 39. Hazeu Corneliszoon, Johannes. 1788. Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt; voor kinderen die in de spelling eenigzints gevorderd zijn. Amsterdam: Willem van Vliet. 40. Molhuysen, P.C., and P.J. Blok, eds. 1911. Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek. Vol. 1. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1040–1041. 41. Hazeu, Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt, 7–8. 42. Klemann, Heather. 2011. “The Matter of Moral Education: Locke, Newbery, and the Didactic Book-Toy Hybrid.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 44, no. 2: 223–244. Cf. the promotion of play and pleasure in sixteenthand seventeenth-century English books for children: Lamb, Edel. 2018. Reading Children in Early Modern Culture. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, esp. 77. 43. Brown, Gillian. 2006. “The Metamorphic Book: Children’s Print Culture in the Eighteenth Century.” Eighteenth Century Studies 39, no. 3: 351–362; Klemann, “The Matter of Moral Education”; Lerer, Seth. 2008. Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History, from Aesop to Harry Potter. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 107. 44. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 1. Cf. the first chapter of The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread. 45. Nieuwenhuyzen, Schoolboekjen van Nederlandsche deugden, 23. 46. Hazeu, Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt. 47. Hazeu, Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt, A2r. 48. Hazeu, Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt, 23. 49. Hazeu, Het leezen gemaklijk gemaakt, 51. 50. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, Riet, ed. 2009. Dichter en boer: Hubert Korneliszoon Poot, zijn leven, zijn gedichten. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, Introduction; Geerars, C.M. 1979. “Hoofdstuk XIII: De waardering van Poot bij tijdgenoten en nageslacht.” In Hubert Korneliszoon Poot: 369–439. Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis, Castricum: Bert Hagen, 369–439.

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51. Loosjes Pz, Adriaan. 1798. Levensschetsen van vaderlandsche mannen en vrouwen, een schoolboek, uitgegeeven door de Maatschappy: tot nut van’t algemeen. Vol. 2. Haarlem: Adriaan Loosjes Pz., 39. 52. Loosjes, Levensschetsen van vaderlandsche mannen en vrouwen, vol. 2, 39. 53. Loosjes, Levensschetsen van vaderlandsche mannen en vrouwen, vol. 2, 43. 54. Loosjes, Levensschetsen van vaderlandsche mannen en vrouwen, vol. 2, 47. 55. [Anonymous]. 1796. Lees-oefeningen voor eerstbeginnenden ten dienste der schoolen welke ingericht zijn naar het oogmerk der Nederlandsche Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen. Vol. 1. Leiden: David Du Mortier and son. This book has been mentioned in the bibliography by Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school-en kinderboeken 1700–1800, number 144, but has never been related to Barbauld before. 56. Lees-oefeningen voor eerstbeginnenden, 9 and 13–14; Barbauld, Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old, 10–11. 57. On De Perponcher’s sources: Bulhof, Francis. 1993. Ma patrie est au ciel: Leven en werk van Willem Emmery de Perponcher Sedlnitzky (1741–1819). Hilversum: Verloren, 179, note 10. 58. Perponcher Sedlnitzky, Willem Emmery de. 1782. Onderwijs voor kinderen. 3 vols. Utrecht: Widow of Johannes van Schoonhoven, vol. 1, 26. 59. Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 1990. “De Nederlandse Verlichting nagerekend: de verkoopcijfers van het oeuvre van Willem Emmery de Perponcher.” In Geschiedenis en cultuur: achttien opstellen (liber amicorum for H.W. von der Dunk), edited by Ed Jonker and Maarten van Rossum: 171–185. The Hague: SDU, esp. 172–173; Bulhof, Ma patrie est au ciel, 47–59. On the political situation in Utrecht during the 1780s: Sas, N.C.F. van. 2004. De metamorfose van Nederland. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 223–253. 60. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 47. 61. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 9–10. 62. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 10–11. 63. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 12–13. 64. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 25. 65. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 37–38. 66. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 132. 67. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 123. 68. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 146. 69. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 58–59. 70. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 48–56. 71. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 66. 72. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, 6 and 15; De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 10.

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73. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, 6; De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 10. 74. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 23. 75. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 23. 76. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, 6: ‘You are climbing at the wrong Place’/‘Don’t be disheartened, Boy, only when you climb, climb in a proper Manner, and at the right Place.’ 77. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek, 2–3. 78. Barbauld, Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old, 33 and 36. 79. Calvert, Karin. 1982. “Children in American Family Portraiture, 1670 to 1810.” The William and Mary Quarterly 39, no. 1: 87–113; Kuus, Saskia. 2000. “Kinderen op hun mooist: Kinderkleding in de zestiende en zeventiende eeuw.” In Kinderen op hun mooist: het kinderportret in de Nederlanden 1500–1700, edited by J.B.M.F.  Bedaux: 73–84. Ghent: Ludion, esp. 79–81. 80. Calvert, “Children in American Family Portraiture”, 95. 81. Barbauld, Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old 36. 82. De Perponcher, Onderwijs voor kinderen, vol. 1, 47. 83. Gelderblom, Arie Jan. 1991. “Wolff en Deken als liedjesfabriek.” In Mannen en maagden in Hollands tuin: Interpretatieve studies van Nederlandse letterkunde 1575–1781: 137–160. Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers. Cf. Kloek, “Letteren en landsbelang”, 83–88; Koolhaas-­ Grosveld, “‘Economische’ schilderkunst”, 144–146; Leemans and Johannes, Worm en donder, 547–549. 84. Grenby, Little Goody Two-Shoes. 85. The Dutch translation from 1781 was reprinted in 1798.

PART II

Young Readers as Knowledgeable Citizens

CHAPTER 4

The Bounds of Empirical Modes of Reading: Knowledge About Visible and Invisible Worlds in the Dutch Adaptations of Georg Christian Raff

4.1   Introduction In the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic, a child lacking knowledge was considered to be, as certain eighteenth-century Dutch children’s books tell us, a ‘useless piece of furniture’.1 This metaphor reflects an idea connecting virtuous citizenship with cognitive (instead of merely moral) qualities: only by gathering knowledge would children be able to grow up and become the virtuous sorts of individuals who contribute to social progress.2 The process of acquiring knowledge was traditionally associated with the reading of books, as imagined, for example, in Cesare Ripa’s famous, often-translated anthology of personifications (Fig. 4.1). Studio (to learn) appears as a ‘Youth, with a pale Countenance’ who is shown reading a book, while the cock on the left denotes his ‘vigilance’ and ‘his Sitting, his sedentary Life’.3 In the second half of the eighteenth century, however, an

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7_4

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Fig. 4.1  Ripa, Cesare. 1709. Iconologia, or, Moral Emblems, by Cesare Ripa. London: Benjamin Motte, 73. Utrecht University Library: ICON 166

alternative conception of knowledge acquisition exerted a huge attraction on Dutch Enlightened pedagogues, whose ideal learning practice took as its starting point the child’s sensual experiences and the physical interaction with objects and real-world environments. For these theorists, youths should not learn by rote or be made to memorize knowledge gleaned from books. Even in the domain of religious instruction and catechism, traditionally devoted to the unambiguous teaching of religious k­ nowledge, educators made a plea for curious and inquisitive learning styles: the

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Reformed minister Samuel van Emdre (1746–1816), for example, argued that children would stay ‘just as ignorant’ (‘even onkundig’) if exclusively developing their memory to the exclusion of their ‘reason and judgement’ (‘verstand en oordeel’).4 Several pedagogues and teachers invited children to cast aside their books and venture outside, to explore their physical surroundings and feel the wind on their skin. ‘One’s own, experiential examination of objects’ (‘De eigene en proefondervindelijke naspeuring van voorwerpen’) always provides a clearer, more complete understanding of things than books can offer, Dionysius van de Wijnpersse argued.5 The pedagogue and regent Willem Emmery de Perponcher (1741–1819) defined words as ‘empty sounds’ (‘ydele klanken’) as well as foods from which children would fail to extract nourishment. Knowledge, for example, about air (‘lugt’), he argues, can be acquired only through the experience of air that moved, the effect, say, of an exhaling mouth or a fan in motion.6 This huge appreciation directed towards experiential knowledge correlated to an expanding culture of empirical knowledge amongst scholars as well as craftsmen in the early modern period.7 Practices of knowledge production through personal observation and interaction with objects exercised a significant impact on pedagogical ideas and practices from the seventeenth century onwards. In the wake of Johann Amos Comenius’s (1592–1670) declared ambition that ‘everything should, as far as is possible, be placed before the senses’ of children, seventeenth-century pedagogical reformers argued in favour of the introduction of Realia—‘real things’ such as plants, animals and tools—in Latin schools in Central Europe.8 Some even explicitly privileged three-dimensional objects above images, on the grounds that the former made deeper impressions and exerted a more direct impact on the senses than the latter.9 In the eighteenth century, such ideas also percolated into vernacular education (both within and outside public schools) throughout Europe. Famous trendsetting pedagogues included John Locke (1632–1704, having written in the prior century), who advocated that ideas must be acquired via the sensual perception of things instead of through mere words,10 and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), whose Emile ou De l’éducation (Emile, or On education, 1762), stimulated explorative and sensual learning practices while rejecting reading as the ‘plague of childhood’.11 At first sight, the ideal of empirical knowledge seems to be incompatible with the notion that books were classical knowledge stores that could

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be passively consumed by their readers. But as historians of knowledge and science have convincingly argued with regard to the knowledge culture of adults during the early modern period, books took on roles that supported the experiential practices then becoming widespread, for example, by visualizing hands-on skills or by demonstrating sensual acts of knowing.12 Western European children’s books were also tailored to the needs of an empirical knowledge culture in the way they shaped reading modes that spurred the use of empirical experiences as the building blocks of knowledge. The second half of the eighteenth century, for example, witnessed the development of ‘book-toy hybrids’ that redefined the process of reading ‘as an experiential act with an object’: such hybrid children’s books were expanded via material paraphernalia (e.g. balls, pin-cushions, letter dices and cards) or assumed a notably tactile shape (e.g. movable books and harlequinades).13 Empirical reading modes were also stimulated by books that, without the help of any actual physical applications, grounded their narratives in the real world. In the case of Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s (1743–1815) Lessons for children (1778–1779), as has been analysed by Joanna Wharton, representations of domestic things stimulated the physical interaction between the reading child and the objects in the youngster’s own surroundings: ‘The frequent demonstrative references to things—“here is a pin”, “here is a white butterfly”—and the imperatives “see” and “look at” suggest […] Barbauld’s actual physical gesturing towards a particular proximal object.’14 And as practical actions (‘Take out your handkerchief. Throw it up’) are also integrated into the learning process envisioned in Lessons for children, readers were thus invited to experience objects beyond the physical book they were reading.15 Numerous eighteenth-century Western European children’s books presented comparable dialogues that mimic real conversations: a child—or a few children—observes the domestic surroundings and discusses his or her perceptions so as to transform these perceptions into knowledge.16 Such children’s books, as Jessica L. Straley has aptly put it, aimed to ‘dissolve the boundary between fiction and life’ and ‘tried to look as little like literature as it could, seeking to mimic raw sensation’.17 So, on the basis of the quite extensive amount of international scholarly literature on book-­toy hybrids and real-world prose, we can generally assume that empirical modes of reading, designed to spur children’s cognitive development and knowledge acquisition, were widely developed in the eighteenth century. This chapter contributes to this line of scholarship in its demonstration of how empirical reading modes were developed in the Dutch Republic to

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serve the Dutch Enlightenment programme. Here educated, virtuous citizenship was synonymous with Christian citizenship, and religion was approached as an independently empirically obtainable phenomenon.18 Within this context, the shaping of citizens, as the actors expected to advance social progress, depended not only on knowledge about visible and tangible objects but—just as much—on knowledge about invisible worlds. This chapter therefore focuses on these types of empirical reading modes that were developed to transmit knowledge that the child’s experiential environment could not provide. How did Dutch book producers, in continuous interaction with the international children’s literature market, adapt reading as a method to offer the opportunity to acquire empirically based knowledge about phenomena and places that were beyond the reach of children’s eyes and hands? This chapter is not, I want to underline, dedicated to the transmission of exclusively religious knowledge as a distinct knowledge category. Building on a recent call in the history of knowledge to study exchanges and interrelations between types of knowledge,19 it highlights different empirically based reading techniques that were used to acquire knowledge about various invisible phenomena and places—God, but also faraway geographical regions and exotic natural phenomena that children were unable to see with their own eyes. This chapter demonstrates that the growing (not-­yet-)citizen was conceptualized as someone who practised empirical modes of reading in order to acquire knowledge about visible and invisible worlds, and to make connections amongst the bits of knowledge thus obtained. The central cases taken up in this chapter are the Dutch adaptations of two popular elementary textbooks originally written in German by Georg Christian Raff, a naturalist and lecturer at the grammar school in Göttingen: Geographie für Kinder (Geography for children, 1778) and Naturgeschichte für Kinder (Natural history for children, 1778).20 Raff’s Dutch translators—who reveal themselves to be rather creative adaptors—were Elisabeth (Betje) Wolff (1738–1804) and Johannes le Francq van Berkhey (1729–1812), each of whom, though well known by Dutch scholars as influential authors for adults, has rarely been studied as a translator-author for young audiences.21 In comparison to the original German models, Wolff and Berkhey’s Dutch adaptations aimed to involve young readers in an empirical reading process in which they came to see and understand geographical, natural and religious phenomena invisible to them in their own environment. Both adaptations show the development of reading strategies

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that facilitated a process of displacement: in the first case, the reading child was transmitted to distant worlds, while in the second, the unknown worlds were transferred to the empirical environment of its reader. These two alternative empirical reading modes, arising from and exerting an impact on the tradition of Dutch and of Western European children’s literature more broadly, illuminate a Dutch interest in modes of literacy that helped transform invisible worlds into graspable empirical, tangible shapes.

4.2   Wolff’s Aardrykskunde voor kinderen (1779): Travelling Readers Elisabeth  Wolff’s translation of Georg Christian Raff’s Geographie für Kinder (Geography for children, 1778) offered young readers a travel experience that enabled them to visit countries and regions they had never seen. Her Aardrykskunde voor kinderen (Geography for children, 1779) stimulated the imaginative and empathic skills of children, who were urged to escape the paperbound reality of the book and to enter imagined places, thus acquiring geographical knowledge that was rooted in (imagined) empiricism. Elisabeth Wolff-Bekker (1738–1804) is an author known to Dutch literary history in particular because of her productive cooperation with  Agatha Deken (1741–1804), which began when the two women decided to live together after the death of Wolff’s husband, the minister Adrianus Wolff, in 1777. Wolff and Deken’s partnership yielded an impressive harvest of Enlightened literature aimed at specific social groups that, at least from their perspective, needed special attention and care: women, lower-class people and children.22 Their writings were grounded in the Patriotist assumption that the education of these weaker groups in society would result in the economic and moral restoration of a fatherland that was supposed to have been in decline.23 The most famous writings to have originated out of this ambition were their epistolary novels.24 Their Sara Burgerhart (Sara ‘Civil Heart’, 1782), concerning the moral and social development of a 16-year-old middle-class girl, became such an impressive commercial success that the publisher, Isaac van Cleef, was able to make them unprecedented financial offers: he paid no less than 6000 guilders for their next epistolary novel, Historie van den heer Willem Leevend (History of Sir Willem ‘Vivaciously’, 1784).25 In the same period, their financial situation was also bolstered by inheritances.26 This prosperity

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sharply contrasted with the first lean years of their partnership, when it was still hard to live off the meagre profits of their publications.27 Aardrykskunde voor kinderen should be situated in this first, difficult period. Obviously, then, Wolff took the initiative to translate Raff’s geography book not so much from idealistic motives as from commercial calculations. She would have recognized the potential inherent in the rising genre of children’s literature: new Enlightened children’s books, just starting to sweep the market, had already achieved some notable financial successes. Aardrykskunde voor kinderen was one of the first books that Wolff published with the commercial, market-oriented publishing duo Isaac van Cleef (1748–1803), from The Hague, and Johannes Allart (1754–1816), from Amsterdam.28 The latter had recently published Johannes Florentius Martinet’s (1729–1795) Katechismus der Natuur (Catechism of nature, 1777–1779), a book that had sold like hotcakes: the complete first print run of no less than 1200 copies sold out within 3 weeks and as many as 6000 copies were sold during its first year on the market.29 The publication of Aardrykskunde voor kinderen can be considered an attempt to benefit from such enthusiasm via its adaptation of a very recently developed foreign model.30 Wolff and her publishers would have been aware of the innovative nature and commercial potential of Raff’s Geographie für Kinder: geography books then circulating in the Dutch Republic were old-fashioned teaching instruments serving only to facilitate the memorization of geographical names and facts by means of static question-and-­ answer models or schematic diagrams.31 At the quite reasonable price of 1.16 guilders, Wolff, Allart and Van Cleef tried to win over a broad audience to their new, Enlightened type of geographical education.32 In an additional consideration of market advantage, the three book producers had decided, half a year earlier, to precede the publication of Aardrykskunde voor kinderen by Wolff’s Proeve over de opvoeding (Treatise on Education, 1779).33 In this pedagogical tract, addressed to Dutch mothers, Wolff had already recommended Raff’s geography book as a suitable volume for the education of children. Although Proeve over de opvoeding generally valued oral instruction above book-based teaching, Wolff presented Raff’s book as a unique opportunity to gain a variety of knowledge that had long been inaccessible to children and mothers.34 As announced in Proeve over de opvoeding, Wolff’s translation of Raff’s geography book was adapted for its Dutch audience by means of a ‘notable appendix on our Fatherland’ and ‘a number of notes’ (‘merkelyke ­uitbreiding over ons Vaderland’; ‘ettelyke aantekeningen’).35 Comparing

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Wolff’s Aardrykskunde voor kinderen with Raff’s original text,36 we can conclude that Wolff fulfilled her promises.37 The translation’s most significant change, however, was Wolff’s transformation of the process of reading into a travel experience: the embodiment of a metaphor that helped sculpt the contours of empirical reading. Wolff’s format differs from Raff’s, who had developed a narrative design in which teacher and pupils discuss the places depicted on their maps. This conversational style—with a teacher presenting information about the several lands and regions, and the children reacting and asking questions— has been sometimes presented as Raff’s innovation,38 but in fact it aligned with an international tradition of domestic conversations in children’s books that we already see in Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s Magasin des Enfants (The children’s magazine, 1756).39 Wolff not only revived Raff’s conversational style by introducing the names of the pupils who are speaking with their teacher, but she also turned the process of discussing and observing maps into a practice of travelling imaginatively to places. When the protagonists talk about countries that they cannot see, they undertake imagined journeys to collect alternative empirical observations and experiences. So where Raff’s teacher introduces Spain to the children by presenting some dry information about this country, Spain is a big and fortunate Kingdom. It is surrounded by Portugal and France, and by the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Spanien ist ein grosses und gesegnetes Königreich. Es ist von Portugal und Frankreich, und dem Mittellandischen und Atlantischen Meer umgeben […]40

Wolff’s introduction to Spain takes shape in the form of observations made by the teacher and the children upon reaching Spain after a long, hilly hike. The protagonists (called ‘little Travellers’) discuss their trying travel circumstances—fatigue, the heat, poor facilities en route—as a means to stimulate the reader’s imagination, while imperatives (‘see this’) invite the readers to join the observation process being depicted. From Portugal, we go to Spain on foot, because it is very expensive here to drive and sail: one can hardly get a horse, and we don’t want to ride donkeys, do we? Go along, little ones! We now pass mountains and valleys: because Spain is a very hilly country. I am afraid that you will become very tired and hun-

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gry, because of the intense heat and the poor roads. Oh don’t fear for us, my Sir! when we are tired, we will rest at a certain place. And when we are hungry or thirsty, we will enter the nearest inn, and will eat and drink there for our money. But my Children, what would you do when you don’t find an inn over the course of many hours? and when you, consequently, can’t get anything for your money? That is the situation in Spain. Travellers need to carry their own food. When they don’t bring anything, they have to do as much as they can, if they don’t want to die of hunger, and have to discontinue their journey. My little Travellers, take some supplies with you, either bread, rusk, or something else. My Sir, do we also need to go through the Pyrenees Mountains? No, my child. We will pass these mountains when we want to France on foot. See this. This land is big and fortunate Spain. It is, on the side of Portugal and France, surrounded by the Pyrenees Mountains, and on the other side by the Mediterranean Sea. Van Portugal gaan wy te voet naar Spanjen, want het ryden, en het varen is hier zeer duur: men kan hier zeer zelden goede paarden krygen, en op Ezels willen wy immers niet zitten? Komt voort Kleinen! Nu gaat het over berg en dal: want Spanjen is een zeer bergagtig Land. Ik vrees dat gy allen door de zware hitte en de slegte wegen, zeer moede en hongerig zult worden. ô Vrees niet voor ons, myn Heer! als wy moede zyn, zullen wy op de eene of andere plaats uitrusten. En als wy honger of dorst krygen, gaan wy in de naaste Herberg, en eten en drinken daar voor ons geld. Ja maar, myne Kinderen, hoe zult gy het stellen als gy, in ettelyke uren, geen een Herberg aantreft? en dus niets voor uw geld krygen kunt? en zo is het in Spanjen gestelt. De Reizigers moeten hunne spyze medenemen. Brengen zy niets met zich, zo moeten zy het zo goed maken als zy konnen, zo zy niet van honger willen sterven, en dus hun reis dienden te staken. Neemt dan, myn kleine Reizigers, wat voorraad mede, ‘t zy brood, beschuit, of iets anders. Moeten wy, myn Heer, ook over het Pirenesche Gebergte? Neen myn kind. Wy moeten over dat gebergte trekken, als wy te voet naar Vrankryk willen. Ziet daar. Dit Land is het groot en gezegend Spanjen. Het is, aan den kant van Portugal en Vrankryk door het Pirenesche Gebergt, en daar aan die zyde, door de Middellandsche Zee omringt.41

After visiting Portugal, Spain and France, the teacher proposes bringing along his fellow travellers to Calais, where they will hire a packet boat to visit England, Scotland and Ireland. When they have travelled through the

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British Islands, they plan to take a couple of well-earned rest days in London before sailing to Holland. During these rest days, the protagonists find some time for extra instruction: ‘Shall I, in the meantime, name the other regions that belong to the English Crown?’ (‘Wil ik U, onderwyl, de overige Landen der Engelsche Kroon opnoemen?’)42 The lively discussions are suddenly interrupted as the boat will soon depart: ‘The Captain is calling, come, take the Luggage’ (‘de Schipper roept, komt, de Bagage gepakt’).43 During the crossing, however, they continue their conversations, now considering the history and landscape of Holland.44 Such moments of instruction and discussion are augmented by sensual experiences that enable the travelling children to acquire new knowledge about the places they are visiting: for example they taste some wine in Spain,45 enjoy the view of Amsterdam46 and talk to Turkish people.47 So, via a mixture of fictional techniques, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen smoothly integrates knowledge-creating moments of observation and conversation into its narrative of a Western European tour. Although such travel and sensual experiences are described as being true to life, they are mere imaginations, emerging from the perspective of the young readers of Aardrykskunde voor kinderen as well as the protagonists themselves. The teacher and pupils, in fact, simply look at their maps while only imagining their movements and empirical experiences. On occasion, they call out the imaginative character of their journey (‘we are travelling, as you know, in our imagination’: ‘wy reizen, weet gy wel, in onze Verbeelding’48) or reflect on that process: ‘May I call you, my Sir, how we have to imagine these icebergs? Yes sure, Coosje. Imagine yourself, Children, lofty Mountains’ (‘Mag ik u vragen, myn Heer, hoe wy ons die Ysbergen moeten voorstellen? ja zeer wel, Coosje. Verbeeldt u, Kinderen, hemelhoge Bergen’).49 As intended in Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, young readers need to follow the protagonists’ example by imitating this staged process of imagination, and thus they undertake their own imagined journey during the reading of the book. The prefatory poem by Agatha Deken had already encouraged young readers to approach the reading process as a way that one can travel: How amazed will you be. When you, while reading, will go through All the Countries that are known to us!

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Hoe zult gy wel verbysterd staan. Als gy, al leezend, al de Ryken Die ons bekent zyn, door zult gaan!50

At the end of Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, these readers are even explicitly addressed as the travel companions who now need to prepare themselves for a sequel, a journey that will offer several new experiences and observations: If you read this Book diligently […] we may undertake a Journey to the three other Continents; since I intend to take along Children again […]. On the Journey that I am planning, my Children, we will meet People of totally different Shapes, Colours, and Morals, than we have in Europe. We will discover completely different Animals, Fruits, Spices and Trees. We will visit Lands that are inhabited by Black, Yellow, Copper-coloured and Multicoloured People, and we will even meet Cannibals. In short, we will observe many, many rarities. Als gy nu naarstig in dit Boek leest […] zullen wy mooglyk eens een Reis naar de drie overige Waerelddeelen ondernemen; want ik ben van gedagten om weder Kinderen mede te nemen […]. Op de Reis die ik voornemen myne Kinderen, zullen wy Menschen ontmoeten van geheel andere Gedaanten, Kleur, en Zeden, dan de wy in Europa gezien hebben. Wy zullen gehele andere Dieren, Vrugten, Kruiden en Geboomtens ontdekken. Wy zullen Landen bezoeken, bewoont door Zwarte, Gele, Koperkleurige en Bontverwige Menschen; en zelf zullen we Menschen eeters ontmoeten. In ’t kort wy zyllen zeer veele Zeldzaamheden beschouwen.51

What Wolff’s adaptation of Raff’s geography book above all facilitated was an imaginative empirical experience on which knowledge could be built. Through its multilayered narrative structure and sensorially rich style, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen creates an alternative empirical reading mode, one that invites readers to escape the everyday environment and to use the power of imagination to explore places beyond their reach.

4.3   Berkhey’s Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen (1781): Looking Further Raff’s other children’s book published in 1778, Naturgeschichte für Kinder, was also noticed quite quickly in the Dutch Republic. The subscription list for the Dutch edition of the book circulated as early as 1779; the translation itself was published in three volumes in 1781.52 Within the

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lively international reception history of Raff’s Naturgeschichte für Kinder—there were Austrian, English, French, Dutch, Danish, Russian and Slavonic-Serbian translations53—the Dutch Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen (Natural history for children, 1781) was an early adaptation: the first French edition was published only in 1786,54 the English translation in 1796.55 Compared to Wolff’s Aardrykskunde voor kinderen and other children’s books published at the time, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen was a quite expensive book, selling for no less than 6.5 guilders, its price partly an effect of its many engravings of natural phenomena.56 Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen was translated by the naturalist, physician and politically engaged author Johannes le Francq van Berkhey (1729–1812), already known to the Dutch audience as the author of the Natuurlijke historie van Holland (Natural history of Holland, 1769), tailored to adults.57 He was more than just a translator of Raff’s work, as was argued by Adriaan Loosjes Pz (in the first biography of Berkhey) as well as by Berkhey himself.58 In his extensive preface to Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, Berkhey explains how he was unintentionally tangled up in the publication of a Dutch edition of Raff’s book. His publisher, Frans de Does Pieterszoon, having been struck by the commercial success of Martinet’s Katechismus der Natuur, tried to profit from the rising popularity of children’s literature by publishing wobbly translations, as did many of his colleagues.59 Although Berkhey refused to translate Raff’s Naturgeschichte für Kinder, he promised to ‘correct’ (‘nazien’) a translation made by Pieter van Schelle.60 However, when he finally read Van Schelle’s version and compared it to Raff’s book, he sadly concluded that this translation was ‘no Dutch’ (‘geen hollandsch’) at all; as for Raff’s original text, it was fundamentally worthless and unsuitable for Dutch children, crammed as it was with mistakes and devoting itself to a didactic programme that was inadequate61: I, at least, cannot limit myself to merely say to a child: this is dill, this fennel, this lettuce, this cabbage, this is a fly, this is a beetle, etc., without saying something more; a child, a young child should know these things from an external perspective, when one wants to teach him something that we can call Natural History, one has (I think) to present a general conception of this science.

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ik althans kon my niet voldoen, met enkel aan een kind te zeggen, dit is dille, dit venkel, dit salade, dit kool, dit een vlieg, dit een tor, enz. zonder iets meer; een kind, een jong kind kent deze zaaken uitwending, zo men hem ’er dan iets van leeren wil, dat Natuurlyke Historie zal heeten, dan (zo denk ik) moet ’er ook een algemeen denkbeeld van die weetenschap worden voorgedraaen […].62

Since it was not an option to cancel the publication—as De Does had already arranged advertisements and many of his clients had already subscribed—Berkhey decided to thoroughly revise Raff’s work: ‘I simply took the decision to dash Sir Raff’s whole work, and to keep only these parts that seem good and truthful to me’ (‘nam ik kort en goed het besluit, om het geheele werk van den Heer RAFF den bodem in te slaan, en ’er het geene uit te behouden, dat my goed en waarheid scheen’).63 To a certain extent, Berkhey’s adaptation strategies resembled the way Wolff had rewritten Raff. His awareness of Wolff as a fellow translator can be proved via the teachers’ names in Berkhey’s book: ‘Uncle Berkhey’ (‘Ome Berkhey’) and ‘Aunt Betje’ (‘Tante Betje’).64 Just like Wolff, Berkhey took it upon himself to enliven Raff’s conversational style, namely by introducing a ‘Dutch family with many children’ (‘hollandsche kinderryke familie’) of different ages and educational levels so that each child could express questions and answers on the basis of distinctive perceptions and thoughts.65 Berkhey also followed Wolff in her attempts to simulate alternative empirical observations. Like Wolff, he facilitated the creation of connections between places and phenomena within and beyond the children’s reach. But in contrast to Wolff, he did not urge his readers to escape their everyday world, but rather brought unattainable worlds into their domestic, empirical reality. To this end, he deviated from Raff’s original Naturgeschichte für Kinder when connecting the reflections on nature and natural history to the domestic world which was home to his young readers, for example, by adding conversations about the children’s own natural ­observations and experiments. In the following section on the size of the animal kingdom, for example, Berkhey added sentences in which the young protagonists discuss their own observations, with their teacher Uncle Berkhey helping to interpret them: what they saw, he explained, was just a very small, even a non-living part of the animal kingdom.

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Translation of Natuurlyke historie (Berkhey)

Natuurlyke historie (Berkhey)

Naturgesc­hic­hte (Raff)

Because how many creatures and fishes exist? And who would be able to collect all these thousands and thousands of living wasps, clams, flies and butterflies!—Hey, dear Uncle, I have thus seen thousands of beautiful butterflies together with Aunt Sweet Butterfly, and with Uncle Abundance of Clams: thousands of wasps and clams, as well as many birds, fishes, snakes and animals.— That is a nice answer, sweet, dear child, but listen, dear child, and your little sisters and brothers, too, believe me that what such collections contain are not even a thousandth part of all animals, but your lovely Uncle and Aunt attempt to know them, and they are only collected while they are dead. I understand Uncle, he talks about living animals, after all.— You understand that correctly, sweet girl, but listen. Many thousands of animals are still unknown, and nobody, even the major Naturalists, have ever seen them.

Want hoe veelerlei schepselen zyn ’er niet en visschen? En wie zoude alle die duizend duizenden van hoorentjes, schulpjes, vliegjes en kapelletjes leevend by een kunnen brengen!—Hé Oome lief ik heb immers by Tante Vlinderlief, duizende mooie kapelletjes by een gezien, en by Oome Schelpryk by duizende van hoornen en schelpen, ook zo veele vogelen, visschen, slangen en dieren.—Wat antwoordt gy geestig, zoete lieve jongen, maar hoor, lief kind, en uwe zusjes en broertjes ook, geloof my in alle deze verzamelingen zyn nog de duizendste part niet by een, maar uw lieve Oome en Tante zoeken ze te leeren kennen, en dan zyn ze toch nog maar dood by een. Ik begryp Oome hy spreekt immers van levendige dieren.—Dat begrypt gy recht, zoet meisje, maar luister. Veele duizende dieren zyn nog onbekend, en van niemand, zelfs van de grootste Natuurkenners niet gezien.66

Denn wie viel gibt es nur Schafe in der Welt? Wie viel nur Vögel und Fische?

Viele taussend lebendige Thiere kent Niemand, und hat sogar noch Niemand, auch die grössten Gelehrten noch nicht, gesehen.67

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In several sections, Berkhey’s Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen relates the theory of natural phenomena to the children’s world of experience. When the children are taught about the poisoned yew tree, the German edition discusses anonymous ‘ignorant people’ (‘Unwissende Leute’) who died after consuming its fruits.68 In contrast, the Dutch protagonists talk about an example from their own environment: ‘Our goat recently ate from the yew tree in the garden, and died’ (‘onze geitenbok heeft laatst in den tuin van den taxisboom gegeeten, en is gestorven’).69 And while the German version merely suggests the creation of a small garden in which children can grow their own vegetables and plants, the Dutch protagonists already have such a garden and draw on the experiences they have had there when conversing with their teacher.70 The Dutch protagonists’ observations and experiences are also supported and extended through representations of media beyond words. The children, for example, learn how to create a herbarium that contains dried leaves. They already know that their brother Karel’s ‘almanac [is] filled with dried primulas, auriculas, and tulip petals’ (‘almanakje vol met gedroogde primulas, auriculas, en tulpeblaadjes’), and their teacher explains that this method of collecting and structuring knowledge is also practised by naturalists, who ‘dry several plants and flowers, make books from them, and write their names in it, to remember them’ (‘droogen allerlei planten en bloemen, en maaken ‘er boeken van, en schrijven ‘er naamen by, om die te onthouden’).71 Uncle Berkhey helps the children follow this kind of empirical knowledge practice, for example, by advising them on the selection of a book in which leaves could be properly dried. He counsels against the children’s idea of using their ‘Luiken’, which is probably a reference to Jan Luyken’s famous Des menschen begin, midden en einde (1712): preferably, their herbarium should be larger and filled with blank paper. As a nice example of product placement, he suggests that ‘[t]he Bookseller of Uncle Berkhey will provide his dear readers a book’ (‘De Boekverkooper van Oome Berkhey zal voor zyn lieve leezertjes wel een boekje bezorgen’).72 Once dried, the leaves, Uncle Berkhey goes on to advise, can be observed and drawn: See dear Uncle, there is a leaf of the ivy (b) that just has been dried, I find that it is woven like a net, and that it is translucent. Isn’t that lovely, for our book.—Attentive little child, yes, that is beautiful and it deserves a drawing of your oldest brother; keep it, we will put it in the book of Sir RAFF.

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Fig. 4.2  Francq van Berkhey, Johannes le. 1781. Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen. 3 volumes. Leiden: Frans de Does Pieterszoon, volume 1, plate 1, between 50 and 51. KB National Library: KW BJ 25763 Kyk Oome lief, daar is al een blaadje van een klimop (b) net gedroogd, dat vind ik hier zo netachtig geweeven, en doorschynende. Is dat niet mooi, voor ons boek.—Oplettend kindje, ja dat is wonder schoon en waardig, dat uwe oudste broeder daar eene tekening van maakt; bewaar het, wy zullen het in het boek van den Heer RAFF plaatsen.73

It is significant that the teacher suggests putting the drawing in ‘the book of Sir RAFF’ (‘het boek van den Heer RAFF’).74 Berkhey’s readers thus could look at the image in their own book and learn to use that book as an observational instrument (Fig.  4.2). In an implicit way, Natuurlyke

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historie voor kinderen makes its young readers aware that not only can they collect and keep their own observations by means of books and images, they can also use books that others have created (such as Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen itself) to acquaint themselves with someone else’s empirical observations. This kind of alternative observational instruments offer a helpful alternative in cases of observations that are beyond the children’s reach. As the first sentences of Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen state plainly, it is impossible for children to see all the world’s animals: the animal kingdom is too extensive and many animals are too dangerous to observe directly.75 This book, however, offers an appropriate alternative for creatures unable to be seen through direct observation. Hence, Mietje, one of the protagonists, does not observe a real seal but gets to know this sort of animal by means of textual and visual representations. After Uncle Berkhey has described the seal’s strange feet, Mietje can then recognize its image (Fig. 4.3, picture R). She compares this unfamiliar animal to something she knows from her own environment—a swaddled doll—while the teacher helps her to extract knowledge out of these observations and considerations: because an animal possessing this kind of feet is unable to walk, it must live in the sea. The Seal is, indeed, extremely fat and its feet look unusual; people really believe that he has no feet when they see a picture of him, because his forequarters are definitely not perceived as feet, but rather as a human hand that has been cut off, or as a wing.—Then it will be this curious animal that is depicted in Space R. plate XIII. It looks like a swaddled doll.—Right, dear Mie, your comparison isn’t strange; yet the image is correct. Thus the Sea must be his permanent residence: Because how would he be able to move on sand or on earth with these bandy feet? De Zee-Hond is inderdaad bovenmatig vet en zyne voeten zien ’er zeldzaam uit, men gelooft wezentlyk, wanneer men hem afgebeeld ziet, dat hy geen voeten heeft, want de voorvoeten ziet men in het geheel niet als voeten, maar men ziet ze voor een afgehakte menschen hand aan, ofte voor een wiek.—Dat zal dan dat wonderlyk dier zyn dat hier by Vak R. plaat XIII. afgebeeld is. Het lykt wel een gebakerde Pop.—Recht Mie lief, uwe vergelyking is niet vreemd; doch de afbeelding is zeer juist. De Zee moet dus zyn geduurige verblijfplaats zyn: Want hoe zoude hy toch met zulke kromme voeten op ’t zand of de aarde kunnen voortkomen?76

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Fig. 4.3  Francq van Berkhey, Johannes le. 1781. Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen. 3 volumes. Leiden: Frans de Does Pieterszoon, volume 3, plate XIII, between 24 and 25. KB National Library: KW BJ 25763

Raff, in his German edition, chose a different method to introduce animals such as the seal: he has staged them as speaking figures: ‘I the Seal live in the northern Seas of Europe’ (‘Ich Seehund […] halte mich in de nördlichen Meeren von Europa’).77 As the Dutch section on the seal shows, Berkhey has substituted, in place of such fabulous fictional narrative anecdotes, realistic prose that enables children to acquire knowledge

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on the basis of written and imagined perceptions that could be linked to observations rooted in their own environment. So, in comparison to Raff’s original Natürgeschichte für Kinder, Berkhey shifts the focus to the observation of a nearby empirical environment and takes advantage of the way books and images can structure and extend a youngster’s daily experiences. Beyond it being too dangerous and time-consuming to see all the world’s creatures with one’s own eyes, there is one Creature, as Uncle Berkhey explains, that no one is permitted to observe: God. As God is explicitly presented as the invisible Creature, every attempt to see him is considered to be an idle as well as a reprehensible act. What is granted to people, in contrast to animals, is the ability to make observations of God’s creatures: ‘God will demonstrate everything to us as in a mirror’, as ‘we are, in contrast to animals, allowed to see his miracles and to be amazed’ (‘God laat ons alles als in een’ spiegel zien […] ons is het boven de dieren gegund, zyne wonderen te zien, ons te verwonderen’).78 This line of thinking makes it clear why the observation of the surrounding empirical environment is central to Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen: Berkhey considers this experiential method to be the only way one can know and love God. ‘I advise you not to leave, from now on, any garden, land or pasture, without noticing any plant, flower, fruit or leaf’ (‘Ik raad u dan voortaan, geen’ tuin, akker of weide te verlaaten, zonder eene plant, bloem, vrucht of blad in acht te nemen’), because God can be revered only via the observation of his creatures and the amassing of knowledge about them.79 The young protagonists, as ‘little lovers of Natural History’ (‘kleine liefhebbers der Natuurlyke Historie’), thus resolve to ‘learn about our great God from his exercise book of nature’ (‘van onzen grooten God, uit zyn lesboek der nature leeren’).80 We thus see the young readers of Berkhey’s Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen being guided to use their book both as an invitation to see their own environments and as an alternative observational instrument that depicts parts of the empirical world unreachable for them because of their scope and due to the dangers they might present. This layered process of observational reading serves to honour and to understand alike a universe that, though not suitable for every kind of direct human observation, can often be seen indirectly in the reader’s visible environment. Reading is, first and foremost, a means of transferring the invisible to the visible world.

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4.4   The Roots and Pathways of Wolff’s and Berkhey’s Empirical Reading Strategies Berkhey, though seemingly influenced by Wolff’s adaptation of Raff, did not invite his readers to imagine travelling physically to faraway locales. Rather, his focus was the everyday world surrounding children, a place where God could be recognized and honoured via close observation. Berkhey’s approach must have been inspired by Katechismus der natuur (1777–1779), the blockbuster mentioned above by the theologian, naturalist and pedagogue Johannes Florentius Martinet. Whereas Berkhey’s publisher De Does wanted to benefit from Martinet’s commercial success, as we saw, Berkhey himself was primarily attracted to Martinet’s orientation towards natural history, evident in his work for adults as well his Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen.81 Martinet’s Katechismus der natuur, considered to be the first Dutch physico-theological children’s book, is based on the premise that nature, as the realm where God can be found, should be explored as a means to understand and value God’s work.82 This physico-theological approach, in the Dutch Republic spurred by its ‘founding father’ Bernard Nieuwentijt, has been characterized as emblematic of a Dutch Enlightenment that aspired to approach religion as comprising independently obtained convictions instead of a collection of repeated doctrines.83 Inspired by this ideal, several educators and catechists left behind the mechanical, memorizationbased tradition of catechism—although traditional question-and-answer catechisms were still widely used and published84—and aimed to develop reading modes that would foster young readers’ processes of reasoning and that would be integrated with the children’s own empirical observations and curious questions.85 Spurred by this broadly shared ambition, Martinet developed a physico-theological model of ‘walk-­ reading’ (looplezen), a term introduced by Arianne Baggerman.86 Katechismus der natuur is conceived as a walk which the book’s reading process allows its young reader to take: it depicts a child and a teacher who, during their walk together, observe and discuss the natural environment around them and thus learn to see and revere the Creature of all creatures. Berkhey was inspired by Martinet’s creation of an empirical reading mode that could relate the perception of and knowledge about natural phenomena to God, who is, paradoxically, perceived as imperceptible. Berkhey’s Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen also resembles Martinet’s attempt to present his work as an observational instrument offering an

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alternative route in instances when empirical observational practices are either impossible or fail. Martinet’s first conversations functioned as a telescope observing faraway heavenly bodies that are invisible to the naked human eye, but gradually they adopted the perceptual scale of a microscope, revealing and observing small creatures. As Martinet explains, human eyes are not so sharp that they can see what microscopes see: were that the case, our eyes wouldn’t be able to cast their gaze over forests, mountains and horizons, and thus would be denied observation of all the beauties of God’s nature.87 Hence, people need optical instruments, such as magnifying glasses, to reveal the ingenious, divine structure of figures in the snow. The ‘art of seeing snow figures’ is described in detail; the teacher also shows pictures, included in the book, that are drawn from his own observations.88 The book, consequently, was represented as a kind of optical instrument for readers who aimed to collect observations that would otherwise be hidden from their naked eyes. Although Martinet’s Katechismus der natuur, as a physico-theological children’s book, pertains to a Dutch Enlightened programme, one should not consider physico-theological children’s literature to be an exclusively Dutch phenomenon. Martinet’s endeavours in this regard had been preceded by Noël-Antoine Pluche’s Spectacle de la nature (Spectacle of nature, 1732), a French book translated into Dutch.89 As Martinet himself wrote, he was also spurred by the German pedagogue Christian Gellert’s demand for a catechism of nature.90 It is known as well that an English tradition of books about nature as God’s realm influenced the Dutch, not only with regard to books for adults but also in the case of children’s literature.91 An English translation of Martinet’s Katechismus der natuur had been completed by John Hall, minister of the English church in Rotterdam, and published by the London publisher Joseph Johnson.92 In the opposite direction, Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s Hymns in Prose for Children (1781), which casts the perception of nature as the steppingstone to reverence towards God, became a popular model for Dutch book producers: as no less than four different Dutch translations appeared, the book seems to have been more popular and better known in the Dutch Republic than Barbauld’s Lessons for children.93 And when John Newbery’s (1713–1767) The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies (1761) was translated into Dutch, this innovative children’s book (showing the young Tom instructing his friends in experimental physics) was explicitly presented as a physico-theological children’s book in a preface written for this Dutch edition.94

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So although physico-theological children’s literature was not a specifically Dutch subgenre, there was remarkable interest in this type of children’s book on the Dutch market. When Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen accentuated its physico-theological programme in its adaptation of the original German model, Berkhey was thus adopting an approach that had already proved its value and commercial appeal in the Dutch context. He combined this physico-theological programme with the use of a conversational style in which adults and children of different ages discussed natural phenomena, and in this, he clearly deviated from Martinet’s catechetical dialogue. Such a conversational style was only scarcely employed in Dutch books at the time,95 despite its popularity in children’s literature internationally.96 So Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen can be considered an innovative model that went on to enjoy success on the Dutch book market: a book showing how the conversational exploration of the empirical world was a stepping-stone to invisible worlds. The format was adopted by Dutch children’s books that primarily aimed to teach natural history— such as the conversational Natuurkundig schoolboek (Schoolbook on natural history, 1800), in which natural observations are linked to God’s greatness—or at teaching religion—such as the religious instruction books by the minister Samuel van Emdre, who increasingly focused on empirical observations as points of departure to discuss and to honour God.97 In a slightly different way, the format also exercised an impact on several history textbooks for children, in which the empirical, visible world served as an entrance to the invisible world of the past. The anonymous De merkwaardigste lotgevallen onzes Vaderlands (Most remarkable adventures of our fatherland, 1791) consists of nine conversations in which children are faced with historical representations in their everyday environment. Gerrit’s mother, for example, has bought a ‘plastered sculpture’ (‘plyster beeldtenis’),98 and Gerrit wonders what exactly it depicts. His curiosity yields a conversation about the biography of Hugo de Groot, the diplomat and lawyer who was incarcerated by Prince Maurits but managed to escape his prison, the castle Loevestein. Thus the sculpture offers an entrance to a historical world that appears to live on in Gerrit’s own life. Empirical objects also serve as tangible monuments of the past in  Levensschetsen van Nederlandsche mannen en vrouwen (Outlines of Dutch men’s and women’s lives, 1791), a book published by the Society of the Common Good that was written and printed by Adriaan Loosjes Pz (1761–1818), who published a vast body of literary works on Patriotic history during his lifetime.99 Eduard and his son Jan, for example, start

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talking about the naval officer Michiel de Ruyter (1607–1676) after being highly affected by De Ruyter’s monumental grave in the New Church in Amsterdam. During their conversation and walk, they see the waters navigated by De Ruyter, as well as De Ruyter’s house,100 and conceive a plan to observe, after their return home, De Ruyter’s portrait, which can also be observed by children reading the book (Fig. 4.4).101 Also in the domain of travel literature, child protagonists integrate unseen worlds in their own empirical world, instead of escaping their domestic environment.102 The faithful and anonymous translations of the popular travel stories of Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746–1818), one of the German philanthropists who helped realize Rousseau’s pedagogical ideas in practice, restricted the child’s exploratory activities by introducing a frame narrative that distinguished travelling protagonists from children who do not engage in travel. In the case of Handleiding tot de natuurlyke opvoeding of Robinson Crusoë (Treatise on natural education or Robinson Crusoe, 1780–1781)—translated from Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere (1779–1780)—Daniel Defoe’s famous travel story for adults, Robinson Crusoe (1719), was transformed into one such frame narrative for children: a father, his daughter, other children and two adult friends read and discuss Robinson’s tale over the course of 30 evenings.103 On the frontispiece, all the characters are settled in the garden, since the father prefers a direct— unmediated—observation of the natural world: ‘it would be a pity to see such a nice evening through glasses’ (‘het zou jammer weezen, een’ zo bekoorlyken avond slechts door de glaazen te aanschouwen’) (Fig. 4.5).104 Listening to Robinson’s story as it is read by the father, book in hand, they observe the natural environment that is right in front of them—one child even pointing, a gesture highlighting their collective observation process. During the story, the young protagonists begin to emulate Robinson by imitating his behaviour and appearance. One child, for example, mimics Robinson’s production of a game bag.105 When he came up with his handmade bag and ‘a proud step’ (‘een’ fieren tred’), he is like Robinson, as the mother says, ‘I had almost taken you for the real Robinson’ (‘Het scheelde weinig, of ik had u voor den rechten ROBINSON aangezien’).106 One of the other children applauds this type of modelling: ‘It is good, children, to imitate such things. Because whenever you might land on an unpopulated island, you will know beforehand what to do’ (‘Dat is goed, Kinderen, dat gy zulks namaakt. Want zo gy ooit eens op een eiland mogt komen, daar geene menschen zyn; dan weet gy al, hoe gy doen moet’).107

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Fig. 4.4  Loosjes Pz, Adriaan. 1791. Levensschetsen van Nederlandsche mannen en vrouwen, een schoolboek, uitgegeeven door de Maatschappij tot nut van ’t algemeen. Vol. 1. Haarlem: Adriaan Loosjes Pz, 42. KB National Library: KW 383 H 42

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Fig. 4.5  Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1780–1781. Handleiding tot de natuurlyke opvoeding of Robinson Crusoë, geschikt ten dienste der jeugd. Amsterdam: Anthony Mens Jansz, π1r. KB National Library: KW 1088 D 111

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In Campe’s Ontdekking van America, geschikt ter aangenaame […] leezing voor kinderen (The Discovery of America, suitable for a pleasant reading by children, 1782; original German title: Die Entdeckung von America, 1781–1782), fictional characters translate Columbus’s empirical knowledge-acquisition practices to their own domestic context. Father and Frederik, for example, use the ceiling of their room to substitute for the sky observed by Columbus during his journey. FATHER. Come with me to the large room!—So! Consider the ceiling of this room with careful attention, and observe the several ornaments which have been worked into it. FREDERIK. Done! FATHER. Now I will bind your eyes; then I will lead you back and forth in this room, and will turn you around several times, so that you will not know where you are any more. (The Father does just what he had said he was going to do.) Now lean your head backwards, so that when I remove the cloth, you will see nothing other than the ceiling. Thus!—And now (while removing the cloth) look upwards, and tell me, if you are able, in which corner of the room are we now? FREDERIK. In the corner by the organ. FATHER. How do you know that? FREDERIK. Because here, just above me, there is a plaster rose, which I had noticed before. FATHER. See, by observing the ceiling, you are able to know, where you actually are.—What do you think now? Wouldn’t sailors be just as able to discover, in a similar way, in which part of the sea they are? FREDERIK. Oh yes! They just need to observe the sky, as I observe the ceiling, then they will see, by the stars, where they are. VADER.  Kom met my mee naar de grote zaal!—Zo! beschouw nu eens, recht met oplettendheid, de zoldering van dit vertrek, en merk op de verscheidene cieraaden, welke daaraan gemaakt zyn. / FREDERIK.  Goed! / VADER. Nu zal ik u de oogen toebinden; ik zal u alsdan in dit ruim vertrek heen en weêr leiden, en u eenige maalen daarby omdraaijen, tot dat gy volstrekt niet meer weeten zult, waar gy eigenlyk zyt. / (De Vader deed, gelyk hy had gezegd.) / Leg nu uw hoofd achterover, zodanig, dat als ik den doek zal weg doen, gy niets zult zien, dan de zolder. Zo!—En nu (hem den doek afneemende) zie nu opwaards, en zeg my, zo gy kunt, in welken hoek van de zaal wy thans zyn? / FREȆRIK. In den hoek by het orgel. / VADER. Hoe weet gy dat? / FREȆRIK. Om dat hier, juist boven my, de gestukadoorde roos is, welke ik te vooren wel heb opgemerkt. / VADER. Zie, dus kunt gy uit de beschouwing van den zolder weeten, op wat plaats gy eigenlyk zyt.—

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Wat denkt gy nu; zouden de zeevaardenden niet ook wel op eene soortgelyke wyze kunnen ontdekken, in welke streek der zee zy zyn? / FREȆRIK. O ja! Zy behoeven slechts den hemel te aanschouwen, gelyk ik de zoldering, dan kunnen zy ‘t wel aan de sterren zien, waar zy zyn.108

Young readers of Campe’s frame tales are thus invited to follow child characters who import others’ travel experiences into their own lives but do not travel themselves. Not all of Campe’s travel stories, however, are conceived as frame tales: the Eerste reis ter ontdekking in het Noorden (First journey to discover the North, 1786), translated from Gemälde des Nordens (1785), tells only of the late-sixteenth-century Dutch voyage led by Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerck, who tried to find a new northern route to the Indies but were forced, due to ice and frigid cold, to hibernate on the desolate island Nova Zembla.109 Comparable to what transpires in Wolff’s Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, the young readers of the Eerste reis ter ontdekking in het Noorden are explicitly invited to approach their reading process as a travel experience. In the preface, they are addressed as ‘young friends’ (‘jonge Vrienden’) who will be guided through ‘very cold and desolate regions’ (‘zeer koude en eenzaame gewesten’) by means of the book they are about to read. They will, for example, imagine the chill of this region when consulting their maps and will learn that the sun does not seem to rise during a large portion of the year.110 Their imaginative processes have thus, as with Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, been spurred by the practices of looking at maps and learning the characteristics of unknown places. What differs from Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, however, is the persistent distinction between the travelling characters in the book and the readers outside the book’s frame: readers are urged to imagine unknown places by means of their maps and book, but they do not participate in a fictional reality in which they themselves are travellers. The Dutch geography books published in the years after Wolff’s Aardrykskunde voor kinderen were also primarily aimed at relating distant places to the child’s empirical reality instead of offering an escaping from the youngster’s everyday world. Samuel van Emdre’s Beginselen der aardklootkunde voor de jeugd in vraagen en antwoorden (Basics of geography for the young in questions and answers, 1789), for example, sought its readers to know and honour God on the basis of ‘the observation of the visible Creation’ (‘de beschouwing der zichtbaare Schepping’).111 In Willem Emmery de Perponcher’s Nieuwe aardryksbeschryving voor de

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Nederlandsche jeugd (New geography for Dutch youth) as well as Martinet’s Kort onderwijs in de geografij (Short education on geography), both published in 1784, distant regions beyond the children’s reach are adapted to their daily reality, for example, by means of experiments. In Kort onderwijs in de geografij, a child imitates the earth by making a paper sheet round,112 while De Perponcher suggests the use of objects and experiments to bring unreachable phenomena ‘amongst the eye’ and ‘amongst the children’s senses’ (‘onder ‘t oog; onder de zinnen der kinderen’).113 As De Perponcher explains, lands and seas could be easily imitated through the use of bins of water, pieces of paper or wood, and some clay, sandstones and mosses, while balls and candles could be employed as a means of imagining the solar system.114 As an alternative to such experimental settings,  De Perponcher argues, a teacher might also consider reporting ‘a journey that he really undertook, or assumed to have done’ (‘eene reis, welke men, of in de daad gedaan had, of alleen onderstelde te hebben gedaan’). Such reports need livening up via detailed descriptions of the place’s characteristics, including its agriculture, trade customs and lifestyle, and preferably would be connected to the child’s daily environment, for example, by selecting regions that grow those fruits and vegetables appreciated by children.115 While this last didactic suggestion resembles, in a way, Wolff’s imaginative travel approach, it should instead be interpreted as a strategy of importing distant phenomena and places into the children’s environment. Berkhey’s model, thus, was the approach that enjoyed much success in the late-eighteenth-century Dutch book market. Cast as the means to a reading practice that enabled children to see and experience unreachable places and phenomena within their own everyday environments, the book was transformed into an alternative, extended instrument of empirically based knowledge. The alternative strategy developed by Wolff in her adaptation—showing children venturing, by means of their imagination, to places they have never seen—met with far less acknowledgement.

4.5   Conclusion The comparative German-Dutch analyses in this chapter highlighted the Dutch appropriation of the larger Western European attempt to develop empirical modes of reading that fostered inquisitive, experiential knowledge processes amongst the young. Both alternative empirical reading modes revealed in this chapter facilitated a process of displacement,

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whereby young readers could gain empirically based knowledge that was unavailable or invisible in their real-world, experiential environments: child readers were transmitted to other worlds (Wolff’s Aardrykskunde voor kinderen), or—the other way around—these worlds were transported into their environment (Berkhey’s Natuurlijke historie voor kinderen). As such, this chapter demonstrates that the knowledgeable, growing citizento-be was largely conceptualized as someone who practised empirical modes of reading in order to make connections regarding knowledge about visible and invisible worlds alike and to be able to extrapolate from one’s reading. This conception implies a bedrock relation of literacy to active knowledge skills rather than to the passive absorption of knowledge. Social progress was thus implicitly considered to be dependent on educated citizens who possessed reading skills that enabled them to acquire, interrelate and appropriate different types of knowledge: geographic, natural and religious knowledge; invisible, intangible and experientially obtainable knowledge. Berkhey’s strategy of displacement—whereby the reading child was confined to an everyday environment and merely learned to see and imitate new realities within the borders of this domestic world—was quite successful. Although this approach of empirical reading was not unique to Dutch children’s books, as it fits into larger Western European ambitions to create empirical reading modes, the Dutch market developed a special interest in means of literacy that instantiated invisible worlds in empirical shapes, spurred along by the ambition to make God knowable and understandable. Wolff’s strategy—in which child readers used their imaginations to travel to other places—seems to have been less successful than expected: Aardrykskunde voor kinderen was not followed by the promised sequels about other continents, and its strategy was rarely imitated by Dutch travel or geography books for children. It was controversial, first and foremost, because the fictional character of the imaginative journey developed by Elisabeth Wolff seems to be incompatible with the contemporary bent for children’s books to mimic empirical knowledge experiences, which—to quote Jessica L. Straley—‘tried to look as little like literature as it could’.116 Moreover, the Aardrykskunde voor kinderen’s strong appeal to the reader’s imagination as well as its implicit invitation to explore faraway places was probably perceived as risky by the educators and parents who aimed to guide the children’s processes of interpretation: how to restrict the movements of travelling minds and bodies?117 The dangerous effects of

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imitating fictional travellers were regularly discussed by eighteenth-­century pedagogical thinkers, who realized that ‘emulation could easily go astray if not properly moderated’.118 In her Guardian of Education, the English pedagogue and author of children’s literature Sarah Trimmer explained that a child reading Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe required supervision and regulation, since once, indeed, two little readers had run away with plans to embark on a sea voyage to discover an island.119 So while the development of empirical reading modes at first sight seems to indicate a growing amount of agency for young readers—children were now urged to acquire their own store of knowledge based on real-life experiences—it was precisely the kinds of children’s books that restricted their readers’ imaginations and agency as knowledge actors that met with the greatest approval on the Dutch market. As we have also seen in the previous chapter, children’s books encouraged as well as regulated the strivings of children towards self-development and growth.

Notes 1. Beets Pz., Pieter. 1798. Korte verhaalen voor kinderen van zes tot tien jaaren. Amsterdam: Paul Etiënne Briët, 44, 50 and 157; [Anonymous]. 1793. Trap der jeugd: Uitgegeeven door de Maatschappij: tot nut van ‘t algemeen. 2nd impression. Leiden: David Du Mortier and son, Deventer: Jan Hendrik de Lange, 38. 2. Kloek, Joost J., and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt. 2002. “De verlichte burger.” In De Burger: Een geschiedenis van het begrip ‘burger’ in de Nederlanden van de Middeleeuwen tot de 21e eeuw, edited by Joost J. Kloek and Karin Tilmans: 155–171. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, esp. 157. 3. Ripa, Cesare. 1709. Iconologia, or, Moral Emblems. London: Benjamin Motte, 73. I have also discussed this example and development in Dietz, Feike, and Sven Dupré. 2019. “Youthful Minds and Hands: Learning Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.” Science in Context 32, no. 2: 113–118. 4. Emdre, Samuel van. 1791. Het onderwys in de H. Godgeleerdheid bevattelyk, gemakkelijk en nuttig gemaakt voor zulken, die belydenis zullen doen, als mede tot verdere oeffening van minkundigen, die reeds lidmaaten zyn. Utrecht: Dirk Kemink and son and Willem van Yzerworst, x. 5. Wynpersse, Dionysius van de. 1780. Onderwijs in de redenkunde, ten dienste zijner academiesche lessen […] beschreven. Rotterdam: Johannes Pols, 400.

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6. Perponcher Sedlnitzky, Willem Emmery de. 1782. Onderwijs voor kinderen. 3 vols. Utrecht: Widow of Johannes van Schoonhoven, vol. 1, xiii–xiv. 7. See, amongst others, Smith, Pamela H. 2009. “Science on the Move: Recent Trends in the History of Early Modern Science.” Renaissance Quarterly 62, no. 2: 235–275; Smith, Pamela H. 2004. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: Chicago University Press; Miert, Dirk van. 2009. Humanism in an Age of Science: The Amsterdam Athenaeum in the Golden Age, 1632–1704. Leiden and Boston: Brill; Harkness, Deborah. 2007. The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. New Haven and London: Yale University Press; Roberts, Lissa, Simon Schaffer, and Peter Dear, eds. 2007. The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialization. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 8. Whitmer, Kelly J. 2019. “Reimagining the ‘Nature of Children’: Realia, Reform and the Turn to Pedagogical Realism in Central Europe, c. 1600–1700.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 12, no. 1: 113–135; Whitmer, Kelly J. 2015. The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: Observation, Eclecticism and Pietism in the Early Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Quote Comenius: Comenius, Johann Amos. 1957. “The Great Didactic.” In John Amos Comenius on Education, edited by Jean Piaget. New  York: Teachers College Press, 95. 9. Cf. Whitmer, “Reimagining the ‘Nature of Children’”, that, for example, discusses Andreas Reyher’s ideas. 10. Cf. Locke, John. 2000. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. [s.l.]: Batoche Books, 404. 11. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1979. Emile: Or, on Education. Edited by Allan Bloom. New  York: Basic Books, 116. Cf. the general introduction of Lettering Young Readers, Chap. 1. 12. See, for example, Smith, Pamela H., and Benjamin Schmidt, eds. 2007. Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press; Smith, Pamela H., and Tonny Beentjes. 2010. “Nature and Art, Making and Knowing: Reconstructing SixteenthCentury Life-Casting Techniques.” Renaissance Quarterly 63, no. 1: 128–179; Kusukawa, Sachiko. 2012. Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Ogilvie, Brian W. 2003. “The Many Books of Nature: Renaissance Naturalists and Information Overload.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1: 29–40; Frasca-Spada,

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Marina, and Nick Jardine. 2000. Books and the Sciences in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 13. Klemann, Heather. 2011. “The Matter of Moral Education: Locke, Newbery, and the Didactic Book-Toy Hybrid.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 44, no. 2: 223–244, esp. 225. See also: Shefrin, Jill. 2009. The Dartons: Publishers of Educational Aids, Pastimes & Juvenile Ephemera 1787–1876. Los Angeles: Cotsen Occasional Press; Heesen, Anke te. 2006. The World in a Box: The Story of an Eighteenth-Century Picture Encyclopedia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Brown, Gillian. 2006. “The Metamorphic Book. Children’s Print Culture in the Eighteenth Century.” Eighteenth Century Studies 39, no. 3: 351–362; Hoiem, Elizabeth F.M. 2013. Object Lessons: Technologies of Education in British Literature 1762–1851. PhD diss., University of Illinois. 14. Wharton, Joanna. 2018. Material Enlightenment: Women Writers and the Science of Mind, 1770–1830. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, chapter 1, quote on 43. Cf. Wharton, Joanna. 2013. “The Things Themselves: Sensible Images in Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose”. In Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives, edited by William McCarthy and Olivia Murphy: 107–126. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; Wharton, Joanna. 2012. “Inscribing on the Mind: Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ‘Sensible Objects’.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, no. 4: 35–550. 15. Quote from Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1788. Lessons for Children of Three Years Old. 2 vols. London: Joseph Johnson: vol 2, 11. 16. Bannett, Eve Tavor. 2017. Eighteenth-Century Manners of Reading: Print Culture and Popular Instruction in the Anglophone Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 2; Cohen, Michèle. 2015. “The Pedagogy of Conversation in the Home: ‘Familiar Conversation’ as a Pedagogical Tool in Eighteenth- and NineteenthCentury England.” Oxford Review of Education 41, no. 4: 447–463. Cohen, Michèle. 2009. “‘Familiar Conversation’: The Role of the ‘Familiar Format’ in Education in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England.” In Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices, edited by Mary Hilton and Jill Shefrin: 99–116. Farnham: Ashgate. 17. Straley, Jessica L. 2016. Evolution and Imagination in Victorian children’s literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19. 18. There is a huge amount of literature on the Dutch Enlightenment and the symbiosis between religion and Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic; see, for example, Buisman, Jan Wim, ed. 2013. Verlichting in Nederland 1650–1850: Vrede tussen rede en religie? Nijmegen: Vantilt; Wall, Ernestine van der, and Leo Wessels, eds. 2007. Een veelzijdige verstandhouding:

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Religie en Verlichting in Nederland 1650–1850. Nijmegen: Vantilt; Jacob, Margaret C., and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt, eds. 1992. The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment, and Revolution. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press; Bosma, Jelle. 1997. Woorden van een gezond verstand: De invloed van de Verlichting op de in het Nederlands uitgegeven preken van 1750 tot 1800: Monografie & bibliografie. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, esp. 58–59; Eijnatten, Joris van, and Fred van Lieburg. 2005. Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis. Hilversum: Verloren, esp. 243. 19. Cf., for example, Mulsow, Martin, and Lorraine Daston. 2019. “History of Knowledge.” In Debating New Approaches to History, edited by Marek Tamm and Peter Burke: 159–179. London: Bloomsbury. 20. Oelkers, Jürgen. 2008. “Elementary textbooks in the eighteenth century.” In Scholarly knowledge: Textbooks in early modern Europe, edited by Simone De Angelis, Emidio Campi, Anja-Silvia and Anthony Grafton: 409–427. Genève: Droz; Te Heesen, The World in a Box, 78. 21. Berkhey is known as the author of the popular Natuurlijke historie van Holland (1769), as an Orangist poet and as a nonconformist participant in literary societies; see Honings, Rick, and Lotte Jensen. 2019. Romantici en Revolutionairen: Literatuur en schrijverschap in Nederland in de 18de en 19de eeuw. Amsterdam: Prometheus, esp. 66–68; Leemans, Inger, and Gert-Jan Johannes. 2013. Worm en donder: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700–1800: de Republiek. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, esp. 694–695; Honings, Rick. 2013. “Lillende lijven, krakende knoken en geknotte koppen: Johannes le Francq van Berkhey en de Slag bij de Doggersbank.” In Oorlogsliteratuur in de Vroegmoderne tijd: Vorm, identiteit en herinnering, edited by Lotte Jensen and Nina Geerdink, 135–149. Hilversum: Verloren;  Honings, Rick, ed. 2012. Het onbedwingbare hart: Een keuze uit het werk van de Leidse dichter Johannes le Francq van Berkhey (1729–1812). Zoeterwoude: Uitgeverij Astraea; Arpots, Robert P.L. 1990. Vrank en Vry: Johannes le Francq van Berkheij (1729–1812). PhD diss., University of Nijmegen; Koolhaas-Grosveld, Eveline. 2003. “‘Mensch, ken u zelven’: Antropologie als bron voor de volkskunde van Johannes Le Francq van Berkheij.” Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 35: 69–86; Koolhaas-Grosveld, Eveline. 2010. De ontdekking van de Nederlander: in boeken en prenten rond 1800. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, chapter 3; Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. 2015. “De Koe in de Wetenschapsgeschiedenis.” In Het nut van geschiedschrijving: Historici in het publieke domein: Opstellen voor Ed Jonker bij zijn afscheid als hoogleraar Grondslagen en Geschiedenis van de Geschiedbeoefening aan de Universiteit Utrecht, edited by Leen Dorsman and others: 18–23. Amstelveen: Eon Pers.

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A lot of scholarly literature is dedicated to Elisabeth Wolff (and her usual collaborator Agatha Deken), in particular with regard to the famous epistolary novel Sara Burgerhart (1782), see, for example, the introduction of Wolff, Elisabeth, and Agatha Deken. 1980. Historie van Mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart, edited by P.J.  Buijnsters. The Hague: Nijhoff; Boheemen-Saaf, Christel van. 1992. “The fiction of (national) identity: literature and identity in the Dutch Republic.” In The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment and revolution, edited by Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt: 241–253. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press; Dalen-Oskam, Karina van. 2014. “Epistolary voices: the case of Elisabeth Wolff and Agatha Deken.” Digital Humanities 29, no. 3: 443–451; Dietz, Feike, and Lidewij Ponjee. 2013. “Sara Burgerhart als leeswijzer: literaire socialisatie via lezende personages.” Nederlandse letterkunde 18, no. 2: 79–100. Wolff has been hardly studied as a translator, except for: Buijnsters, P.J. 1983. “Betje Wolff als vertaalster: opvattingen en praktijk.” In Ars & Ingenium: Studien zum Übersetzen: Festgabe Frans Stoks zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Hans Esther, Guillame van Gemert and Jan van Megen: 219–230. Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press. 22. On Wolff and Deken’s life and literary production, Buijnsters, P.J. 1984. Wolff & Deken: een biografie. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. 23. Buijnsters, Wolff & Deken, 188–189; Gelderblom, Arie Jan. 1991. “Wolff en Deken als liedjesfabriek.” In Mannen en maagden in Hollands tuin: Interpretatieve studies van Nederlandse letterkunde 1575–1781: 137–160. Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers. 24. These are considered to be the firstlings on the Dutch book market, but were preceded by the epistolary children’s novel De kleine Grandisson, a topic that will be further discussed in Chap. 6. 25. Dysterinck, Joh. 1904. Brieven van Betje Wolff en Aagtje Deken. The Hague: Brothers Van Cleef, letter CXXVIII, 292. On Sara Burgerhart, cf. note 21. 26. Buijnsters, Wolff & Deken, 202–203. 27. Buijnsters, Wolff & Deken, 181; Gelderblom, “Wolff en Deken als liedjesfabriek”, 138. 28. Before 1763, Wolff published her (mostly pious) work with publisher Tjalling Tjallengius from Hoorn. After 1779 her sole permanent publisher was Isaac van Cleef. It is not clear why Johannes Allart stopped working with her that year. On Allart’s commercial approach, Broos, Ton J. 1981–1982. “Boeken zijn zo goed als geld maar geld is beter: Johannes Allart (1754–1816).” Spektator 9: 14–24. 29. Baggerman, Arianne. 2002. “‘Looplezen’ rond 1800: Kinderen en het Boek der natuur.” Literatuur zonder leeftijd 16, no. 58: 188–209, esp.

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194, 196; Haas, Frieda de, and Bert Paasman. 1987. J.F. Martinet en de achttiende eeuw: in ijver en onverzadelijken lust om te leeren. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 64. Cf. Dijstelberge, Paul. 2015. “Drukkers en verkopers van literatuur (1450–1800).” In Van hof tot overheid: Geschiedenis van literaire instituties in Nederland en Vlaanderen, edited by Jeroen Jansen and Nico Laan: 93–114. Hilversum: Verloren, esp. 104: a usual print run was between 750 and 1000 copies. 30. Raff’s Geographie für Kinder was published in 1778. On 20 September of that same year, Wolff wrote to her friend J.E. Grave (who she invited to write a dedication) that she has already worked on the translation for a couple of months. See Dysterinck, Brieven van Betje Wolff en Aagtje Deken, letter LXXXVIII, 230–231. Cf. in that same book, letter XC, 233. 31. Cf. A.A.V.M.V.D.M.D.D. [= Abraham Arent van der Meersch]. 1765. Geographisch hand-boekje. Amsterdam: Steven van Esveldt; [Anonymous]. 1758. Geographische oefening, schetzende de geheele aardrykskunde in XXII: Landkaartjes. Amsterdam: Frans Houttuyn; Ostervalt, Samuel Frédéric, and Benjamin Bosma. 1765. De geographische onderwyzer: Behelzende een volkomen zaamenstel der aardrykskunde. Amsterdam: Jacobus Loveringh. On the developments in geography education in the late-eighteenth-century Dutch Republic: Baggerman, Arianne, and Rudolf Dekker. 2005. Kind van de toekomst: De wondere wereld van Otto van Eck (1780–1798). Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, chapter 6. 32. This price is mentioned on the title-page. Scholarship on book prices, based on the administration of bookshops in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, has revealed that the average price of children’s books was between 0.92 and 1.35 guilders: Brouwer, Han. 1995. Lezen en schrijven in de provincie: de boeken van Zwolse boekverkopers. Leiden: Primera Pers, 184; Kloek, Joost J., and Wijnand W.  Mijnhardt. 1988. Leescultuur in Middelburg aan het begin van de negentiende eeuw. Middelburg: Zeeuwse Bibliotheek, 79. 33. The preface of Proeve over de opvoeding is dated 28 February 1779; the preface of Aardrykskunde voor kinderen is dated 2 October 1779. In February 1779, Wolff was already working on her translation of Raff’s book, cf. note 30. 34. Wolff, Elisabeth. 1977. Proeve over de opvoeding, edited by H.C. de Wolf. Meppel: Boom, 61–62 and 85–86. 35. Wolff, Proeve, 62. These notes are also praised by Agatha Deken when she sends a copy of the book to their friend and later publisher Widow Dóll, cf. Dysterinck, Brieven van Betje Wolff en Aagtje Deken, letter XCVIII, 242. 36. I used the edition from 1787: Raff, Georg Christian. 1787. Geographie für Kinder: fur Kinder zum Gebrauch auf Schulen. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich. In the preface, Raff explains that he rectified some

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errors, but did not implement major changes, so that the school children were able to use several editions at the same time. 37. See the added section on Holland and several notes (‘Aanmerkingen’) in Raff, Georg Christian. 1779. Aardrykskunde voor kinderen. Translated by Elisabeth Bekker, widow A.  Wolff. Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, The Hague: Isaac van Cleef, 94–132 and passim. As a result of the additions, the book was expanded from 387 to 557 pages. 38. Te Heesen, The World in a Box, 78: Raff ‘developed a teaching method that was remarkable for its dialog form’. 39. Cohen, “The Pedagogy of Conversation in the Home”; Cohen, “‘Familiar Conversation’”. 40. Raff, Geographie für Kinder, 24. 41. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 30–31. 42. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 89. 43. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 94. 44. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 94–114. 45. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 38. 46. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 117. 47. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 100. 48. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 114. 49. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 157–158. 50. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, fol. 6r–8v (dedication to a ‘sweet child’: ‘Aan een lief kind’). 51. Wolff, Aardrykskunde voor kinderen, 183–184. 52. [Anonymous]. 1779. Bericht en voorwaarde van inschryvinge op een werk, getiteld Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen […] van den Heer G.C. Raff, […] vertaald […] en verrykt met aanteekeningen van de heeren J. le Franq van Berckhey […] en P. van Schelle. Leyden: Frans de Does Pieterszoon and others. People were able to subscribe for the publication between 4 May and 15 June 1779, cf. Arpots, Vrank en Vry, 216. According to Arpots, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen was officially published on 28 December 1780. 53. Kristóf, Ildikó Sz. 2011. “The uses of natural history. Georg C.  Raff’s Naturgeschichte für Kinder (1778) in its multiple translations and multiple reception.” In Le livre demeure: Studies in Book History in Honour of Alison Saunders, edited by Alison Adams and Philip Ford, assisted by Stephen Rawles: 309–333. Genève: Droz, esp. 311. 54. Raff, Georg Christian. 1786. Abrégé d’histore naturelle pour l’instruction de la jeunesse. Translated by M.  Perrault. Strasbourg: Amand Koenig, Paris: Barrois Jeune. 55. Raff, Georg Christian. 1796. A System of Natural History: adapted for the instruction of youth, in the form of a dialogue. Translated into English.

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Edinburgh: printed for G. Mudie and son, London: printed for J. Johnson and G.G. & J. Robinson. 56. Arpots, Vrank en Vry, 216. The images were made by R. Muis. To compare this book price, the most expensive copies of Swildens’s Vaderlandsch A-B Boek voor de Nederlandsche Jeugd were sold for seven guilders, and most people preferred to buy a cheaper version, cf. Chap. 2: Boeles, W.B.S. 1884. De patriot J.H.  Swildens, publicist te Amsterdam, daarna hoogleraar te Franeker: zijn arbeid ter volksverlichting geschetst. Leeuwarden: A. Meijer, H. Kuipers and J.G. Wester, esp. 39–41 and 89. Van Alphen’s complete set of illustrated children’s poems was sold at no less than 5.5 guilders: Alphen, Hieronymus van. 1998. Kleine gedigten voor kinderen. Edited by P.J. Buijnsters. Amsterdam: Athenaeum—Polak & Van Gennep, 189. 57. Francq van Berkhey, Johannes le. 1769. Natuurlyke historie van Holland. Amsterdam: Jacob Yntema and Jacob Tieboel. This book bursted upon the public, cf. Arpots, Vrank en Vry, 167. Cf. note 21 for some scholarship on this popular book. In the introduction of his Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, Berkhey refers to this former book: Francq van Berkhey, Johannes le. 1781. Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen. 3 vols. Leiden: Frans de Does Pieterszoon, X. 58. Loosjes Pz, Adriaan. 1813. De geest der geschriften van wijlen Joannes le Francq van Berkhey. Haarlem: Adriaan Loosjes Pz, 139. 59. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, III.  Cf. note 29 on Martinet’s commercial success. 60. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, V. 61. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, VII and X. 62. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, XI. 63. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, XI. 64. The relationship between Wolff and Berkhey deserves further research, cf. Buijnsters, Wolff & Deken, 354, note 60. Berkhey characterized Wolff as a great, wise and funny author, but criticized her (later) attempts to laugh at the Bible, cf. Arpots, Vrank en Vry, 82–83, 169, 172. Wolff, in a letter to her friend J.E.  Grave, defined Berkhey as a ‘great genius’ (‘groote Genie’), who, nonetheless, wrote numerous ephemeral texts. Cf. Dysterinck, Brieven van Betje Wolff en Aagtje Deken, letter LXVIII, 200–201. 65. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, XII. 66. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 3–4. 67. Raff, Georg Christian. 1781. Naturgeschichte für Kinder. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich, 2. 68. Raff, Naturgeschichte für Kinder, 11. 69. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 27.

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70. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 30; cf. Naturgeschichte für Kinder, vol. 1, 11. 71. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 31. 72. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 31–32. Luyken’s Des menschen begin, midden en einde (1712) seems to have used as a book for children, cf. Wolff, Elisabeth, and Agatha Deken. 2007. Geschrift eener bejaarde vrouw. Edited by André Hanou. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 269. 73. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 32. 74. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 32. 75. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 2–3. 76. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 3, 233–234. 77. Raff, Naturgeschichte für Kinder, 579; Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 3, 232. 78. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 33. 79. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 29. 80. Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 1, 38, 33. 81. Martinet’s ideas about how to investigate types of Dutch people were an inspirational source for Berkhey’s natural history for adults: KoolhaasGrosveld, De ontdekking van de Nederlander, 82–84. Berkhey explicitly refers to Martinet in both his work for adults and children: Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie van Holland, vol. 3, 1010; Berkhey, Natuurlyke historie voor kinderen, vol. 3, 48. 82. Paasman, Bert. 1971. J.F. Martinet: Een Zutphens filosoof in de achttiende eeuw. Zutphen: Boekhandel van Someren, esp. 45–65. 83. On physico-theology and the symbiosis between religion and Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, see note 18. On Nieuwentijt’s physico-theology: Vermij, Rienk H. 1991. Secularisering en natuurwetenschap in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw: Bernard Nieuwentijt. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi. 84. Abraham Hellenbroek’s Voorbeeld der Goddelyke Waarheden (1706) is an example of an often-reprinted book: cf. Buijnsters, P.J., and L. BuijnstersSmets. 1997. Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800. Zwolle: Waanders: 111–112; Exalto, John. 2009. “Abraham Hellenbroek.” In Het gereformeerde geheugen: Protestantse herinneringsculturen in Nederland, 1850–2000, edited by George Harinck, Herman Paul and Bart Wallet: 77–86. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 77–86. 85. Cf. Dietz, Feike. 2016. “Met fictieve peers op zoek naar de waarheid: Fictie als didactisch instrument in Verlicht-religieuze catechismussen van Samuel van Emdre (1781–1798).” BMGN—Low Countries Historical Review 131, no. 3: 3–25. 86. Cf. Baggerman, “‘Looplezen’ rond 1800”.

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87. Martinet, Johannes Florentius. 1777–1779. Katechismus der natuur. 4 vols. Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, esp. vol. 1, 246. 88. Martinet, Katechismus der natuur, vol. 1, 147–148. 89. Baggerman, “‘Looplezen’ rond 1800”, 191–192. 90. Martinet, Katechismus der natuur, vol. 1, 11; Paasman, J.F. Martinet, 47. Gellert published his demand in his Moralische Vorlesungen (1770). 91. Paasman, J.F. Martinet, 47; Evers, M. 1988. “Pro Newtone et Religione: De receptie van Newton en de Engelse fysicotheologen in de Bibliotèque Ancienne et Moderne (1714–1727).” Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 20, no. 2: 247–267; Vermij, Secularisering en natuurwetenschap in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, esp. 103; Dietz, Feike. 2019. “Het achttiende-eeuwse jeugdboek als instrument van Zeeuwse genootschappelijkheid: kennisverspreider, stimulator en toegangspoort.” In Een hoger streven: Bouwstenen voor een geschiedenis van het Zeeuwsch Genootschap, 1769–2019, edited by Arjan van Dixhoorn, Henk Nellen and Francien Petiet: 137–160. Vlissingen: Archief. 92. Martinet, Johannes Florentius. 1790. Catechism of Nature: For the Use of Children. London: Joseph Johnson. Mentioned by Paasman, J.F. Martinet, 102. Chap. 6 will further explore the Anglo-Dutch activities of Hall and Johnson. 93. Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1781. Hymns in Prose for Children. London: Joseph Johnson. The Dutch translations (cf. Buijnsters and BuijnstersSmets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken, numbers 613–616): Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1783. Lofzangen in prosa, Voor Kinderen. Translated by Willem Emmery de Perponcher Sedlnitzky. Utrecht: Widow of Johannes van Schoonhoven; Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1788. Lofzangen voor kinderen; vooral, over de heerlijkheid in de werken der Natuur. Translated by Johannes Tissel. Dordrecht: Johannes Tissel; Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1795. Lofzangen in onrijm voor kinderen. Translated by Johannes van Bemmelen. Leiden: Abraham and Jan Honkoop; Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. 1797. Lofzangen In Prosa, Voor Kinderen. Middelburg: Henrik van Osch and Johannes Jacobus van de Sande. 94. [Anonymous]. 1768. Philosophie der tollen en ballen, of Het Newtoniaansche zamenstel van wysbegeerte. Middelburg: Christiaan Boehmer, esp. preface, fol. 3v. 95. As an exception, the Dutch translation of Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s Magasin des Enfants (1756); see Chap. 7. 96. Cohen, “The Pedagogy of Conversation in the Home”. 97. Buijs, Johannes. 1800. Natuurkundig schoolboek: Uitgegeeven door de Maatschappij tot nut van ‘t algemeen. Leiden: D. Du Mortier and son, Deventer: Jan Hendrik de Lange, Utrecht: Gijsbert Tieme Paddenburg

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and son. On the developments in Samuel van Emdre’s catechism literature: Dietz, “Met fictieve peers op zoek naar de waarheid”. 98. [Anonymous]. 1791. De merkwaardigste lotgevallen onzes Vaderlands: by wyze van vraagen en antwoorden: opgesteld […] voor de Nederlandsche schoolen. Amsterdam: J. van Emenes, 27. 99. Jensen, Lotte. 2012. “Synchrone en diachrone herinnering: Michiel de Ruyter in twee vaderlands-historische epen van Adriaan Loosjes.” Nederlandse letterkunde 17, no. 2: 141–155; Jensen, Lotte. 2012. “The Dutch against Napoleon: Resistence literature and national identity, 1806–1813.” Journal of Dutch literature 2, no. 2: 5–26, esp. 13–14. 100. Loosjes Pz, Adriaan. 1791. Levensschetsen van Nederlandsche mannen en vrouwen, een schoolboek: uitgegeeven door de Maatschappij tot nut van ‘t algemeen. Vol 1. Haarlem: Adriaan Loosjes Pz: 48 and 53. 101. Loosjes, Levensschetsen van Nederlandsche mannen en vrouwen, 56. 102. Cf. Dietz, Feike. 2019. “Mediated Education in Early Modern Travel Stories: How Travel Stories Contribute to Children’s Empirical Learning.” Science in Context 32, no. 2: 193–212. 103. There is a large scholarship on Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere, cf. O’Malley, Andrew. 2008. “Acting out Crusoe: Pedagogy and Performance in Eighteenth-Century Children’s Literature.” The Lion and the Unicorn 33, no. 2: 132–145; Nitschke, Claudia. 2016. “Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson the Younger: Universal Moral Foundations and Intercultural Relations.” Humanities 5, no. 2: 45; Peterson, Brent O. 1992. “Robinson Crusoe Shifts Paradigms: Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere.” In Robinson Crusoe in the Old and New Worlds, edited by Ton J.  Broos, Jelle Kingma and Anton Bossers: 65–79. Groningen: Ann Arbor; Liebs, Elke. 1977. Die pädagogische Insel: Studien zur Rezeption des “Robinson Crusoe” in deutschen Jugendbearbeitungen. Stuttgart: Metzler; Koller, Hans-Christoph. 1991. “Erziehung zur Arbeit als Disziplinierung der Phantasie: J.H. Campes Robinson der Jüngere im Kontext der philanthropischen Pädagogik.” In Vom Wert der Arbeit: zur literarischen Konstitution des Wertkomplexes ‘Arbeit’ in der deutschen Literatur (1770–1930), edited by Harro Segeberg: 41–76. Tübingen: Niemeyer; Stach, Reinhard. 1970. Robinson der Jüngere als pädagogischdidaktisches Modell des philanthropistischen Erziehungsdenkens. Ratingen, Wuppertal and Kastellaun: A. Henn Verlag. 104. Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1780–1781. Handleiding tot de natuurlyke opvoeding of Robinson Crusoë, geschikt ten dienste der jeugd. Amsterdam: Anthony Mens Jansz, introduction. 105. Campe, Handleiding tot de natuurlyke opvoeding of Robinson Crusoë, 95–96. 106. Campe, Handleiding tot de natuurlyke opvoeding of Robinson Crusoë, 98.

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107. Campe, Handleiding tot de natuurlyke opvoeding of Robinson Crusoë, 96. 108. Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1782. De ontdekking van America, geschikt ter aangenaame en nuttige leezing voor kinderen en jonge lieden. Amsterdam: Widow of Jan Dóll, 47–48. 109. Veer, Gerrit de. 1997. Waerachtighe beschryvinghe van drie seylagien, ter werelt noyt soo vreemt ghehoort. Edited by Vibeke Roeper and Diederick Wildeman. Franeker: Van Wijnen; Gramberg, Hans. 2001. De overwintering op Nova Zembla. Hilversum: Verloren. 110. Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1786. “Eerste reis ter ontdekking in het Noorden”. In Reisbeschryvingen voor de jeugd: vol. 1, 3–130. Amsterdam: Widow of Jan Dóll, 3–6. 111. Emdre, Samuel van. 1789. Beginselen der aardklootkunde voor de jeugd in vraagen en antwoorden. Utrecht: Henricus van Otterloo, *2 v. 112. Kort onderwijs in de geografij is included in Martinet’s Geschenk voor de jeugd, and was not published separately until 1801: Martinet, Johannes Florentius. 1784. Geschenk voor de jeugd. Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, 3. 113. Perponcher Sedlnitzky, Willem Emmery de. 1784. Nieuwe aardryksbeschryving voor de Nederlandsche jeugd. Utrecht: Widow of Johannes van Schoonhoven, 8. 114. De Perponcher, Nieuwe aardryksbeschryving, 5–6 and 13. 115. De Perponcher, Nieuwe aardryksbeschryving, 4–5. 116. Straley, Evolution and Imagination, 19. 117. Baggerman, Arianne. 2004. “Keuzecompetentie in tijden van schaarste en overvloed: Het debat rond jeugdliteratuur voor en na Hiëronymus van Alphen (1760–1840).” In Een groot verleden voor de boeg: Cultuurhistorische opstellen voor Joost Kloek, edited by Gert-Jan Johannes, José de Kruif and Jeroen Salman, 17–37. Leiden: Primavera Pers. 118. O’Malley, “Acting out Crusoe”, 132. 119. O’Malley, “Acting out Crusoe”, 131–132; O’Malley, Andrew. 2012. Children’s Literature, Popular Culture, and Robinson Crusoe. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 25–26.

CHAPTER 5

The Moral Assessment of Historical Knowledge: Searching for Truths in Dutch History Textbooks

5.1   Introduction In Joachim Heinrich Campe’s (1746–1818) Ontdekking van America, geschikt ter aangenaame […] leezing voor kinderen (The Discovery of America, suitable for a pleasant reading by children, 1782), a family’s children and their mother gather round their father, who tells them about Columbus’s expeditions. In the course of their conversations over a couple of evenings, these characters not only followed but also shaped Columbus’s voyages. ‘Didn’t he take his wife on these journeys?’ (‘Nam hy dan zyne vrouw niet mede op deeze reizen?’), the mother asks. When the father explains that no historian has ever reported that his wife had been on these journeys, the mother decides that they, too, would have allowed Columbus to travel without her.1 While reading this episode in Ontdekking van America, child readers were faced with the complex relationship between historical truth and the writing of history. Campe’s Ontdekking van America invites its audience to trust in the writing of history: because there is nothing in what historians had written to suggest that Columbus’s wife had been on any of his expeditions, the book’s readers can safely assume that she stayed home. At the same time, however, the book’s characters conspicuously reflect on their attempts to construct a historical narrative of their own. Although they emphatically seek a historically faithful interpretation of Columbus’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7_5

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adventures, the reading children are made aware that history in its particulars should always be approached as an interpretation of historical facts. They, as reading children, thus have the responsibility to apply their own reading processes as a practice of seeking and assessing historical truths. This chapter analyses how late-eighteenth-century textbooks on the history of the Dutch fatherland—an understudied but quantitatively significant genre of children’s books, mainly used for the purpose of home education2—helped young readers to develop their truth-finding reading skills. As I will demonstrate, these textbooks teach a mode of reading that is directed towards the examining of truth on the basis of epistemological arguments—what kind of evidence is available? How trustworthy are the sources? Can different ideas be true at the same time?—but above all is justified on moral grounds. As moral assessments primarily determine what can be considered true, they hamper the possibilities of discussing truths or of providing alternative historical interpretations—although the books increasingly claim to present an impartial, balanced perspective on historical events. Historians of knowledge have revealed the fundamental relation between epistemic and moral assessments. They have demonstrated that during the early modern period, ‘objectivity’ and ‘impartiality’ were conceptualized as virtues that were at once epistemic and moral, ‘aimed at the good as well as the true’.3 Focusing on the domain of natural knowledge, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have argued that early modern naturalists sought realistic, faithful images of nature that represented ‘not the actual individual specimen before them but an idealized, perfected, or at least characteristic exemplar of a species or other natural kind’.4 So the quest for ‘truth-to-nature’ was connected to a search not so much for how things exactly were but for how they ought to be, based on assumptions about what it means to be good, to be valuable or to have some sort of aesthetic quality.5 Specifically with regard to historical knowledge, scholarship has revealed that the burgeoning preoccupations with truth-finding, careful observation and first-hand observation were considered to be a vital force behind—rather than a threat to—the acquisition of valid moral lessons from history.6 The textbooks on the history of the Dutch fatherland discussed in this chapter also reflect a convergence of epistemic and moral assessment. But instead of teaching a truth-seeking reading mode in order to lead children to a moral interpretation of history, they rather prescribe—implicitly or not—which moral ideas could be considered valid, arguing that the

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interpretation of history can be true only if consistent with certain moral truths. This strategy is the effect of two somewhat competitive ambitions that came together in the production of Dutch history textbooks for children during the politically divided last decades of the eighteenth century: on the one hand, there was the Enlightened pedagogical ambition of providing children some agency with which to assess knowledge and to develop rational judgements, and, on the other hand, we find a political ambition that sought to guide new generations to the only valid interpretation of history and, subsequently, to the prospective improvement of the Dutch Republic.7 More than the memory of history, the shaping of the future was the aim of these books: their young readers would be able to properly assess and interpret political events and thus would support the political (re)formation and moral progress of their fatherland. It is therefore telling that the books were written by politically engaged authors who—as far as we know and as well as can be determined—also published other markedly political texts. This situation clearly differed from, for example, what was going on in Germany, where the genre of historical textbooks was dominated by the activity of theologians, schoolmasters and professors.8 At first sight, the political, one might even say the propagandistic function of the Dutch textbooks was in tension with Enlightened ideals about shaping children so that they would be equipped to critically assess the facts and judgements they encountered while reading books. However, these two ambitions also depended on each other, as the future of the fatherland was considered to rest in the hands of people who not only shared political opinions but also possessed the necessary skills to assess media critically, to consider competing narratives and to choose their own position vis-à-vis their reading. This chapter demonstrates how history textbooks for children succeeded in combining these two vital ambitions by turning the consideration of historical truths into a practice of moral assessment. A shared set of values and virtues shaped the groundwork of a shared set of historical knowledge, and as such created the foundations of sociopolitical improvement from below.

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5.2   History Textbooks from the Early 1780s: Univocal Historical and Moral Truths Children’s books grew into significant propaganda instruments during the inland political controversy of the 1780s.9 During this decade, as discussed in previous chapters, opinions became strongly divided on the form of government that would permit the Dutch Republic to resist and (it was hoped) reverse a process of economic and social decline. The situation had become urgent. The ‘Orangists’ aimed to preserve the leadership position of Stadholder William V of Orange; the ‘Patriots’ rejected this Orange dynasty as well as the power of the elites, and strived for a new form of government that would be based on Enlightened, democratic ideals of freedom and equality. The printing press was abundantly used by people from both political camps to propagate their political opinions and to blacken the characters of their enemies. Such propagandistic publications regularly disseminated biased narratives to ground their political views. This biting propagandistic media war is considered to be a vital force behind the increasing radicalization of the inland political situation.10 Within this political climate, anonymous authors from both political camps produced history textbooks that approached history of the Dutch Republic from a biased, one-sided perspective. The political allegiance of such book producers largely determined what was presented as ‘true history’. The authors themselves, however, claimed to embody truth-seeking as a virtue and to be disseminating true historical knowledge, in direct contrast to what other, supposedly untrustworthy print media sources were doing. As such, these books were broadcasting the idea that printed media were either spreading lies or propagating truths, counting themselves, of course, in the latter category. Those readers who succeeded in selecting reliable reading material were thus able to establish a truthful historical understanding via the process of reading. In this way, ‘truth’ was conceptualized as a distinct and stable category rooted in epistemological as well as moral grounds: it refers to what had actually happened as well as to the honest, trustworthy lessons to be drawn from history. This approach to ‘true history’ had its origins in a modest Dutch tradition of propagandistic history textbooks for youths developed in the seventeenth century.11 The frequently reprinted Spieghel der Ieught (Mirror of the Young, 1614), also known under the title Spaense Tyrannye (Spanish tyranny), was published during the Eighty Years’ War (Dutch Revolt,

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1568–1648) against Spain. It aimed to convince young readers of the cruel character of Spaniards: as the preface included in its later seventeenth-­ century editions argued, children had to absorb these cruelties along with their milk.12 The book is shaped as a dialogue between father and son, the son portrayed as an often ignorant boy who makes faulty judgements about the history of the Dutch fatherland and thus must be corrected by his father: ‘Your judgements are based on your knowledge, which is small’ (‘Ghy oordeelt na uwen wetenschap / de welcke kleyn is’).13 The Spieghel der Ieught is grounded in the assumption that there is one and only one correct, knowledge-based historical narrative, to be absorbed by children through their reading of this book and by looking at the horrible images contained within its covers. The title and a prefatory poem, significantly, present the book as a ‘mirror’ that offers reading children a correct and comprehensive presentation of reality. The metaphor is rooted in a medieval historiographical tradition, of which Jacob van Maerlants’s thirteenth-­ century Spiegel historiael is the most famous Dutch example, that used the image of the mirror as a way to confirm the informative value and accuracy of its content.14 The Spieghel der Ieught’s successor, Nieuwe Spiegel der Jeught, Of Fransche Tirannye (New Mirror of the Young, or the French tyranny, 1674), followed the same format but was now reporting on the cruelties of Frenchmen in service of their country that had, under the leadership of King Louis XIV, declared war upon the Dutch Republic in 1672. To an even greater extent than the Spieghel der Ieught, this book assumes as a point of departure that only one history can be true. The young reader is promised to acquire ‘complete knowledge’ (‘volkomen kennis’) and ‘sincerely described truth’ (‘Waarheyd regt beschreeven’), and the son in the book brings forth only informative questions, without making wrong judgements that would require refutation by his father.15 Although the eighteenth-century pedagogue Martinus Nieuwenhuyzen (1759–1793), founder of the Society of the Common Good (Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen), considered the Nieuwe Spiegel der Jeught to be unsuitable for classroom teaching, the book was regularly reprinted during the eighteenth century and served as a model for Engelsche tieranny (English tyranny, 1781), an anonymous publication that also imagined a father and son discussing cruelties, in this case the atrocities of the English, against whom the Dutch people fought during the Fourth English War (1780–1784).16 The historical narrative, focusing on the long history of English-Dutch conflict dating back to Batavian times (around the

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beginning of the Common Era), is characterized by its propagandistic, ideologically biased character: from the very start, the father character presents English people as predatory, angry and oppressive.17 His son, like the son in the Nieuwe Spiegel der Jeught, Of Fransche Tirannye, behaves as a conversation partner who asks questions that elicit information and regularly confirms his father’s judgements: ‘What murderers!’ (‘Welke moordenaaren!’).18 The Engelsche Tieranny also follows its predecessor in its explicit claims to truth: the anonymous author promises its readers that the behaviour of Englishmen will be depicted in such a way that ‘is consistent with the truth’ (‘met de waarheid overeenkomt’),19 whereas the father declares that he uses only ‘true examples’ (‘waare voorbeelden’) as reliable evidence.20 By means of such statements, the author offers in self-­ presentation the persona of a virtuous truth-seeker, whose account is restricted to facts and events that have actually happened. New here is the opposition of this history book to highly objectionable English prints depicting Dutchmen as cowardly and brutal: ‘it is, therefore, time that we paralyze intolerable libels, by making them truly known, who unrighteously and severely jeer at us’ (‘het wordt derhalven tyd, dat wy deezen onverdraagelyken laster krachtloos maaken, door hen, die ons zo onverdiend en bitter hoonen, recht te doen kennen’).21 The predecessor Nieuwe Spiegel der Jeught, Of Fransche Tirannye is counted within the category of ‘unreliable prints’ as well: according to the Engelsche Tieranny, this book is crammed with lies and partial judgements,22 as well as many barbarities ‘without the evidence of truth’ (‘zonder bewys van waarheid’).23 According to the father, the Englishman, engaged in ongoing ‘excessive tyrannies’ (‘buitenspoorige geweldenaryën’), is worse than the Frenchman, ‘a person who is inclined to soft feelings’ (‘een tot zachte aandoeningen genegen mensch’).24 In such a way, the book professes to be a trustworthy source of truth, which can suppress lies, unreliable media and partial judgements. Such a tirade against untrustworthy prints can also be found in Oranje’s Tirany (Tyranny of the Orange dynasty, 1782), anonymously published but presumably written by Willem van Ollefen.25 Its title notwithstanding, this book denounces not the cruelties committed by the house of Orange but rather the wrongful accusations of barbarism directed at it. In this case, the father discovers that his son has read several anti-Orangist ‘dirty libels’ (‘vuile lasterschriften’), unaware of their many lies.26 The father, without a second to spare, rescues his son from the attempted infection of the slander’s ‘cursed claws’ (‘vervloekte klaauwen’) and instructs him not

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to read everything he comes across but to select only those books that contribute to his good taste as well as his moral behaviour27: Father Don’t we find, between the millions of available books, ample books that have no other objective than spoiling people’s taste as well as their moral behaviour? Son So you don’t consider it good to read everything? Father Not at all, my Son. He who reads everything, certainly always reads; confuses the one and other obtained skill, and resembles the miser who collects treasures until his death, without using them in a proper way.

Vader […] onder de milioenen boeken, welken ‘er voor handen zyn, vindt men ‘er niet weinigen die nergens anders toe dienen, dan om zo wel den smaak als goede zeden te bederven? Zoon Dus vindt gy niet goed alles te leezen? Vader Verre van daar, myn Zoon. Hy die alles leest, leest zekerlyk altoos; verwart de eene verkreegene kundigheid met de andere, en staat gelyk met den vrek die tot zyn’ dood toe schatten vergadert, zonder immer van dezelven recht gebruik gemaakt te hebben.28

Thus the ‘tyranny’ books of the 1780s make claims to truth by opposing themselves to unreliable media. As Shapiro has demonstrated, during the early modern period ‘[h]istorical “matter of fact” was regularly contrasted with slander, libel, and lying’ as a strategy to ‘underline the differences between history and fiction’.29 The tyranny books derive from the assumption that true and untrue histories could be distinguished in a univocal way and that books could and should be dedicated to the transmission of truthful historical narratives—although they realize that some of the printed matter in circulation fail to do so. Promising to navigate their young readers through the media landscape, these books confirm their own virtuous character. ‘Truth’ as an epistemological concept—referring to things that actually happened—is fundamentally bound up with moral assessment: objectionable print sources are untrue in both an epistemological and a moral way, as they spread lies and untrustworthy ideas. As a result, the tyranny books’ media education succeeded in presenting

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their (biased and context-bound) perception of truth as the only morally valid, and therefore fact-based, version of history.

5.3   History Textbooks from the Late 1780s: Moral Judgements Under the Veil of Impartial Truths Although history textbooks from the later 1780s again took up positions in the further radicalized political controversy between Patriots and Orangists,30 they were inspired at the same time by the Enlightened pedagogical ideal that held that children should be permitted to consider and evaluate knowledge on their own. Instead of transmitting univocal, invariable truths to be absorbed passively, these textbooks explicitly claim to be impartial and to allow readers to create their own interpretations of history. This ambition of achieving impartiality and relative openness seems to contradict a countervailing desire to spread a partisan, polemical message. But although these textbooks approached ‘impartiality’ differently from how we would today, their orientation was quite common in the early modern period, as Murphy and Traninger’s Emergence of impartiality (2013) has revealed: impartial knowledge was considered to be the informed and rational (instead of neutral) interpretation of facts.31 Following this widespread approach, the history textbooks helped readers to assess critically which historical interpretations could be true, guiding readers to ‘impartial intelligence’.32 The impartial interpretational practice is depicted as a process of rational consideration—but equally rooted in certain moral values implicitly presented in these books as unassailable truths. One example of a book presenting morally valid historical interpretations as impartial knowledge is De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen of Vaderlandsche avonden (The friend of Dutch children or Fatherlandish evenings, 1787). This anonymous book bears a marked Patriotist perspective. Over the course of a couple of evenings, ‘Heer Hermannus’ (‘Lord Hermannus’), his son Dirk, daughter Sofie and nephew Hendrik discuss episodes from the history of their fatherland in chronological order. They start with the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish king, led by William of Orange, who was killed and succeeded by his son Maurice, who later decided to decapitate Grand Pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt—a pivotal moment in Dutch history, which Patriots perceived as an

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illustrative example of Orangist tyranny. The characters progress through the history of their fatherland up through their own era, a time when the consequences of these historical developments manifest themselves within their own family household. In the last conversation of De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, the characters decide to shelter family friends forced to flee their home in Hattem, an Overijssel town surrounded by princely troops in September 1786 due to Patriot criticism of the Stadholder’s decision to appoint an Orangist sheriff there. The Hattem events intensified the national war of pamphlets and the process of political radicalization—eventually resulting in the Patriotists’ arrest of William V’s wife Wilhelmina of Prussia in the summer of 1787. When the Patriot coup failed, and Wilhelmina’s brother Ferdinand William II of Prussia offered military support to the Orangist counterrevolution, many Patriots lost their public positions as well as the freedom to print and distribute partisan publications; many decided to flee the Dutch Republic. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, ending with the attack on Hattem in 1786, was likely written and published before that pivotal summer of 1787, at the peak of Patriot radicalization.33 Despite the book’s marked Patriot stance, it explicitly claims to seek impartiality. Its title referring to the translated periodical Vriend der kinderen (The Children’s Friend, 1779–1783),34 the book presents itself as a friend to all Dutch children ‘without distinguishing between parties’ (‘zonder onderscheid van party’).35 The anonymous author, as the preface argues, aims to offer young readers ‘a faithful painting’ (‘een getrouwe schildery’) of Dutch history, as only faithful knowledge and truths can now rescue youths from the current flow of obscure, false information.36 It grounds its reliability by referring to Jan Wagenaar’s (1709–1773) 21-volume series on Dutch history (1749–1759) as its main source.37 In the preface, the author of De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen introduces Wagenaar as a faithful ‘guide’ (‘Leidsman’) infected by the ‘love for truth’ (‘waarheids-liefde’).38 Within the narrative context, Heer Hermannus presents Wagenaar’s series as a faithful compensation to the prevailing ‘spirit of partisanship’ (‘geest van partyschap’). He advises Dirk and Hendrik to write abstracts of Wagenaar’s history in order to gain ‘accurate and coherent knowledge’ (‘naauwkeurige en aanëengeschakelde kennis’) about the Orange tyranny.39 The domestic conversations show how the characters interpret and consider Wagenaar’s volumes quite carefully. Little but keen, Sofie, for example, asks several critical questions—for example about the paradoxes she thinks she finds in Wagenaar—that are applauded by Heer Hermannus:

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‘We should never believe something without evidence’ (‘Men moet nooit iets gelooven zonder bewys’).40 The children also verify the truth of Heer Hermannus’s ideas by comparing them with Wagenaar’s texts: ‘We can see this in our Historian, although he doesn’t say it explicitly’ (‘Dit kan men ligt zien by onzen Geschiedschryver, hoewel hy het niet uitdruklyk zegt’), Hendrik concludes when Heer Hermannus argues that Stadholder Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, had no interest in religion but rather sought only the increase of his own political power.41 Under the mask of this careful, rational reading of Wagenaar, however, De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen above all invites children to make a selective interpretation of the history of their fatherland as a continuing story of discord and repression by Orange-affiliated people. The father guides this specific reading of Wagenaar—who was blamed for his republican, anti-stadholder perspective on history42—by posing politically biased questions to the children. For example, he asks the children to investigate, by means of Wagenaar’s historiography, how Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, who was such a right-minded Grand Pensionary, could become a victim of Prince Maurice’s severity in 1619.43 Images also sometimes contribute to this selective brand of historical interpretation: an affecting picture showing the violent passing of Van Oldenbarnevelt makes the children shiver and cry, and thus helps guide the book’s young readers’ evaluation of pivotal historical episodes (Fig. 5.1).44 We see then that in the case of De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, child characters—as well as the book’s readers—were invited to develop balanced, rational interpretations of historical events. These impartial interpretations seem, at first sight, to be rooted in epistemological facts, but we equally find a grounding in certain underlying moral assessments. For example, Van Oldenbarnevelt was too upright to actually have been guilty, and the individuals who were violent to him could not have been good people. Such moral assumptions restricted the available possibilities for creating alternative interpretations of history: only one—Patriotist— interpretation was morally, and therefore also rationally, valid. Underlying moral premises also guide the process whereby truth was assessed in the Orangist book De vaderlandsche historie in dichtmaat (History of the fatherland in metre, 1788), published after the restoration of Stadholder Willem V in 1787.45 This book presents itself as a guide for truth-searching readers, as all the short poems it contains are followed by the visually highlighted phrases ‘that happened’ (‘dat is geschied’) or ‘I don’t believe that’ (‘dat geloof ik niet’). The words ‘geschieden’ (‘to

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Fig. 5.1  [Anonymous]. 1787. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen of Vaderlandsche avonden. Rotterdam: Jacobus Bronkhorst: opposite 93. KB National Library: KW 2115 E 47

happen’) and ‘geloven’ (‘to believe’) do not exactly mean the same thing here: while ‘geschieden’ is connected to epistemological facts, ‘geloven’ implies a faithful interpretation of events. So although the phrase ‘that has happened’ is linked to historical facts: That one let the real Orange Friends be caught, and let them be bound like Crooks.        that happened.46 Dat men de waare Oranje Vrinden, Liet vangen en als Schelmen binden.        dat is geschied.

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the phrase ‘I don’t believe that’ evaluates statements that could not be trusted, because they refer to improbable future events or to interpretations that are morally invalid: But that this horrible action Will be forever unpunished        I don’t believe that. Maar dat dit gruwelyk bedryven, Voor altoos ongestraft zal blyven.        geloof ik niet.47

So ‘unbelievable’, and thus untrue, are many immoral actions: ‘that we can take this humiliating jeering as an example’ (‘dat van zulk een smaadlyk hoonen, / Ooit eenig voorbeeld is te tonen’), or ‘that we owe these Tyrants a debt of obedience’ (‘dat wy die Geweldenaaren, / Gehoorzaamheid verschuldigd waren’).48 This strategy enabled De vaderlandsche historie in dichtmaat to transmit moral truths and to prescribe the scope of interpretation of historical events. In this way, the book guided its readers to an Orangist, anti-Patriotist reading of history while grounding its truthfulness on undisputed moral truths. Thus history textbooks from both political camps presented the process of truth-seeking as a process of rational and even impartial interpretation, and simultaneously succeeded in limiting their readers’ freedom of interpretation through a convergence of rational and moral assessments. As a result, it was nearly impossible to bring historical truths up for discussion. The assessment of truth, as shaped in these books, functioned rather as a process of discovering the one and only morally valid interpretation.

5.4   History Textbooks from the Late 1790s: Balanced Historical Judgements Rooted in Moral Truths History textbooks from 1796 onwards, however, fostered a new conception of ‘truth’: now truths, which can be ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretations, can easily become points of disagreement and sometimes contrast with one another or even be just partly true. This development can be related to shifting political circumstances. After the Batavian Revolution of 1795, the Orange dynasty was replaced by a

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democratic ‘Batavian Republic’, conducted under the auspices of the French regime.49 Against the background of the new political status quo, new history textbooks were not primarily directed towards the attack strategy of one political camp, but first and foremost aimed to demonstrate that practices of partiality and the encouragement of biased judgements had been the driving forces behind discord and destruction in the past and should now be replaced by practices fostering concord, unity and the careful investigation of historical narratives. In this way, these books again connected truth to moral virtues, in this case particularly to the virtues perceived to be vital for the success of the newly founded democratic constitution: concord as well as balanced judgement. One such attack on political discord was provided by Historie der omwentelingen (History of revolutions, 1796), written by Johannes Hazeu (1754–1835), an Amsterdam author, bookseller and printer who also published several children’s books.50 At first glance, the book resembles De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen from the 1780s, as it also explicitly proclaims to offer ‘sincere truths’ (‘blanke waarheden’) and to teach children how to ‘distinguish truth from falsehood’ (‘om het waare van het valsche te […] onderscheiden’),51 while at the same time presenting as a character a politically partisan father who had himself contributed to the Patriot cause and the Batavian Revolution as a captain of the citizen’s militia. But in comparison to De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, something has fundamentally changed: de Historie der omwentelingen does not connect the ‘truth’ and ‘the false’ to a single political category (Patriots are true and good, Orangists are false and bad) but rather demonstrates that both Patriots and Orangists have been guilty of sowing discord and engaging in aggression, and as such have sometimes lost track of what is true and good. According to Hazeu’s father figure, every historical judgement based on mere good or bad actions of a party is an unfair judgement, since all parties have their ‘benevolent and evil objectives’ (‘goede en kwaade oogmerken’).52 The father’s main lesson is that partiality and discord deprive people of the truth: Dear Children, you should learn from this that as soon as factions and political disputes arise in a country, every faction tries to conquer, and to command in accordance with its own mode of thought, often without considering general concerns; but most of all for the benefit of itself, or to reach some of its own, arrogant objectives.

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Hier uit, lieve Kinderen! moet gij leeren, dat zoo dra ’er partijschappen en staatkundige geschillen, in een Land ontstaan, iedere partij zijn best doet, om te overwinnen, en, naar zijne denkwijze, te gebieden, dikwijls zonder berekening voor het algemeen belang; maar meest ten voordeelen van zich zelven, of eenige eigendunklijke bij-oogmerken, om die te bereiken.53

The father urges his children to avoid practices of destructive partiality and to prefer concord as well as the critical analysis of ‘mere rumours’ (‘bloote geruchten’).54 He explicitly connects good citizenship to the virtues of critical judgement and analysis: Should you like to become good citizens, oh my dear Children, never forget to investigate the History of the Fatherland, and to judge the actions of people in an unbiased way. wilt gij goede Burgers en Burgeressen worden, ô mijne lieve Kinderen! vergeet dan nimmer, de Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis te doorzoeken, en onpartijdig, het gedrag der menschen te beöordelen.55

So what Hazeu’s protagonists advocate and practice above all is the critical consideration of both political camps. For example, the father presented the undeserved loss of his military position in 1787—‘a scorn, a breach of my honour!’ (‘een hoon, een schending van mijne eer!’)56—as the effect of the false Orangist claim that the prince of Orange was the founder of Calvinism and that his removal would destroy the Calvinist religion.57 The key lesson of this historical episode is not that all Orangists are inferior people, but rather that they sometimes lost sight of justice and truth.58 That is why the father also criticizes Patriots who fall for false rumours. In 1787, Patriots failed to believe that there were Prussians seeking to assist the Orangists because they were dazzled by the illusion that Frenchmen were coming to help them.59 Their erroneous belief made them blind to the naked truth: ‘people who said that the Prussians were approaching, were considered to traitors by them, but the opposite was true’ (‘die menschen welke zeiden dat de Pruissen in aantocht waaren, hielden zij voor verraaders, en dit was juist het tegendeel’).60 Thus open-minded people searching for truth, the father demonstrates, come to realize that different truths could at once be true (the Patriots and Orangists were both right: ‘Here we can find two truths’ [‘Hier vind men twee waarheden’61]) or that truths can be only partly true (the Orangists were right that the prince was a defender of the Reformed religion but wrongly argued that he was its

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founder).62 Partial truths claimed as full truths, or two truths presented as exclusive and opposed ideas, yields social discord.63 In this way, Historie der omwentelingen contributes to the creation of impartial, open-minded judgements by offering an understanding of the mechanisms behind biased prejudgements and by leaving space for the reader’s own conclusions. When daughter Mietje asks whether the historical events described by her father were fair, her father answers, I only tell you the things that have happened, and don’t discuss the Fairness or Unfairness with you; when you have gained some more knowledge, you will be better able to judge for yourself. Ik verhaal u alleen het geen’ ’er geschied is, zonder met u, over het Recht of Onrecht, te handelen; als gij wat meerder kennis zult gekreegen hebben, kunt gij hier over, beter oordeelen.64

But although Hazeu’s Historie der omwentelingen conceives of truth as a balanced judgement transcending any clear distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, it in fact again introduces moral ideas to guide the readers’ process of truth-finding. When Hazeu uses the word ‘true’, it functions as a synonym of ‘pure’ and ‘sincere’: a ‘true concern’ (‘waar belang’) in contrast to partial self-interest,65 a ‘true purpose’ (‘waare doel’)66 or ‘true happiness’ (‘waar geluk’).67 The word ‘truth’ is used when he presents universal moral lessons, sometimes in the shape of proverbs and poems,68 and is most often included in the sections of ‘general lessons’ (‘algemene leeringen’) that follow each conversation and to which young readers are referred to by explicit references made during the conversations. The repeated phrasing ‘It remains a truth that’ emphasizes the timeless, universal character of these moral ideas, which are all rooted in Hazeu’s central moral virtue of unity. It remains a truth that discord causes havoc. It thus remains a truth that people must approach the offer of Peace with the same caution as the declaration of War. It remains a truth that the happiness of children is connected to the prosperity of older people. het blijft een ontegenzeglijke waarheid, daar verdeeldheid heerscht, komt verwoesting69 Het blijft dus eene waarheid dat men in het aanbod van Vrede, even zoo omzichtig behoord te zijn, dan in het verklaaren van Oorlog70 het blijft eene waarheid, dat het geluk der Kinderen, aan den voorspoed der Ouderen verbonden is71

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The value of unity is an undisputed foundation of the Historie der omwentelingen, but that does not mean that it is an unproved assumption. Hazeu makes an explicit distinction between unquestioningly repeated mottos and experiential, historically grounded truths, while regulating the moral lesson ‘union is strength’ to the latter category. The Motto: UNION IS STRENGTH was not an imitated motto from others, but a truth established by experience, derived from the old Batavian people; who were enabled to conquer the strongest enemies by their means of United acts and efforts. De Spreuk: EENDRACHT MAAKT MACHT was geene naargevolgde Spreuk van anderen, maar eene proefondervindelijke waarheid, afgeleid, uit de verrichtingen der alöude Batavieren, en hunne geslacht; die door hunne Eensgezinde werkingen en pogingen, de sterkste vijanden hadden kunnen overwinnen.72

So while readers of the Historie der omwentelingen are again guided by moral truths, they are supposed to accept the assumption that these are trustworthy truths grounded in investigation and experience. A comparable approach to truth and partiality was developed in a history textbook that took a fundamentally different position within the political climate of the Batavian Republic: the six-volume Beknopt handboekje der vaderlandsche geschiedenissen (Short handbook of histories of the Fatherland, 1800–1803). It was written by the Cornelis van der Aa (1749–1815), supporter of the Orangist camp that was sidelined due to the Batavian Revolution of 1795. Van der Aa, having already been imprisoned because of his openly Orangist position, seems to be reluctant to express his opinions within the context of the Batavian Republic, in which the freedom of (Orangist) print was restricted.73 In his preface, Van der Aa presents himself as a victim of partisan practices, as he was imprisoned for many years although nobody could find reasonable arguments to justify his sentence.74 Spurred by these circumstances, Beknopt handboekje took shape as a ‘continuous historical overview’ (‘doorgaand geschiedverhaal’) characterized by an argumentative, neutral style (explicitly presented as an alternative to the fictional domestic conversation in the preface),75 and it offered an explicit plea for unbiased judgement, just like several of Van der Aa’s other publications at the time did.76 In the preface, Van der Aa explicitly compares truth to impartiality and opposes it with self-interest and the lust for power.77 He creates an opposition between the striving for

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personal prestige and ‘a real longing for the expansion of the Empire of Wisdom’ (‘eene waare zucht tot de uitbreiding van het Rijk der Waarheid’).78 In the extensive historical overview itself, he demonstrates how people are often spurred by delusions and wrongful motives, and how they regularly create internal conflicts when they exaggerate their mutual antagonism with opponents. In the third volume of his Beknopt handboekje, for example, Van der Aa describes the religious conflicts that took place during the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621), which resulted in the dispute between Stadholder Maurice and Grand Pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and in the harmful death of the latter. Van der Aa promises to investigate these events in a systematic way, focusing on the conflict’s origin, course and effects, while he declares that he will choose ‘truth and impartiality’ (‘waarheid en onpartijdigheid’) as his guides.79 As Van der Aa explains, both camps had been guilty of crude and unfair actions and judgements. Maurice’s opponents were spurred by self-interest when they wrongfully blackened the prince’s reputation, Van der Aa, for example, demonstrates,80 while Maurice’s friends also rudely jeered at Van Oldenbarnevelt: several pamphlets distributed allegations that were ‘false’ (‘valsch’), ‘untrue’ (‘onwaarachtig’) and ‘utterly unfounded’ (‘van allen grond ontbloot’) but were nonetheless believed and repeated by many people.81 Van der Aa argues that the oppositions were completely blown out of proportion: the underlying theological conflict was no more than a ‘verbal dispute’ (‘woordenstrijd’) about insignificant problems that nearly nobody understood and that could easily have been resolved via a common striving for ‘Truth’ and ‘Peace’ (‘Waarheid’ and ‘Vrede’).82 People were driven not by a sincere theological interest but rather by imperious motives and their desire for ‘celebrity and prestige’ (‘grootheid en aanzien’).83 Van der Aa aims to convince his young readers of the significance of a more balanced view and invites them to use reading as a process to develop solid, impartial judgements. He argues that Van Oldenbarnevelt, when we carefully consider all the facts, cannot be characterized as ‘the Holy Innocent’ (‘de Vermoorde Onnozelheid’) or be added to ‘the list of innocents’ (‘den lijst der onschuldigen’), yet he was indeed wrongfully murdered, as all clear evidence of his guilt was lacking.84 Opinions about Maurice are biased as well, Van der Aa explains: some people express their warmest praise, while others consider him to be a man who has always been bad:

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two extremes, that are, in our opinion, both incompatible with the truth of history, but must be most of all characterized as the effects of foul flattery, or excessive hate. twee uitersten, die onzes bedunkens, in geene deele met de waarheid der geschiedenis zijn overeentebrengen, maar veel eer als uitwerksels van laage vleijerij, of overdrevenenen haat, verdienen aangemerkt.85

Van der Aa argues that Maurice could be esteemed ‘one of the greatest and bravest war heroes’ (‘voor éénen der grootste en dapperste Krijgshelden’)86—a clear hint in the direction of his own political position!—but he also pays attention to counterarguments.87 The ‘settlement of this dispute’ (‘beslissing van dit pleit’) is left to the reader, he concludes.88 So Van der Aa tries to refrain from making explicit judgements about truths and untruths: ‘We don’t want to pronounce upon who has the truth and justice on their side’ (‘Wij willen hier geen uitspraak doen, wie de waarheid en het recht aan zijne zijde had’).89 What people have to do when they want to understand history is to consider different perspectives on truth in a balanced, impartial way. At the same time, this multivalent, ambiguous character of truth becomes a ‘truth’ in itself. Van der Aa argues that it is natural for people to have different approaches to truth: it is a ‘false’ (‘valsch’) idea to expect that we can all have the same opinion about ‘dogmatic truths’ (‘leerstellige waarheden’).90 Just as with Historie der omwentelingen, Van der Aa’s Beknopt handboekje considers historical truth to be a complex phenomenon, attainable only by someone who develops a balanced view on historical events and as such creates judgements that have a universal moral ground. So while counterbalancing a biased practice of valuing one truth above the other, they foremost aim to extract pure, universal truths from history. These truths were supposed to be, as was also the case in the history textbooks from the 1780s, indisputable in themselves.

5.5   Conclusion It is a widely accepted idea that history textbooks for youths are cultural artefacts that always create selective narratives about the past and, undeniably, embody the ideological values of a specific cultural context.91 As Stuart Foster and Keith Crawford argued in What shall we tell the children (2009): ‘What appears in textbooks is legitimately sanctioned knowledge

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that has been allocated an official stamp of “truth”; but what textbooks offer are not truths but claims to truth.’92 This is preeminently the case for the Dutch textbooks on vaderlandsche history published in the last decades of the eighteenth century: competing political opinions as well as shifting political circumstances largely determined what these textbooks offered their child readers as ‘truth’. A recurrent pattern, however, was the textbooks’ attempt to connect this truth to its moral validity, arguing that the interpretation of history could be true when it was consistent with moral truths. In this way, these books primarily function as instruments to create moral citizenship, which was mainly conceptualized in opposition to the idea of false, blameworthy citizenship: namely, civic participation marked by aggressive, oppressive and disharmonious behaviour. The fictional techniques used in these books—such as familiar conversations and poetry—were intended to guide the readers’ process of developing valid interpretations and the foundations of moral citizenship.93 A crucial development in the moral-political educational programme that these books disseminated was spurred by political developments in the last decades of the eighteenth century: while the Republic’s inhabitants became deeply divided during the 1780s, the newly founded Batavian Republic depended for its communal orientation on unity and concord. So whereas history textbooks from the 1780s approached ‘true’ and ‘false’ (as well as good and bad) as stable categories that could be connected unambiguously to specific print publications and political parties, books published after 1795 defined the designation of truth as a balanced, ambiguous judgement and assumed that people or parties can never be inherently true, good or bad. Promoting balanced judgement and concord as the vital moral virtues that defined good citizenship, the books from 1795 onwards reflected a growing awareness that historical knowledge is a ‘made’ instead of a ‘found’ reality, that different truths can coexist and that young readers should be tasked with evaluating the moral and true character of print publications and stories. In this way, the books gradually developed into tools that help young readers to sharpen their own mental capacities and to create their own critical judgements and assessments. But although readers were offered an increasingly complex approach to historical truth, a development that suggests that young readers were given a growing responsibility to consider historical facts and to develop their own interpretation of historical events, all these books nonetheless guide the readers’ interpretation by presenting historical truth as a

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predominantly moral category. This moral foundation of historical knowledge, in fact, deprived the readers of alternative interpretations: on the basis of the moral assumptions and evaluations conveyed by the books, only one version of history can be accepted as true and good. The epistemic virtue of truth-seeking that these books teach was, in the end, dependent less on the epistemological capacities of their young readers than on the moral ideas they internalized while reading books.

Notes 1. Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1782. De ontdekking van America, geschikt ter aangenaame en nuttige leezing voor kinderen en jonge lieden. Amsterdam: Widow of J. Dóll, 17. This book is a faithful translation of Die Entdeckung von America (1781–1782). 2. The bibliography of Dutch eighteenth-century children’s and schoolbooks mentions 85 history textbooks published in the period 1780–1800 (Buijnsters P.J., and L. Buijnsters-Smets. 1997. Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800. Zwolle: Waanders, no. 1041–1199). In comparison, Jacobmeyer has collected around 50 German history textbooks from the period 1780–1800 (Jacobmeyer, Wolfgang. 2011. Das deutsche Schulgeschichtsbuch 1700–1945: Die erste Epoche seiner Gattungsgeschichte im Spiegel der Vorworte. 3 vols. Münster: LIT Verlag, vol. 1, 45). (Please note that the selection criteria for these two surveys might differ, and the Dutch bibliography also contains reprints. But the quantity of Dutch history textbooks in comparison to their German counterparts is still remarkable considering that the Dutch book market was much smaller than the German.). 3. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2010. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books; Murphy, Kathryn, and Anita Traninger. 2013. Emergence of Impartiality. Leiden and Boston: Brill, quote on 10. 4. Daston and Galison, Objectivity, 42. 5. Daston and Galison, Objectivity, chapter 2. Cf. Swan, Claudia. 1995. “Ad Vivum, Naer Het Leven, from the Life: Defining a Mode of Representation.” Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 4, no. 11: 353–372. 6. On the burgeoning preoccupations with truth-finding, first-hand witnesses and empiricism: Shapiro, Barbara J. 2000. A culture of fact: England, 1550–1720. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press; Pomata, Gianna, and Nancy G.  Siraisi, eds. 2005. Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. On the ars historica as a ‘source of moral principles’: Grafton, Anthony. 2012. What

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was history? Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, esp. 31 and 67–68, quote on 67. 7. Cf. Buijnsters, P.J. 1988. “De patriot als schoolmeester.” In 1787: De Nederlandse revolutie?, edited by Th.S.M. van der Zee, J.G.M.M. Rosendaal and P.G.B. Thissen: 100–111. Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw. 8. Jacobmeyer, Das deutsche Schulgeschichtsbuch, vol. 1, 46–65. 9. Buijnsters, “De patriot als schoolmeester”, esp. 102. 10. On the pivotal role of propagandistic media in the controversy between Patriots and Orangists: Sas, N.C.F. van. 2004. De metamorfose van Nederland. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 195–221; Oomen-­ Delhaye, Amber. 2019. De Amsterdamse schouwburg als politiek strijdtoneel: theater, opinievorming en de (r)evolutie van Romeinse helden (1780–1801). Hilversum: Verloren; Zee, Th.S.M. van der, J.G.M.M. Rosendaal, and P.G.B. Thissen, eds. 1988. 1787: De Nederlandse revolutie? Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw; Leemans, Inger, and GertJan Johannes. 2013. Worm en donder: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700–1800: de Republiek. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, chapter 9.2; Wissing, Pieter van. 2008. Stookschriften: pers en politiek tussen 1780 en 1800. Nijmegen: Vantilt. An English-language introduction to the controversy between Patriots and Orangists: Schama, Simon. 1992. Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813. New York: Vintage Books; Kloek, Joost J., and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt. 2004. 1800: Blueprints for a National Community. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, esp. 21–30. 11. Toorn, Annemarie van, Marijke Spies, and Sietske Hoogerhuis. 1989. “‘Christen Jeugd, leerd Konst en Deugd’: De zeventiende eeuw.” In De hele Bibelebontse berg: De geschiedenis van het kinderboek in Nederland & Vlaanderen van de middeleeuwen tot heden, edited by Harry Bekkering, Nettie Heimeriks and Willem van Toorn: 104–164. Amsterdam: Querido, 127; Boekholt, P.Th.F.M., and E.P. de Booy, Geschiedenis van de school in Nederland vanaf de middeleeuwen tot aan de huidige tijd. Assen and Maastricht: Van Gorcum: 38 and 55; Booy, E.P. de. 1977. De weldaet der scholen: Het plattelandsonderwijs in de provincie Utrecht van 1580 tot het begin der 19de eeuw. Haarlem: Gottmer, 278–279; Pollmann, Judith. 2013. “Met grootvaders bloed bezegeld: Over religie en herinneringscultuur in de zeventiende-eeuwse Nederlanden.” De Zeventiende Eeuw: Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief 29, no. 2: 154–175, 168; Pollmann, Judith. 2018. “The Cult and Memory of War and Violence.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age, edited by Helmer J. Helmers and Geert H. Janssen: 87–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, esp. 92; Van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland, 71.

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12. I used the later edition from 1644: Een ware lief-hebber des vaderlandts [=a true lover of the fatherland]. 1644. Spieghel der jeught, ofte Een kort verhael der voornaemste tyrannije, ende barbarische wreetheden, welcke de Spaengiaerden hier in Nederlandt bedreven hebben. Amsterdam: Otto Barentsz Smient, Aiiir-Aiiiv. 13. Spieghel der jeught, ofte Een kort verhael, Avir. 14. Grabes, Herbert. 1991. The mutable glass: mirror-imagery in titles and texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, esp. 43–45. On Van Maerlants Spiegel historiael and his use of the mirror metaphor (inspired by Vincentius van Beauvais’s Speculum historiale): Oostrom, Frits van. 1991. “Geschiedenis als Spiegel Historiael.” Spiegel Historiael 26 (thematic issue on “Verbeeld verleden”): 472–480, esp. 472–473; Oostrom, Frits van. 1996. Maerlants wereld. Amsterdam: Prometheus, part 3. 15. [Anonymous]. 1709. Nieuwe spiegel der jeugt, of Fransche tyrannye, zijnde een kort verhael van den oorspronck en voortgangh deses oorloghs, Amsterdam: Widow of J. van Poolsum, quotes on A1v. 16. [Nieuwenhuyzen, Martinus]. 1789. Verhandeling over het kunstmaatig leezen; uitgegeeven door de Maatschappij: tot nut van ’t algemeen. Amsterdam: Harmanus Keyzer, Arend Fokke Simonsz and Cornelis de Vries, 42. On the eighteenth-century reprints, Buijnsters and BuijnstersSmets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800, no. 1161–1179. 17. Engelsche Tieranny has been regularly noticed and mentioned, but not thoroughly studied: Buijnsters, “De patriot als schoolmeester”, 106; Buijnsters, P.J. 1989. “Nederlandse kinderboeken uit de achttiende eeuw.” In De hele Bibelebontse Berg: De geschiedenis van het kinderboek in Nederland en Vlaanderen van de Middeleeuwen tot heden, edited by Harry Bekkering, Nettie Heimeriks and Willem van Toorn: 169–228. Amsterdam: Querido, 183; Dodde, Nan L., and C. Esseboom. 2000. “Instruction and education in French schools: A Reconnaissance in the Northern Netherlands 1550–1700.” In Grammaire et enseignement du français, 1500–1700, edited by Jan de Clerq, Nico Lioce and Pierre Swiggers: 39–60. Leuven: Peeters, 56; Eck, P.J. van. 1917. “Van een oud schoolboekje en – van antiEngelsche propaganda.” Den Gulden Winckel 16: 49–52. 18. [Anonymous]. 1781. Engelsche tieranny. Amsterdam: Hendrik Gartman, 46. 19. Engelsche tieranny, ‘Voorbericht aan den leezer’ (Preface to the reader). 20. Engelsche tieranny, 60. 21. Engelsche tieranny, ‘Voorbericht aan den leezer’ (Preface to the reader) and 68. 22. Engelsche tieranny, 40. 23. Engelsche tieranny, 58. 24. Engelsche tieranny, 40–42.

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25. Oranje’s Tirany is generally attributed to the controversial author Willem van Ollefen, although Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets consider his brother Lieve as its author (Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800, no. 1146), as Lieve wrote some children’s book as well, cf. Dietz, Feike. 2012. Literaire levensaders: internationale uitwisseling van woord, beeld en religie in de Republiek. Hilversum: Verloren, chapter 6. Willem is more often confused with his brother, cf. Breekveldt, Willem. 1985. “Wel-meenende lezers! Over een receptie-ongeluk in het werk van Wolff en Deken.” Voortgang 6: 361–381; Meerkerk, Edwin van. 2014. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Het ongrijpbare tijdschrift De Lachebek (1780–1781) van Willem van Ollefen.” Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman 37: 216–224. 26. [Ollefen, Willem van]. 1782. Oranje’s tirany. [s.l.]: [s.n.], 3. Cf. Linden, David van der. 2007. “Samenspraak en tegenspraak: Gesprekspamfletten en publieke opinie in de Republiek 1781–1784.” Vooys: tijdschrift voor letteren 25, no. 4: 19–32, 28. 27. Oranje’s tirany, 4. 28. Oranje’s tirany, 1–2. 29. Shapiro, A culture of fact, 40. 30. Rosendaal, Joost. 2003. Bataven! Nederlandse vluchtelingen in Frankrijk, 1787–1795. Phd Diss., Catholic University Nijmegen, 33–54. 31. Raymond, Joad. 2013. “Exporting Impartiality.” In Emergence of Impartiality, edited by Kathryn Murphy and Anita Traninger: 141–167. Leiden and Boston: Brill, esp. 154–155; Stogdill, Nathaniel. 2013. “‘Out of Books and Out of Themselves’: Invigorating Impartiality in Early Modern England.” In Emergence of Impartiality, edited by Kathryn Murphy and Anita Traninger: 189–210. Leiden and Boston: Brill, esp. 193. 32. Quote: Raymond, “Exporting Impartiality”, 154. 33. Rosendaal, Joost. 2005. De Nederlandse Revolutie: Vrijheid, volk en vaderland 1783–1799. Nijmegen: Vantilt, 17–95; Rosendaal, Bataven!, 33–54; Van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland, 173–274. 34. [Anonymous]. 1779. De vriend der kinderen. Haarlem: Christoph Henrich Bohn. Until 1783, eight volumes are published. De vriend der kinderen is a translation of the often translated children’s journal Der Kinderfreund (1773) by Christian Felix Weiße. Arnaud Berquin’s famous and influential L’ami des enfans is also an adaptation of Der Kinderfreund, cf. Brown, Penelope. 2007. A Critical History of French Children’s Literature. Vol. 1: 1600–1830. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, chapter 5. 35. [Anonymous]. 1787. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen of Vaderlandsche avonden. Rotterdam: Jacobus Bronkhorst, vii. 36. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, vi–vii.

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37. Wessels, L.H.M. 1997. Bron, waarheid en de verandering der tijden: Jan Wagenaar (1709–1773), een historiografische studie. The Hague: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks. Some sequels were published after 1759, for example by Adriaan Loosjes Pz. 38. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, vi–vii. 39. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, 8. The protagonists use Wagenaar’s original series instead of one of the abridged versions for children (Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800, no. 1192–1198). I conclude this on the basis of the quotes by  Wagenaar in the book, as they literally refer to the original series. 40. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, 38. 41. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, 20. 42. Laan, K. ter. 1952. Letterkundig woordenboek voor Noord en Zuid. Den Haag and Djakarta: G.B. van Goor Zonen’s Uitgeversmaatschappij, 595. 43. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, 8. 44. De vriend der Nederlandsche kinderen, 93–94. 45. Een waar vaderlander [=a true patriot]. 1788. De vaderlandsche historie in dichtmaat. 2 vols. [s.l.]: [s.n.]. 46. De vaderlandsche historie in dichtmaat, vol. 1, 8. 47. De vaderlandsche historie in dichtmaat, vol. 1, 8. 48. De vaderlandsche historie in dichtmaat, vol. 1, 11 and 6. 49. Rosendaal, De Nederlandse Revolutie; Velema, Wyger. 2013. “Republikeinse democratie: De politieke wereld van de Bataafse Revolutie, 1795–1798.” In Het Bataafse experiment: politiek en cultuur rond 1800, edited by Frans Grijzenhout, N.C.F. van Sas and Wyger Velema: 27–63. Nijmegen: Vantilt; Van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland, 275–398. 50. Molhuysen, P.C., and P.J. Blok, eds. 1911. Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek. Vol. 1. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1040–1041. 51. Hazeu Corneliszoon, Johannes. 1796. Historie der omwentelingen, in vaderlandsche gesprekken voor kinderen. Amsterdam: Johannes Hazeu Corneliszoon and Willem van Vliet, I and VI. 52. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 31. 53. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 45. 54. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 48 and 80. 55. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 110. 56. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 30. 57. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 17–18. 58. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 30. 59. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 74. 60. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 80. 61. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 76.

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62. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 18. 63. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 142–143. 64. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 64. 65. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 44, 47, 52, 111, 153 and 180. 66. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 146 and 335 67. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 313 and 336 68. There are, for example, several references to the ‘true proverb’ that changes are  not  equal to improvements, cf. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 210–211 and 250. Father also quotes a poem about nationalistic love as a ‘truth’, cf. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 9 (or 111 and 179). 69. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 38. 70. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 141. 71. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 225. 72. Hazeu, Historie der omwentelingen, 327. 73. Hansma, Laurien. 2012. “‘Oranje blixem, donderse schelm!’: De strijd van orangist Cornelis van der Aa in de Bataafse Republiek 1795–1798.” Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman 35, no. 1: 59–66, esp. 60–62. 74. Aa, Cornelis van der. 1800–1803. Beknopt handboekje der vaderlandsche geschiedenissen: Aanvang neemende met de komst van Karel de Vde […] ten dienste van Neêrlandsch jongelingschap. 6 vols. Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, quote on vol. 1, viii-ix. He also reflects on his undeserved punishment in Request omme rappél van ban (1800), cf. Hansma, “‘Oranje blixem, donderse schelm!’”, 64–65. 75. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 1: xi–xii. 76. Cf. Hansma, “‘Oranje blixem, donderse schelm!’”, 62. 77. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 60 and 274. 78. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 69. 79. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 60. 80. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 198. 81. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 104–106, quotes on 105–106. 82. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 82. 83. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 68–69 and 136. Quote on 69. 84. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 132–133. 85. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 189. 86. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 189. 87. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 190. 88. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 191. 89. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 77. 90. Van der Aa, Beknopt handboekje, vol. 3, 61. 91. Cf., for example, Fuchs, Eckhardt, and Annekatrin Bock, eds. 2018. The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies. Basingstoke and New  York:

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Palgrave Macmillan, see esp. its chapter “History of Textbook Research” (25–56), by Eckhardt Fuchs and Kathrin Henne. Especially focusing on history textbooks, several scholars have aimed to identify ideological, onesided frameworks, and questioned the biased selection of events as well as the repression of alternative views on history. See, for example, Provenzo, Eugene F. jr, Annis N. Shaver, and Manuel Bello, eds. 2011. The textbook as discourse: Sociocultural dimensions of American schoolbooks. London and New  York: Routledge; Klerides, Eleftherios. 2010. “Imagining the Textbook: Textbooks as Discourse and Genre.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2, no. 1: 31–54; Otto, Marcus. 2013. “The Challenge of Decolonization: School History Textbooks as Media and Objects of the Postcolonial Politics of Memory in France Since the 1960s.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 5, no. 1: 14–32; Nieuwenhuyse, Karel van, and Joaquim Pires Valentim, eds. 2018. The colonial past in history textbooks: historical and social psychological perspectives. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing. 92. Foster, Stuart J., and Keith A. Crawford, eds. 2006. What shall we tell the children: International perspectives on school history textbooks. Greenwich: Information Age Publishing, 8. 93. As such, these books should be approached beyond the traditional ‘fact-­ fiction divide’, cf. Merveldt, Nikola von. 2019. “Fiktionalität des Faktischen Theoretische Überlegungen zum Kinder- und Jugendsachbuch.” Jahrbuch der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichtsdidaktik 2019 (thematic issue on “Fakt, Fake und Fiktion”): 14–26. On fiction as a didactical instrument that contributed to finding (religious) knowledge: Dietz, Feike. 2016. “Met fictieve peers op zoek naar de waarheid: Fictie als didactisch instrument in Verlicht-religieuze catechismussen van Samuel van Emdre (1781–1798).” BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review 131, no. 3: 3–25. On fictional genres dedicated to the transmission of historical knowledge in the eighteenth century, Dew, Ben, and Fiona Price. 2014. Historical writing in Britain, 1688–1830: Visions on history. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

PART III

Young Readers as Epistolary Literate Writers

CHAPTER 6

From Individual Boyhood to Political Brotherhood: Dimensions of Moral Education in Epistolary Prose for Children

6.1   Introduction In the Dutch Republic, children usually learned to spell and read before they mastered the art of writing. This situation was partly dictated by economic circumstances: since writing education was quite expensive, due to the need for intensive guidance and costly paper materials, many parents felt forced to limit themselves to reading education. However, pedagogical beliefs played their part as well: the art of writing was considered to be beyond the reach of young children, as it was a difficult physical competence.1 So those who had the fortunate opportunity to learn how to write were invited primarily to acquire a physical skill.2 Schoolbooks as Carel de Gelliers’s popular Trap der Jeugt (The Youths’ Staircase)—collected around 1640 but still reprinted in the late eighteenth century3—taught many generations of children how to cut and hold their pens, to shape letters, to make coloured ink, to position their bodies during the writing process and to copy again and again the same letters, words and texts so as to train their hands.4 Scholarship on writing education assume that this dominant model of physical writing education was only gradually replaced by a more cognitive model from the early nineteenth century onwards, when schoolbooks started to connect writing exercises to reflections on the complex relationship linking language, cognition and meaning.5

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7_6

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This chapter focuses on a neglected development in late-eighteenth-­ century writing education that took place beyond the domain of formal schoolteaching, in a fictional book that portrays the context of domestic education amongst the Republic’s elite circles: the bestselling epistolary children’s novel De kleine Grandisson (The little Grandisson, 1782–1786) written by Margareta Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken (1735–after 1796). In contrast to instructional handbooks or treatises that prescribe how to write, this fictional novel depicts a protagonist who demonstrate their developing ‘epistolary literacy’—advanced competence in writing letters, as well as in reading, interpreting and answering one another’s letters6—and use this as an instrument of moral growth. As such, the education of writing was less connected to the children’s hands and bodies than to the development of their hearts and minds. As the young, epistolary literate character functioned as an  instructive model for child readers beyond the book, De kleine Grandisson was in fact an early exponent of the ‘peer modelling’ didactics that is nowadays considered an effective didactic strategy for writing education,7 grounded in the idea that children learn more, and more effectively, from peers than from instructing parents and teachers.8 The relationship between eighteenth-century epistolary literacy and moral growth has already been established with regard to adults and adolescents: epistolary novels written by or in the footsteps of Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) are generally considered to be instruments of virtuousness.9 As Susan Whyman has convincingly argued, this type of literature in fact imitated a current practice when it depicted protagonists who used letter writing in the service of moral development.10 Through her case study on letter-writer Jane Johnson (1706–1759), Whyman has demonstrated how an eighteenth-century woman transcended her merely functional literacy skills by applying her writing practices to address and consider moral problems. Her letters, ‘propelled by questions about virtue and morality’, developed ‘a moral perspective that she passes on in letters’ to her children and friends, who in turn could use their reading and writing practices for the purpose of their own moral growth and guidance.11 This chapter approaches the De kleine Grandisson as—from both a national and international perspective—an innovative and influential attempt to transmit this epistolary literacy practice among adults to an audience of children, in order to spur their moral and writing competences. Through this fundamental entwinement of moral and writing skills, De kleine Grandisson represents moral progress as an individually

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accessible destination for growing boys as well as a stepping-stone to improving the Dutch Republic’s international political relations. As such, the novel reflects the idea that political developments depended on a measure of (gendered) moral virtuousness and creative writing skills.

6.2   De kleine Grandisson as the First Epistolary Novel for Children When Margareta Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken published De klei­ne Grandisson in the 1780s, she already held a pivotal position on the Dutch book market. De Cambon-van der Werken had been that kind of woman who rejected the idea that women are subordinate to men. ‘I do not understand the difference between a male and female quill’ (‘een mannelijke en een vrouwelijke pen’), she provocatively wrote in reply to the reviewer of the Vaderlansche Letteroefeningen (Fatherland’s Literary Exercises), who had criticized her translation of Hamlet by arguing that female authors should restrict themselves to more ‘tender plays’ (‘Zagter Toneelen’).12 This self-confident woman was as an example for other female authors. The female author Maria van Zuylekom (1759–1831) considered De Cambon-van der Werken to be one of her inspiring predecessors who demonstrated that female authorship was as valuable as male authorship: while she considered Lucretia van Merken (1721–1789) to be ‘competent’ and Elisabeth Wolff (1738–1804) and Agatha Deken (1741–1804) to be ‘well-read’ figures, she characterizes De Cambon-van der Werken as ‘schrander’: sharp, and perhaps a bit harsh and biting.13 This self-confident woman used her literary works to express her political and social engagement and strong Orangist feelings. An industrious author who made her debut at the age of 22 by writing an epic poem— how exceptional for a woman!—on Stadholder William IV of Orange (Willem IV, 1756), she wrote and translated several plays, published numerous Orangist pamphlets, edited one of the Republic’s first magazines for women and participated in literary societies.14 De Cambon-van der Werken, however, enjoyed her greatest fame as an author of children’s literature. Her most successful literary work was, by far, the epistolary children’s novel De kleine Grandisson, which was published in 1782 in two parts and expanded by two more parts in 1786. The epistolary model had come from across the Channel. Richardson had published in England his famous novels Pamela (1740), Clarissa (1748) and

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The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), each of which were soon available in Dutch translations. De kleine Grandisson refers particularly to The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753) in its title, preface and some of its characters’ names. De Cambon-van der Werken created her own narrative line, but still mainly set her novel in England. According to Bonnie Latimer, the Grandisson family in De kleine Grandisson could be interpreted as ‘a younger generation of characters, born out of the marriages that conclude Richardson’s original (and a new pen-pal William D.)’.15 The strong intertextual connections indicate that De Cambon had familiarized herself with Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison. She may have read the Dutch translation of the novel, available from 1756 to 1757 onwards: Historie van den ridder-baronet Karel Grandison.16 But she read English and so probably have read it in the original.17 De kleine Grandisson was the first original epistolary novel published in Dutch. Even Elisabeth Wolff and Agatha Deken’s famous Sara Burgerhart (Sara ‘Civil Heart’, 1782), commonly known as the first Dutch epistolary novel, was actually published a few months after De kleine Grandisson.18 Also in 1782, Wolff and Deken published a Dutch translation of Adèle et Théodore ou Lettres sur l’education, Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis’s epistolary novel on educational themes. So De kleine Grandisson was part of a sudden rise of epistolary prose in the Dutch Republic, especially in The Hague, where all these novels were published. De Cambon-van der Werken was the first writer—anywhere—to apply the popular epistolary model to a book for children. Although it is assumed that Richardson’s literature had been adapted for child readers,19 the popular anonymous abbreviated editions collected under the title The Paths of Virtue Delineated in fact replaced the epistolary form with a third-person narrative.20 Other epistolary books for children consist of letters written by adults to children (such is the case in Oliver Goldsmith’s famous History of England [1771]). A couple of individual fictional child letters were, however, integrated into letter-writing manuals or appeared in the Danish weekly periodical Ungdommens Ven (The Friend of Youth, 1770),21 and in  Richard Johnson and John Newbery’s Letters Between Master Tommy and Miss Nancy Goodwill (1770) partly consisted of letters written by the two child protagonists.22 But while Tommy and Nancy’s letters nearly exclusively function as a frame to transmit stories and fables, and traditional letter-writing manuals lack any narrative line, De kleine Grandisson made ‘childlike letters’ (‘kinderlyke brieven’) the novel’s central building block, to spur the young readers’ epistolary literacy and moral development.23

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6.3   Epistolary Literacy and Moral Education in De kleine Grandisson In her preface to De kleine Grandisson, De Cambon-van der Werken explains that she does not intend to present ‘a complete instruction in Natural Sciences or another knowledge domain’ (‘geenszins een volledig onderwys in de Natuurkunde of eenige andere weetenschappen’), but has rather directed her efforts towards the moral improvement of children’s hearts.24 This she regards as ‘the most important part of education’ (‘the gewigtigste deel der opvoeding’), as well as its most neglected and difficult aspect: it is easier to enrich the reason with ‘skills and knowledge’ (‘kundigheden en weetenschappen’) than to manage children’s passions and emotions.25 In De kleine Grandisson’s narrative, epistolary literacy serves the moral development of the protagonist, the 12-year-old Dutch boy ‘Willem D’. In the novel he is raised by the virtuous and successful English Grandisson family over the course of a year, a period when he exchanges letters with his mother at home. It is not clearly explained in the novel why Willem was sent to England for his education, but the suggestion is that the Grandissons had offered outstanding circumstances to nurture Willem’s moral and intellectual growth, especially by means of inspiring role models. Since Willem’s father, a colonel, has died, Willem has grown up without a father—and fathers are the ‘defender of our youth’ (‘beschermer van onze jeucht’).26 Sir Grandisson functions as a substitute father, a man who resembles Willem’s biological father, as Willem writes to his mother: And my Sir: oh I cannot say how admirable he is […]. My father was comparable to him, I suppose: yes, because you regularly say that he was virtuous. En myn Heer: o ik kan u niet zeggen hoe beminnelyk hy is: […]. Myn Vader was ook zoo, geloove ik: ja, want gy zegt my dikwyls dat hy deugtsaam was.27

Willem explains that he considers Sir Grandisson to be exemplary: ‘I will take him as my example, and then I will be respected by everyone when I am grown-up’ (‘ik wil hem tot myn voorbeeld neemen, en dan zal ik van ieder geächt zyn, als ik groot zal weezen’).28 Although virtuous adulthood—represented by Sir Grandisson—is Willem’s final purpose, he most directly takes after the example of the 13-year-old son Karel Grandisson, a diligent and obedient boy who is meant to follow in his father’s footsteps. Willem strongly relies on Karel, who demonstrates how he should observe natural phenomena, how to discuss and interpret personal experiences,

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and how to behave inquisitively, gently and gratefully. Through this example and his continuous interaction with his friend—as well as with Karel’s amiable sister Emilia and naughty brother Eduard—Willem grows as a virtuous boy. As the afterword explains, this development enables him to reach his final destination: he grew up as a man displaying ‘outstanding behaviour’ (‘voortreffelyk gedrag’) and has acquired a ‘splendid position’ (‘luisterryken leevensstand’).29 He married Emilia Grandisson, a kindhearted woman who desired as her husband ‘a man of virtue and intelligence and good manners’ (‘een man van deugt en verstand en goede zeden’).30 Epistolary literacy is inseparably connected to this process of moral growth as it is depicted in the novel. First and foremost, Willem’s inquisitive and diligent attitude contributes to the development of his writing skills. Willem, observing that his competences were lagging behind Karel’s, resolves to rise to his level within the next year: Oh, that I was able to write as he can! what a beautiful hand! what a fine way of expression;—but now! I will do everything I can to resemble him: I am only twelve years old, and he is thirteen; so there is still a year in which I can make a lot of progress: people just have to practice and then are able to learn everything, isn’t it true, Mum? Och, kost ik ook zoo schryven als hy! welk eene schoone hand! welk eene fraaye wys van zich uit te drukken;—maar nu! ik zal al doen wat ik kan om hem gelyk te worden: Ik ben maar twaalf jaaren oud, en hy is dertien; zie daar dan noch een jaar, waar in ik veel vorderen kan: men heeft zich maar te oeffenen, en dan kan men alles leeren, niet waar Mama?31

The reader witnesses how Willem’s literacy competences improve, partly as an effect of the explicit advice he receives. His mother explains, for example, that a letter has to be ‘plain and natural’ (‘eenvoudig en natuurlyk’), without ‘strained words’ (‘uitgezochte woorden’) or, obviously, spelling mistakes.32 He also develops as a reporter of conversations: he preserves their interactive character by communicating them word for word, alternating the different conversational partners—as Lady Grandisson had advised him ‘not always to be saying he says and she says’ (‘om niet altyd te zeggen zegt hy en zegt zy’).33 While his behavioural growth was a driving force behind the development of his epistolary literacy skills, the process also worked the other way around: his literacy skills spurred Willem’s development as a virtuous, gentle boy. This evolution primarily depends on the strong connection

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between writing and conversing, which is, for example, addressed by Lady Grandisson in her advice to Willem: Talk to her about all your activities: talk to her about your discourses with my son and daughter, it will diminish her grief over your absence. spreek haar van alle uwe bezigheden: spreek haar van uwe redeneeringen met myne zoons en dochter, dat zal haar het verdriet van uw afzyn vergoeden.34

Lady Grandisson’s writing instruction addresses two characteristics of the relationship between writing and talking: writing is both an instrument of conversation in itself and a way to pass on the spoken discourses one has had with others. Willem is encouraged to talk to his mother about his conversations with Karel and Emilia Grandisson. The term ‘reasonings’ (‘redeneeringen’) for conversations is significant here: it connects their conversations to thinking. And it really does seem that Willem and his friends use their dialogues to reason and argue together. Willem, for example, carefully describes a conversation about Karel’s little birds: when Karel needs to take care of his birds, Willem and Emilia decide to accompany him. During their conversation, Willem shares his observations: ‘they seem as if they are coming to you’ (‘‘t is of zy naar u toe komen’).35 Karel, in turn, helps Willem to understand this phenomenon: the birds recognize him, as they are used to eating out of his hand. But for Willem, this answer doesn’t get to the bottom of the mystery: ‘They appear to know you, but how do they make a distinction between you and another person?’ (‘Zy moeten u dan kennen, en hoe weeten ze dat onderscheid tusschen u en een ander te maaken?’).36 Karel’s further explanation shows his close investigation of the birds: It is certain that they have the faculty of discernment, for I have often seen, when I came with my hat before them, they fled from me, but I also conclude from that circumstance, that this faculty of discernment is very poor, because otherwise they would always know me. ’t Is gewis, dat ze eenige opmerkzaamheid hebben; want ik hebbe dikwyls gezien, als ik met een hoed voor hun kwam, dat zy dan voor my vluchtten, maar ik besluit ook daar uit, dat die opmerkzaamheid zeer gebrekkig is, want anders zouden zy my altoos kennen.37

Such conversations can be characterized as moments of collective thinking: Willem and his little friends question their observations, interpret

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several explanations and share their conclusions. Willem’s writing process functions as a way to structure these observations and to turn collective experiences into knowledge and insights. This helps him to develop as an inquisitive, mindful boy, a development on which he explicitly reflected in his letters. He realizes that he has now learned to see things for the first time: ‘Up to now, I did what other children do as well,’ he writes to his mother; ‘I saw things, but didn’t observe them’ (‘Ik hebbe tot hier toe maar gedaan als andere kinders, die dat dagelyks zien zonder ‘er acht op te slaan’). Fortunately, now Karel has taught Willem ‘to discuss everything, and to observe the Creator’s goodness in it’ (‘maar Kareltje leert my over alles te redeneren, en ‘er de goedheid van den Schepper in op te merken’).38 So by sharing conversations, Willem becomes a more sensible and attentive boy. He explicitly says as much: ‘I will communicate our conversations word by word. […] Yes Mother your son will become wise’ (‘ik zal u woord voor woord onze gesprekken mede deelen. […] ja Mama uw zoon zal hier verstandig worden’).39 While epistolary writing thus functions as a way to report conversations and to reflect on their significance, letters are also instruments of conversation in itself. Repeating an insight from Cicero’s reflection on letters, writing is characterized as a way of talking to those who are absent: ‘after all, writing is a kind of speaking’ (‘schryven is immers net als spreeken’).40 That Willem considers his letter exchange to be a conversation appears from his use of ‘to speak’ synonymously with ‘to write’: ‘I will regularly talk about that to you’ or ‘I prefer to talk about something else’ (‘ik zal u hier van dikwyls spreeken’, or ‘maar ik wil liever van wat anders spreeken’).41 His six-year-old sister Annette, who has remained in Holland, also approaches the writing between her mother and brother as a kind of conversation: ‘It seems like he is with us, like he talks to us’ (‘‘t is net of hy by ons waare, net of hy met ons spreekt’). She decides to write her brother as well, ‘and then he will answer me’ (‘en dan zal hy my antwoorden’).42 In addition to letters, books are represented as intelligent conversation partners as well: ‘Books speak, when you read, and they make us wise’ (‘De boeken spreeken, als men leest, en zy maaken verstandig’).43 Eduard, Karel’s naughty brother, is reprimanded for his aversion to books, while tutor Bartlet commands respect by reading books in the garden.44 Bartlet compares books to ‘guides’ (‘wegwyzers’) that help in understanding the world: ‘the books of wise writers are useful to us more easily understand

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what we see and experiences’ (‘de boeken van wyze schryveren zyn nuttig om ’t geen wy zien en ondervinden beter te kunnen begrijpen’). However, our own eyes are our best guides. The Book of Nature, the heavens, with all the stars and planets; this earth on which we are, with all its productions and creatures, is the best book. Het boek der natuur, namelyk die Hemel, met alle zyne lichten, deeze Aarde, waar op wy zyn, met alle haare gewassen en dieren, is noch het beste van alle de boeken.45

Rather than regarding these words as a form of resistance against books, I consider them to be a consequence of the novel’s representation of the empirical world as entirely mediated. In De kleine Grandisson, every observation, insight and experience is transmitted by media representations, while the entire process of moral growth depends on epistolary literacy practices. Literacy, in sum, is represented as the stepping-stone to progress for an individual boy. The young readers of De kleine Grandisson, in their turn, can use and develop their own literacy skills to read the letters Willem writes and receives, through which they gain access to Willem’s world and individual development. The book’s preface argues that readers will not find ‘schoolish lessons’ or ‘grave and severe corrections’ (‘schoolwyze lessen’, ‘ernstige en gestrenge bestraffingen’) in this book but an ‘imaginative example of virtuousness’ (‘denkbeeldig voorbeeld van deugt’), rooted in the pedagogical assumption that ‘the instructive reasonings of amiable playmates’ (‘de leerzaame redeneeringen van beminnelyke speelgenootjes’) are the best and most efficient didactic tool.46 The readers are thus explicitly invited to imagine themselves as Willem and the young Karel Grandisson. In this way, the individual moral progress depicted in the novel could be emulated by the readers beyond the book, who thus transform the process of individual growth into a form of collective progress that all children could participate in. As Cambon-van der Werken argues in the preface, her novel’s ultimate purpose lays in the ‘improvement of humankind’ (‘verbetering van het Menschdom’) as such.

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6.4   De Kleine Grandisson in a Transnational Tradition of Women’s Writing for Children Declaring in her preface that she has primarily aimed to improve children’s hearts, instead of offering extensive instructions about the acquisition of knowledge, De Cambon-van der Werken implicitly presents her novel as an exponent of a broader international tradition of children’s prose, written by aristocratic women writers, that portray forms of elite domestic education directed towards the protagonists’ as well as young readers’ moral development. De Cambon-van der Werken presumably became familiar with this international children’s literature tradition in The Hague, where she settled in the early 60s. Although officially she was a Remonstrant, her Huguenot husband Jacques Louis Ricateau Boncam de Cambon (1711–1781)—officer in the Dutch States Army, of French origin— offered her easy access to the Walloon Church, in which they married (1759) and baptized their only son, Jean-Jacques (1763).47 As one of the Hague Walloon ministers who were, in one way or another, involved with the production of children’s books at the time,48 Jean-Daniel de La Fite (1719–1781) had married the children’s-book author Marie-Elisabeth de La Fite (1737–1794). De kleine Grandisson followed in the wake of De La Fite’s Entretiens, drames et contes moraux, a l’usage des enfans (conversations, plays and moral stories for the use of children, published in The Hague in 1778 in French and in 1780 in Dutch), which was in its turn obviously modelled on Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s (1711–1780) frequently reprinted and translated book Magasin des Enfants (The children’s magazine, 1756), published in a Dutch translation with Ottho van Thol in the Hague (Magazyn der kinderen, 1757), whose French edition was also reprinted in the Dutch Republic at the time.49 Both Le Prince de Beaumont and De La Fite were cosmopolitan women: the first was a French governess who worked amongst the London aristocracy, the second a German-born Frenchwoman who lived in the Dutch Republic until she was widowed in the early 1780s and took up Queen Charlotte’s offer to work as her reader in the English royal house.50 In Magasin des Enfants, governess Mademoiselle Bonne organizes a domestic education programme for a group of girls that is shaped by means of interactive, domestic conversations, which often have their starting points in moral tales that were read, told and discussed together—‘La Belle et la Bête’ (‘Beauty and the Beast’) is one of the discussed tales and has become the most famous example.51 In Entretiens, drames et contes

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moraux, tales and plays—often compilated from other, mostly originally German books—are used as instruments of moral reflection as they are discussed by a mother, daughter and niece.52 Cambon-van der Werken followed this format of domestic conversations for the purpose of moral growth,53 but her work took an innovative shape, as it was completely constructed by letters exchanged between its protagonists. So whereas Le Prince de Beaumont and De La Fite had presented their child characters as the consumers of tales, De Cambon-van der Werken now turned them into writers who deployed their active literacy skills in the service of moral reflection and self-development. This intermingling between advanced epistolary literacy and moral growth had a huge international appeal, as the impressive international reception of De kleine Grandisson proves. The book became an international bestseller, with more than 80 reprints, translations and adaptations: few eighteenth-­ century Dutch books were able to equal this impressive success.54 In 1787, Arnaud Berquin (1747–1791) translated the book into French, Le petit Grandisson, in a version that circulated widely in Western Europe. Reprints were published by Isaac van Cleef in The Hague from 1791 onwards, in London (1795–1823), Geneva (1796), Leipzig (1798–1821), Metz and Luxembourg (1803), and Vienna (1830).55 Berquin’s Le petit Grandisson was also translated into German (Der kleine Grandisson, 1801–1804), into Swedish (Carl Grandison, eller Ungdomens Mönster, 1806–1851) and—a bit earlier—into English.56 Before the London publisher John Stockdale published The history of little Grandison (1791),57 and Berquin’s international reception came to a head, Young Grandison (1790) was published as the first English edition by Joseph Johnson, in a translation made by the English minister John Hall in Rotterdam, and improved by the influential philosophical writer and pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.58 This latter exponent of De kleine Grandisson’s reception history deserves some special attention, as it shows a process of mutual exchange within the transnational network of female authors writing children’s literature at moral education. Itself grounded in this tradition, De kleine Grandisson served as an inspiring model for new children’s prose written by Wollstonecraft, which, in its turn, was to be adapted by De Cambon-van der Werken. Although Young Grandison has remained understudied for the most part,59 it could be interpreted as an example of how Wollstonecraft’s efforts in translation, often dismissed as mere ‘hack-work’,60 exercised an impact on her production of original prose for children.

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De Cambon-van der Werken probably had a hand in the realization of the English Young Grandison. The initial translation was made by John Hall (1740–1829), minister of the English Presbyterian church in Rotterdam,61 with whom De Cambon-van der Werken shared Orangist and English sympathies; they more often worked together.62 Together with an English edition of Johannes Florentius Martinet’s (1729–1795) Kleine Katechismus der Natuur (1779), also rendered in English by Hall, Young Grandison was published in 1790 by Joseph Johnson, a publisher who encouraged several young female authors to write children’s books, among them Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825), Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) and Charlotte Smith (1749–1806).63 Before its publication, Young Grandison was given a thorough round of editing by the young Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Johnson put to work as a translator and editor of children’s books when she came to London after working as a governess in Ireland.64 We derive this knowledge from Wollstonecraft’s husband, William Godwin, whose memoirs were published by Johnson after her death. As explained by Godwin, Wollstonecraft edited Young Grandison on Johnson’s orders: The employment which the book-seller [=Joseph Johnson, FD] suggested to her, as the easiest and most certain source of pecuniary income, of course, was translation. With this view she improved herself in her French, with which she had previously but a slight acquaintance, and acquired the Italian and German languages. The greater part of her literary engagements at this time, were such as were presented to her by Mr. Johnson. She refashioned and abridged a work, translated from the Dutch, entitled, Young Grandison.65

Since we do not have Hall’s original manuscript, it is impossible to distinguish the various hands which marked the final product or to decide definitively which interventions were made by Wollstonecraft. According to the preface, the text was slightly reduced: ‘deviations, from the original were unavoidable’. While the natural insights transmitted in the original book were often very fruitful—‘they tend to awaken curiosity, lead to reflections calculated to expand the heart’—they were sometimes rather ‘not only useless but pernicious’, because they encouraged ‘selfishness’. When children were crammed with knowledge and rules of behaviour, they would become affected prigs instead of virtuous children, the preface agued. The preface therefore made a plea for an educational model which guided children ‘by gradual improvement’.66 However, the differences between De

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kleine Grandisson and Young Grandison turned out to be less radical than we might expect when reading the preface or when consulting the only critical work done on Young Grandison67: only small revisions were made during the adaptation process.68 The fact that Wollstonecraft mainly preserved De Cambon-van der Werken’s model of epistolary literacy and moral growth demonstrates that this model had great appeal to her. It even may have inspired her while she was writing her first original youth novel: Original Stories from Real Life (1788), on the education of Mary and Caroline by their governess Mrs. Mason.69 Although Original Stories was published two years before Young Grandison, Godwin’s memoirs indicate that she wrote her novel during her period in which she also edited Young Grandison and translated Christian Gotthilf Salzmann’s (1744–1811) Moralisches Elementarbuch (1783) as Elements of Morality (1790).70 Although the Original Stories were rooted in Wollstonecraft’s own experiences as a governess,71 she certainly drew inspiration from her activities as a translator as well. Scholars indicate that Wollstonecraft modelled Mrs. Mason upon the mother in Salzmann’s Elements of Morality and ‘was to imitate the structure and method of Salzmann’s book’.72 Didactic parallels between the Original Stories and Young Grandison have been noticed before as well.73 Within the scope of this chapter, it is interesting to see the similarities in the representations of media products in Original Stories. Although Original Stories is not an epistolary novel, in it several letters and notes are sent, read and represented.74 Mary and Caroline, for example, read the tale of a girl who wrote a letter to her mother and became a schoolteacher when she grew older, suggesting a direct relationship between writing and growth.75 In the final chapter of Original Stories, Mrs. Mason takes leave of Mary and Caroline by giving them a book (‘I now, as my last present, give you a book, in which I have written the subjects that we have discussed’) and agreeing to keep up a correspondence (‘Write often to me, I will punctually answer your letters’).76 In parallel to this leave-taking, when De Cambon-van der Werken’s Willem left the Grandisson family at the end of De kleine Grandisson, he receives some books and resolves to write letters to his friends.77 So Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories shares De kleine Grandisson’s representation of epistolary literacy as an instrument to develop yourself and to consider moral questions. The Original Stories found its way back to De Cambon-van der Werken and the Dutch Republic as well: De Cambon-van der Werken translated

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the Original Stories as Maria en Carolina.78 The Dutch edition was produced by Johannes Coenradus Leeuwestijn, who also published an edition of De kleine Grandisson (that also included a couple of Berquin’s stories) as well as many translations,79 among them a translation of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (probably based on a German edition by Salzmann) and other translations made by De Cambon-van der Werken.80 When Leeuwenstijn published his editions of De kleine Grandisson and Maria en Carolina, the Republic experienced a short revival of Anglo-Dutch youth literature.81 Maria en Carolina was, however, probably not directly translated from the English original text. All De Cambon-van der Werken’s translations with Leeuwestijn were rooted in French sources, and this probably also goes for Maria en Carolina, since the French translation Marie et Caroline (1799), made by Antoine-Jean-­ Noël Lallemant, seems to have functioned as an intermediary between Original Stories and De Cambon-van der Werken’s edition.82 Maria en Carolina is in fact a pretty faithful translation: the story is still set in the English countryside and is embellished with images which resemble the original images that William Blake added to the French edition. Had De Cambon-van der Werken become acquainted with Lallemant’s Marie et Caroline (1799) and other French books in France, where she may have fled after the Batavian Revolution in 1795? We do not have any proof of that, but I am not the first to suggest that she left the country to take refuge with friends in France or England—a very reasonable suggestion.83 It is obvious that De Cambon-van der Werken, as a visibly Orangist author, was compelled to flee the country, as Stadholder William V and Wilhelmina of Prussia went to England at this time. The unmasking of Maria en Carolina as a translation of Original Stories sheds new light not only on Cambon-van der Werken’s oeuvre but also on Wollstonecraft’s reception. Until now, it has not been known that Wollstonecraft’s youth literature had been translated into Dutch, since the title-page and preface of Maria en Carolina introduced it as a work originally written by Cambon-van der Werken, and Cambon-van der Werken’s bibliographers categorized the book as an original work as well.84 In the flourishing research tradition on Wollstonecraft’s international reception,85 the scholarly consensus has been that Wollstonecraft exerted minimal influence in the Netherlands. Her famous Thoughts on the Education of Daughters has never been translated into Dutch, while A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was available in Dutch only via Salzmann’s Rettung der Rechten des Weibes.86 Wollstonecraft’s reception now proves to

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be more extensive and spurred by processes of mediation and exchange: Maria en Carolina was the effect of the dynamic interactions among different books and among people from several countries. These processes of mutual exchange shed light on the position of De kleine Grandisson within a transnational tradition of morally educational children’s literature written by female authors: it took its inspiration from this tradition, enriched it by its innovative connection to the epistolary format and exerted its influence on the production of new exponents of children’s prose. There is, however, one specific characteristic of De kleine Grandisson that sets this children’s novel apart from the inspirational models written by Le Prince de Beaumont and De La Fite and follow-ups such as Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories: while they depicted the moral development of girl protagonists, De kleine Grandisson is primarily a novel about boys, fathers and male modelling, and explicitly relates literacy and moral progress to virtuous manhood.

6.5   From Individual to Political Progress An explanation for the male-oriented content of De kleine Grandisson can be found, I assume, in the political meaning of this novel within the context of the Dutch Republic. Although De kleine Grandisson at first sight seems to be an apolitical novel about the development of individual children, it in fact presents a politically marked model for virtuous, cosmopolitan citizenship, which was implicitly portrayed as a vital stepping-stone to improving the Dutch Republic’s inland situation as well as its international political position. My political interpretation differs significantly from the biographical interpretation developed by Simon Vuyk, the only scholar to have written a couple of articles on De Cambon-van der Werken’s life and oeuvre and who has linked the novel’s narrative with De Cambon-van der Werken’s personal life. As Vuyk attempted to read De Cambon-van der Werken’s entire oeuvre as a personal struggle against her dissolute, criminal father, a Remonstrant minister plagued by crime, debts and alcoholism,87 he finds it telling that De kleine Grandisson’s protagonist Willem no longer has a father: after his father’s death, he travelled to England to live under the supervision of the surrogate father Grandisson. It is significant, Vuyk argues, that De Cambon-van der Werken’s husband Boncam de Cambon had died in the year before De kleine Grandisson’s publication. Thus she had become the sole educator of their son Jean-Jacques (who shared his

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first name with Rousseau, whose Émile was published in the year before Jean-Jacques’s birth: is this a coincidence?).88 Vuyk assumes that this new situation encouraged De Cambon-van der Werken to write texts devoted to the education of her son. While her Schets der Zeden (Outline of morals, 1784) was directly addressed to Jean-Jacques,89 De kleine Grandisson presented a fictional story of the little boy Willem who was growing up without his father. The autobiographical connection here is strengthened when Willem’s mother is presented as ‘the Colonel’s widow’ (‘de Weduwe van een Colonel’).90 Nonetheless, I do not find the interpretation that De kleine Grandisson is a novel about De Cambon-van der Werken and her son to be very convincing. Willem is 12, whereas Jean-Jacques, aged 18  in 1782, was already a young man. Besides, the preface of De kleine Grandisson reveals that the novel was written in the late 1770s: De Cambon-van der Werken explained that Martinet’s Catechisms (1777–1779) had been published just as she had finished her writing process.91 This means that De Cambon-van der Werken wrote De kleine Grandisson before instead of after her husband’s death. I suggest that the father motif in De kleine Grandisson could be interpreted in a more political way and could be related to De Cambon-van der Werken’s marked political engagement. As an author, she expressed strong Orangist feelings and explicitly supported the stadholder’s policy. She dedicated her epic poem Willem IV (1756) on William IV of Orange’s (1711–1741) short life to his children Carolina and William, who now had to develop into Dutch role models without the support of their father.92 In her ensuing writings, she frequently honoured son William (1748–1806), who became Stadholder William V of Orange in 1766. When his position gradually became threatened in the 1780s—as Patriots struggled for a democratic Republic and aimed at removing the current governors—she wrote biting pamphlets as tokens of her adoration for William and his wife, Wilhelmina of Prussia (1751–1820).93 What earlier scholars have never noticed, though it is crucial, is the publication date of this children’s novel: the book appeared during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784). This war is a black page in the history of Anglo-Dutch relations. The English royal family had been interwoven with the Dutch family of Orange since Stadholder William III (1650–1702) had married Mary Stuart (1666–1695) in 1689 and had become the king of England and Ireland.94 The current stadholder, William V, was his grandson and a full cousin of George III (1738–1820), the English king during the last four decades of the eighteenth century.

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His wife Wilhelmina of Prussia was also related to the English royal house: her grandmother was King George II’s (1683–1760) sister (who was William V’s grandfather as well: he had married his second cousin).95 The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War hampered Anglo-Dutch relations, and it fostered anti-Orangist and anti-English feelings within the Dutch Republic. William V’s opponents argued that the Republic did not stand a chance against England, as William V had intentionally diminished the Republic’s sea power: he was considered to be in league with the enemy, helping them to win the war. When William V celebrated the undecided Battle of Dogger Bank on 5 August 1781 as a triumph, his critics became even more furious: their stadholder was claiming credit for unearned successes.96 During the night of 25–26 September, the pamphlet Aan het volk van Nederland (To the Dutch people) was spread door to door. This vicious pamphlet depicted Stadholder William V as a collaborator and a power-hungry ruler, and incited its readers to arm themselves so as to fight for a democratic land without any stadholders. It was anonymously published—only in the late nineteenth century did it become clear that the Patriotist Joan van de Capellen tot den Pol had written it.97 On 1 May 1782—half a year after the publication of Aan het volk van Nederland—De Cambon-van der Werken published the pamphlet Onderhoud tusschen vredelief en vrijhart over de tweedracht en oproerigheid (Conversation between Peacelove and Freeheart on Discord and Rebelliousness), clearly a reaction against the author of Aan het volk van Nederland and his political friends.98 It honoured the Dutchmen’s Batavian forefathers, just as Aan het volk van Nederland had done: they now functioned as exemplary people who harmoniously fought against their enemies and never wrote libellous accusations, while Aan het volk van Nederland praised its democratic system and their powerful defence of it.99 Protagonist Vredelief (Peacelove) declared his intent to leave the country now that concord and peace had already departed. Vredelief complains about the struggle against ‘the Illustrious Father William’ (‘den Doorluchtigen Vader Willem’), whose ‘heroic weapons’ (‘heldhaftige wapenen’) have given us freedom.100 People nowadays largely meddle in governmental affairs: the engineer adept at managing tools and technology thinks himself equipped to manage a country as well; a schoolmaster who can control a small group of young pupils assumes he is also fit to govern an entire nation.101 From this passion for power (‘regeerzucht’), groundless assumptions and false charges arise. When something happens, through no fault of the country’s government, everyone dips his pen in

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gall and writes provocative satires to gain support.102 Such ‘covert agitators’ and disguised enemies hamper concord in the fatherland.103 Through its use of allegorical protagonists, De Cambon-van der Werken’s pamphlet makes a plea for peace, concord and virtue, and resists the thoughtless craving to write libellous accusations. Virtuous citizenship and reflexive writing practices were also encouraged in De kleine Grandisson, published in the same period as Onderhoud tusschen vredelief en vrijhart over de tweedracht en oproerigheid: no more than a couple of months could have passed between the publication of these two works.104 But as we saw above, De Cambon-van der Werken must have written De kleine Grandisson around 1778–1779.105 During these years, just before the outbreak of the war, Anglo-Dutch tensions as well as the Republic’s internal troubles increased. The Orangists, hoping the Dutch army would support England’s war with France, saw their plans frustrated by the Patriotist merchants and regents. In their opinion, the war was the effect of their lack of support.106 De kleine Grandisson can be considered a plea for peaceful Anglo-Dutch cooperation and friendship. By depicting a fatherless Dutch Willem who finds an alternative father in England, the novel encouraged the idea that England itself was a father engaged in raising and guiding the Dutch Republic. The fairy-tale marriage between Willem and Emilia could be reinterpreted as a metaphor for a peaceful Anglo-Dutch union. And as De Cambon-van der Werken dedicated several of her texts to Williams of Orange, the Kleine Grandisson protagonist was called Willem as well. This Willem, younger than De Cambon-van der Werken’s son Jean-Jacques, was of a comparable age to William V’s son William at the time. This William, the later King William I, still had a living father in 1782, but William V himself had lost his father at an early age and had to take his examples from elsewhere—De Cambon-­ van der Werken also referred to this situation in her epic poem Willem IV. Thus De kleine Grandisson, though certainly not an explicitly political pamphlet, resonates nonetheless with the political context of its moment. Willem is not just a random individual child who develops his writing and moral competences. Rather, he serves as a model for a specific type of citizenship that De Cambon-van der Werken supported, guided by her position as an Orangist rooted in elite, internationally oriented circles of the Dutch Republic: virtuous, cosmopolitan brand of citizenship, which accepts England as a dutiful and benevolent father figure and is directed towards the bridging of a widening Anglo-Dutch gap, and as such contributes to the moral concerns centred on the inland situation and on the

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political welfare and international position of the Dutch Republic. In an implicit way, De kleine Grandisson makes children co-responsible for a markedly political agenda and spreads the idea that the Republic’s prosperity depended on children’s capacity to strive towards moral perfection via their development of literacy.

6.6   Conclusion It has been known that parents and teachers of eighteenth-century children (from higher social classes) were prompted to keep diaries or compile commonplace books, and as such these children learned ‘how to shape their own minds through graphic interface’.107 For the Dutch Republic, Otto van Eck (1780–1798) is the most famous example of a child who used his diary writing as an instrument of introspection and cognitive growth.108 As could be proved by this unique diary, De kleine Grandisson indeed functioned as training in literacy, in which the enmeshed practices of writing, reading, thinking and talking spurred the reader’s practice of moral reflection. However much his writing discipline may have been fostered by his parents,109 Otto took fictional characters’ moral behaviour as examples (for instance, emulating Willem’s behaviour towards his sister), as well as their writing practices: when Otto found himself with insufficient material for his writing, his father advised him to read a letter from De kleine Grandisson.110 This combination of epistolary literacy and moral reflection not only exerted an influence on an individual reader such as Otto van Eck but also on the international book market. While in previous chapters I already identified the quite lively reception of international children’s books in the Dutch Republic, I now have shed light on the neglected impact of Dutch literature on children’s literatures in other languages. A process of dynamic transnational exchange turned out to be a vital force behind the development of new epistolary literacy models in the field of children’s literature. The networks in which these transnational and multilingual collaborations were developed were generally organized along the lines of religion and political preference as well as gender. This chapter confirms the significance of transnational women writers’ networks for the development of children’s literature.111 The remarkable and exceptional international success of De kleine Grandisson may have been depended on the cosmopolitan character of the novel: it is situated in England instead of the Dutch Republic and depicts

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a friendship that transcended national borders. This cosmopolitan character was, however, at the same time closely connected to the specific political circumstances of the Dutch Republic during the 1780s. De kleine Grandisson portrays a type of virtuous England-oriented citizenship that, according to elite Orangists like De Cambon-van der Werken, was necessary for the Republic to strengthen its international position and inland situation. The image of the Anglo-Dutch marriage at the end of the book depicts the success of Willem’s moral development as well as the desired situation of international brotherhood. So whereas De kleine Grandisson portrays (epistolary) literacy as an individually accessible competence that spurs the child’s agency in thinking critically, making comparative moral assessments and shaping a successful personal future, it simultaneously guides children to a preferred model of citizenship and political engagement. By depicting this model of moral citizenship and brotherhood as ‘male’, De kleine Grandisson held an exceptional position in the international tradition of women writing prose for children that was aimed at their moral education: such women writers mainly dedicated their writings to the moral education of girls. De kleine Grandisson, instead, reflects a fundamental connection between literacy and male citizenship, as previous chapters also revealed, although the image of citizenship and political improvement was in this case shaped from a marked Orangist, higher-class perspective. This is not to say, however, that a Dutch linkage between moral development and (epistolary) literacy is an exclusive male connection. As the next chapter will demonstrate, it was precisely in the Dutch Republic that an emancipatory model of ‘girlish’ epistolary literacy was created as well. This distinct type of literacy, however, lacked the larger political dimension of the male-oriented material. Rather, it served to preserve a separate female domain in society.

Notes 1. Dietz, Feike. 2015. “Fictionele schrijfwijzer voor de jeugd: De verbeel­ ding van de scheppende schrijfhand in zeventiende-eeuwse jeugdlitera­ tuur.” De Zeventiende Eeuw: Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief 31, no. 2: 307–326, esp. 308–311; Boekholt, P.Th.F.M., and E.P. de Booy. 1987. Geschiedenis van de school in Nederland vanaf de mid-

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deleeuwen tot aan de huidige tijd. Assen and Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 37–40. 2. Cf. Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. 2019. “An alphabet of colors: Valcooch’s Rules and the emergence of sense-based learning around 1600.” Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 68, no. 1: 168–203; Valcooch, Dirck Adriaensz. 1875. Den reghel der Duytsche schoolmeesters. Eene bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het schoolwezen in het laatst der XVIe en het begin der XVIIe eeuw, edited by G.D.J. Schotel. The Hague: Ykema. 3. Buijnsters, P.J., and L.  Buijnsters-Smets. 1997. Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800. Zwolle: Waanders, 42–45. 4. Galliers, Carel de. [17XX]. Trap der jeugd, of Perfecte manier om jonge kinderen […] te leeren leezen en schryven. Utrecht: Willem Jan Reers, 42–48. 5. Schoemaker, Bobbie O. 2018. Gewijd der jeugd voor taal en deugd: onderwijs in de Nederlandse taal op de lagere school, 1750–1850. PhD Diss., Leiden University. Utrecht: LOT. 6. Whyman, Susan. 2007. “Letter Writing and the Rise of the Novel: The Epistolary Literacy of Jane Johnson and Samuel Richardson.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 70, no. 4: 275–307, esp. 578. 7. Schunk, Dale H., and Barry J.  Zimmerman. 2007. “Influencing children’s self-efficacy and self-regulation of reading and writing through modeling.” Reading & Writing Quarterly 23, no. 1: 7–25; Braaksma, Martine, Gert Rijlaarsdam, and Huub van den Bergh. 2002. “Observational Learning and the Effects of Model-Observer Similarity.” Journal of Educational Psychology 94, no. 2: 405–415; Raedts, Mariet, Frans Daems, Luuk Van Waes, and Gert Rijlaarsdam. 2009. “Observerend leren van peer models bij een complexe schrijftaak.” Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing 31, no 2: 142–165. 8. Meeus, Wim. 2011. “The Study of Adolescent Identity Formation 2000–2010: A Review of Longitudinal Research.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 21, no. 1: 75–94. 9. Cf. Blewett, David. 2001. Passion and Virtue: Essays on the Novels of Samuel Richardson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 10. Whyman, “Letter Writing and the Rise of the Novel”, 605. With regard to adolescents, Harris, Amy. 2009. “‘This I beg my aunt may not know’: Young Letter-writers in Eighteenth-century England, peer correspondence in a hierarchical world.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2, no. 3: 333–360. 11. Whyman, “Letter Writing and the Rise of the Novel”, 589 and 593. 12. [Anonymous]. 1778. Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen. Amsterdam: A. van der Kroe and Yntema and Tieboel, 96; Ducis, Jean François, and William Shakespeare. 1779. Hamlet: treurspel, gevolgt naar het Fransch en naar

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het Engelsch. Translated by Margareta Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken. The Hague: Isaac du Mee, epilogue. Cf. Vuyk, Simon. 2002. “Twee vrouwen over vaderland en voorzienigheid: Lucretia Wilhelmina van Merken (1721–1789) en Margareta Geertruid van Werken (1734-na 1796).” De Achttiende Eeuw 34: 33–48, esp. 41. 13. Zuylekom, Maria van. 1788. Mengelingen, in proza en poëzij. The Hague: Isaac van Cleef, x: ‘een kundige Van Merken—een beleezene Bekker en Deken—eene schrandere De Cambon’. 14. Cf. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, Riet. 1997. “Van epica tot bestseller-­ auteur: Margareta Geertruid van der Werken (Gouda, gedoopt 29 september 1734 -? ca. 1800).” In Met en zonder lauwerkrans: Schrijvende vrouwen uit de vroegmoderne tijd 1550–1850: Van Anna Bijns tot Elise van Calcar, edited by Riet Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, Karel Porteman, Piet Couttenier, and Lia van Gemert: 602–607. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press; Vuyk, Simon. 2014. “Werken, Margareta Geertruid van der (1734-na 1796).” In Digitaal vrouwenlexicon van Nederland, edited by Els Kloek. http://www.historici.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/DVN/ lemmata/data/Werken; Vuyk, Simon. 2000. “Scherpe contrasten bij Margareta Geertruid van der Werken (1734–na 1796).” In Verlichte verzen en kolommen: Remonstranten in de letterkunde en tijdschriften van de Verlichting (1720–1820): 122–145. Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw; Vuyk, “Twee vrouwen over vaderland en voorzienigheid”. On De Cambon-van der Werken as an author of one of the first magazines for women (Algemeene Oeffenschool der Vrouwen, 1784–1785): Jensen, Lotte. 2001. ‘Bij uitsluiting voor de vrouwelijke sekse geschikt’: Vrouwentijdschriften en journalistes in Nederland in de achttiende en negentiende eeuw. Hilversum: Verloren. On Willem IV: Smit, W.A.P. 1975–1983. Kalliope in de Nederlanden: Het Renaissancistisch-klassicistische epos van 1550 tot 1850. Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp., 479–494. See for a bibliography of De Cambon-van der Werkens’s oeuvre: Groot, J.P.M. 1976. “Voorlopige bibliografie van M.G. de Cambon-van der Werken.” Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 30: 1–37. 15. Latimer, Bonnie. 2009. “Leaving Little to the Imagination: The Mechanics of Didacticism in Two Children’s Adaptations of Samuel Richardson’s Novels.” The Lion and the Unicorn 33, no. 2: 167–188, esp. 175. 16. Richardson, Samuel. 1756–1757. Historie van den ridder-baronet Karel Grandison. Harlingen: Folkert van der Plaats, Amsterdam: Kornelis van Tongerlo. 17. During her career, De Cambon-van der Werken produced several translations, mostly from French or German but also from English: she pub-

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lished a Dutch version of a sermon by John Hall, minister of the English church in Rotterdam. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1793. Aanspraak, gedaan in de Engelsche kerk te Rotterdam, voor de dankoeffening, Op Woensdag avond den 10 April 1793. Rotterdam: Jan Hendriksen. 18. Buijnsters, P.J. 1971. Sara Burgerhart’ en de ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse roman in de 18e eeuw. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 9. Cf. Dietz, Feike. 2018. “1782: De kleine Grandisson als international bestseller.” In: Wereldgeschiedenis van Nederland, edited by Lex Heerma van Voss and others: 339–344. Amsterdam: Ambo Anthos. 19. Latimer, “Leaving Little to the Imagination”, 168: ‘Abbreviated and illustrated versions and adaptations became standard fare in the late-­ century nursery.’ 20. Also translated into Dutch, cf. Richardson, Samuel. 1793. De geschiedenis van Sir Charles Grandison verkort. Leiden: Abraham Honkoop, Jan Honkoop and David du Mortier; Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken, no. 1589. 21. On the many popular letter-writing manuals including exemplary letters, see, for example, Rutten, Gijsbert, and Marijke van der Wal. 2014. Letters as loot: A sociolinguistic approach to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, chapter 5; Brouwer, Judith. 2014. Levenstekens: Gekaapte brieven uit het Rampjaar 1672. Hilversum: Verloren, chapter 2; Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken, 36–42. On the Danish periodical, Christensen, Nina. 2009. “Lust for Reading and Thirst for Knowledge: Fictive Letters in a Danish Children’s Magazine of 1770.” The Lion and the Unicorn 33, no. 2: 189–201; Appel, Charlotte, and Nina Christensen. 2017. “Follow the Child, Follow the Books: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to a Child-Centered History of Danish Children’s Literature 1790–1850.” International Research in Children’s Literature 10, no. 2: 194–212, esp. 202–203. 22. Scholars wrongly assume that this book consists of sections derived from Sarah Fielding’s The Governess (1749), cf. Weedon, M.J.P. 1949. “Richard Johnson and the Successors to John Newbery.” The Library 5, no. 1: 25–63. 23. Quote: Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1782. De kleine Grandisson, of de gehoorzaame zoon. 2 vols. The Hague: Herman Hendrik van Drecht, vol. 1, V. 24. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, V. 25. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, VI. 26. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 84, 11. 27. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 5.

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28. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 5. 29. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 2, 181–2. 30. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 2, 181. 31. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 8–9. 32. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 5. 33. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 19. 34. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 6. 35. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 52. 36. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 52. 37. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 52–53. 38. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 51. 39. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 9. 40. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 4. 41. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 9 and 83. 42. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 28. 43. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 79. 44. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, letter 22 and 43. 45. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 64. 46. De Cambon-Van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, VI. 47. Vuyk, “Twee vrouwen over vaderland en voorzienigheid”, 33. 48. For example, the Hague Walloon minister Charles Chais had published several catechisms for children in both French and Dutch. 49. On De La Fite’s Entretiens, drames et contes moraux and Le Prince de Beaumont as its precursor: Janse, Ineke. 2010. “Traveller, Pedagogue and Cultural Mediator: Marie-Elisabeth and her Female Context.” In Women writing back/writing women back: Transnational perspectives from the late Middle Ages to the dawn of the modern era, edited by Anke Gilleir, Alicia C.  Montoya and Suzan van Dijk: 309–324. Leiden and Boston: Brill. On De La Fite, Le Prince de Beaumont and their œuvres: Brown, Penelope. 2007. A Critical History of French Children’s Literature. Vol. 1: 1600–1830. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, chapters 3 and 4. Of Magasin des enfants more than 130 editions were published throughout Europe between 1756 and 1887, cf. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 103. On its Russian reception, Montoya, Alicia, and Wyneke de Gelder. 2012. “The View from the Periphery: French Pedagogy and Enlightenment in Russia (Leprince de Beaumont’s Magasin des enfants).” De Achttiende Eeuw 44, no. 2: 100–126. Editions published in the Dutch Republic: Prince De Beaumont, Jeanne Marie le. 1757. Magazyn der kinderen, of samenspraaken tusschen eene wyze gouvernante en verscheide van haare leerlingen van het eerste fatsoen. 4 vols. The Hague: Ottho van Thol. Cf. Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie

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van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken, no. 1227; for reprints see no. 1228–1230. French edition: Prince De Beaumont, Jeanne Marie le. 1759. Magazin des enfans: Ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante & plusieurs de ses élèves de la première distinction. The Hague: Pierre Gosse junior, Leiden: E.  Luzac fils. Editions of Entretiens, drames et contes moraux: Fite, Marie-Elisabeth de La. 1778. Entretiens, drames et contes moraux, a l’usage des enfans. The Hague: Jacques Detune; Fite, MarieElisabeth de La. 1780. Zedelijke samenspraaken, toneelstukjes en vertellingen voor kinderen. Utrecht: Abraham van Paddenburg, Amsterdam: Willem Holtrop. 50. Orr, Clarissa Campbell. 2005. “Aristocratic Feminism, the Learned Governess, and the Republic of Letters.” In Women, Gender and Enlightenment, edited by Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor: 306–325. Basingstoke and New  York: Palgrave Macmillan; Janse, “Traveller, Pedagogue and Cultural Mediator”, 310–311; Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 100. 51. A feminist interpretation of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is given by Orr, “Aristocratic Feminism”, esp. 308–309. Chap. 7  of Lettering Young Readers discusses Le Prince de Beaumont’s representation of girlhood and literacy in more detail. 52. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 144–148. 53. On domestic conversation as the upcoming pedagogical ideal, Cohen, Michèle. 2015. “The Pedagogy of Conversation in the Home: ‘Familiar Conversation’ as a Pedagogical Tool in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-­ Century England.” Oxford Review of Education 41, no. 4: 447–463; Cohen, Michèle. 2009. “‘Familiar Conversation’: The Role of the ‘Familiar Format’ in Education in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England.” In Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices, edited by Mary Hilton and Jill Shefrin: 99–116. Farnham: Ashgate; Brown, Penelope. 2009. “‘Girls aloud’: Dialogue as a Pedagogical Tool in Eighteenth-Century French Children’s Literature.” The Lion and the Unicorn 33, no. 2: 202–218. 54. On the international reception of De kleine Grandisson: Tigges-Drewes, Grietje, and Hans Groot. 1980. “Een eeuw kleine Grandisson: 1782–1885.” Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 45: 21–64. On De kleine Grandisson as a successful international bestseller, Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, “Van epica tot bestseller-auteur”, 604. Some brief discussions of De kleine Grandisson by Dutch scholars: Buijnsters, P.J. 1989. “Nederlandse kinderboeken uit de achttiende eeuw.” In De hele Bibelebontse berg: De geschiedenis van het kinderboek in Nederland & Vlaanderen van de middeleeuwen tot heden, edited by Harry Bekkering, Nettie Heimeriks and Willem van Toorn: 169–228.

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Amsterdam: Querido, esp. 212–214; Leemans, Inger, and Gert-Jan Johannes. 2013. Worm en donder: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700–1800: de Republiek. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 516–517. 55. Groot, “Voorlopige bibliografie van M.G. de Cambon-van der Werken”, 25–31; Tigges-Drewes and Groot, “Een eeuw kleine Grandisson: 1782–1885”, 34. 56. Tigges-Dewes and Groot, “Een eeuw kleine Grandisson: 1782–1885”, 34–35. 57. Berquin, M. [=Arnaud] 1791. The history of little Grandison. London: John Stockdale. This edition is translated from the French version of Le petit Grandisson (1787) by Arnaud Berquin, cf. Tigges-Drewes and Groot, “Een eeuw kleine Grandisson: 1782–1885”, 34. 58. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1790. Young Grandison: A series of letters from young persons to their friends: Translated from the Dutch of Madame de Cambon: With alterations and improvements. 2 vols. London: Joseph Johnson. 59. The only scholarly paper on The young Grandison is Latimer, “Leaving Little to the Imagination”. 60. Latimer, “Leaving Little to the Imagination”, 177. Examples: Newlyn, Lucy. 1991. “Review of The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft.” The Review of English Studies 42, no. 165: 66–77, esp. 70 (‘Predictably, Wollstonecraft’s translations are less interesting than her own work’) and Sapiro, Virginia. 1992. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 182 (Young Grandison is ‘unremarkable’ for scholarship on Wollstonecraft). 61. Hall was born in Sheffield. From 1779 onwards, he worked as a minister of the English church in Rotterdam. Cf. Steven, William. 1980. The history of the Scottish Church, Rotterdam: to which are subjoined notices of the other British churches in the Netherlands; and a Brief view of the Dutch ecclesiastical establishment. Edinburgh: Waugh and Innes, Dublin: W. Curry, Jun. & co, London: Whittaker & co, Rotterdam: Van der Meer & Verbruggen. On his work for De kleine Grandisson: Tigges-Drewes and Groot, “Een eeuw kleine Grandisson: 1782–1885”, 21–63. 62. In 1793, De Cambon-van der Werken translated one of Hall’s sermons (Aanspraak, gedaan in de Engelsche kerk te Rotterdam: Sermon, performed in the English Church in Rotterdam, 1793), which depicted English and Netherlandish people as confederates and brothers (‘bondgenooten’; ‘broeders’). Cf. De Cambon-van der Werken, Aanspraak, 8. A couple of years later, De Cambon-van der Werken dedicated her next novel, De kleine Klarissa, to Hall to show him her gratitude for translating De kleine Grandisson (Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1790. De kleine Klarissa. The Hague: Johannes François Jacobs de

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Agé, ‘Toewying aan de weleerwaarden here John Hall’, [s.p.]). Perhaps stimulated by this gesture, Hall translated De kleine Klarissa into English as well. In Chap. 7, I will discuss De kleine Klarissa. 63. Joseph Johnson (1738–1809), a London publisher from the 1760s onwards, mainly focused on the production of (Unitarian) religious and revolutionary writings during the first period of his career, but expanded his activities in the 1770s and 1780s, for example, adding youth literature to his business endeavours. On Johnson’s role in encouraging female authors, Mandell, Laura. 2002. “Johnson’s Lessons for men: producing the professional woman writer.” Wordsworth Circle 33, no. 3: 108–113. On Johnson’s reprint of Martinet, Martinet, Johannes Florentius. 1790. Catechism of Nature, For the Use of Children. London: Joseph Johnson. Mentioned by: Paasman, Bert. 1971. J.F. Martinet: Een Zutphens filosoof in de 18e eeuw. Zutphen: Van Someren, 102. De Cambon-van der Werken also refers to Martinet’s book in her preface to De kleine Grandisson. 64. Kirkley, Laura. 2002. “Mary Wollstonecraft, British author and philosopher, 1759–1797.” In Women Writers’ Networks, edited by Suzan van Dijk, Ton van Kalmthout and Karina van Dalen-Oskam. http://www. womenwriters.nl/index.php/Mary_Wollstonecraft; Todd, Janet. 2002. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. New  York: Columbia University Press, 123–143. 65. Godwin, William. 2001. Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Edited by Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 68. 66. De Cambon-van der Werken, Young Grandison, A2. 67. Bonnie Latimer emphasized ‘the extent of Wollstonecraft’s rewriting’ and interpreted several characteristics of the original novel—such as a focus on curiosity and improvement—as Wollstonecraft’s own inventions. Latimer, “Leaving Little to the Imagination”, 176. 68. Some letters or parts of letters were removed (cf. letter 6 and 7), but other letters were extended or simply replaced (letter 12). 69. Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1788. Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness. London: Joseph Johnson; Todd, Janet, and Marilyn Butler. 1989. The works of Mary Wollstonecraft. London: Taylor & Francis Ltd., Original stories in vol. 4, 359–450. 70. Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 68. 71. Kirkley, Laura, “Mary Wollstonecraft”. 72. Newlyn, “Review of The Works of May Wollstonecraft”, 70. For the impact of Salzmann’s work on the Original Stories, see also: Kirkley, Laura. 2015. “‘Original Spirit’: Literary Translations and Translational Literature in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft.” In Literature and the Development

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of Feminist Theory, edited by Robin Goodman: 13–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Kirkley, Laura. 2007. “Elements of the Other: Mary Wollstonecraft and Translation.” In Translators, Interpreters, Mediators: Women Writers 1700–1900, edited by Gillian Dow: 83–98. Bern: Peter Lang, esp. 93; Blamires, David. 2009. “Elements of Morality: Salzmann and Wollstonecraft.” In Telling Tales: The Impact of Germany on English Children’s Books 1780–1918: 39–49. Cambridge: OpenBook Publishers. 73. Newlyn, “Review of The Works of May Wollstonecraft”, 70; Latimer, “Leaving Little to the Imagination”, note 11; Todd, Mary Wollstonecraft, 134. 74. Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life, chapters 13, 22 and 23. 75. Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life, chapter 16. 76. Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life, chapter 25, 449–450. Cf. Kirkley, “Elements of the Other: Mary Wollstonecraft and Translation”, 91. 77. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, 1782, vol. 2, 172 and 175–176. Cf. ‘ô wat zal ik nu voor u leezen!’ (176) versus ‘How much I shall have read to you’ (De Cambon-van der Werken, Young Grandison, 1790, 305). 78. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. [s.d.]. Maria en Carolina, of De opvoeding door voorbeelden. The Hague: Johannes Coenradus Leeuwestijn. Leeuwestijn worked as a publisher between 1789 and 1803, so Maria and Carolina must be published in this period. 79. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1798. De kleine Grandisson, of De gehoorzame zoon. The Hague: Johannes Coenradus Leeuwestijn. Leeuwestijn’s edition of De kleine Grandisson was extended by some stories which were probably written by Berquin and now translated into Dutch, cf. Tigges-Drewes and Groot, “Een eeuw kleine Grandisson: 1782–1885”, 26. Moreover, Leeuwestijn published most translations discussed in the literary journal Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen, cf. Almut Sommer, Johanna. 2002. “Vertaald uit het Hoogduitsch…”: Een onderzoek naar Duitse vertalingen in de Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen (1796–1803), met bijzondere aandacht voor geschriften met religieuze thematiek. PhD Diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 23. 80. The Dutch translation of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman has not survived. Cf. [Anonymous]. 1797. “Maria Wollstonecraft: Verdediging van de Rechten der Vrouwen: Benevens Aanmerkingen over Burgerlyke en Zedelyke Onderwerpen: Uit het Engelsch, volgends den IIden Druk: Met Aantekeningen en eene Voorreden van Christiaan Gotthilf Salzman: Door Ysbrand van Hamelsveld: Eerste Deel: In den Haag, by J.C.  Leeuwestyn, 1796: In gr. 8vo. 482 bl., behalven het Voorwerk.” Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen. Amsterdam: A. van der Kroe

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and Yntema and Tieboel: 343–349. The translation was probably based on Salzmann’s translation of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, that is Rettung der Rechten des Weibes. According to the review in the Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen, the Dutch translation included a preface by Salzmann. Cf. Kirkley, Laura. 2009. “Feminism in Translation: Rewriting the Rights of Woman.” In Crossing Cultures: Nineteenthcentury Anglophone Literature in the Low Countries, edited by Tom Toremans and Walter Verschueren: 189–200. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 189. Other translations by De Cambon-van der Werken: Cambonvan der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1796. Tafereelen van armoede en tegenspoed. The Hague: Johannes Coenradus Leeuwestijn; François, Jean, and William Shakespeare. 1791. Koning Lear, treurspel. Translated from the French by Margareta Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken. The Hague: Johannes Coenradus Leeuwestijn (reprint of the first edition published by Herman Hendrik van Drecht in 1783). 81. De vermaarde historie van Gilles Zoetekoek was reprinted in 1798, as part of the second edition of the St. Nicolaes Almanach, cf. Buijnsters, P.J. 1995. “Traditie en vernieuwing: Nederlandse ABC-boeken uit de achttiende eeuw.” In A is een aapje: Opstellen over ABC-boeken van de vijftiende eeuw tot heden, edited by Jaap ter Linden, Anne de Vries and Dick Welsink: 55–72. Amsterdam: Querido, esp. 71. Barbauld’s Lessons for Children appeared in a new translation, brought out by the Society of the Common Good (Lees-­oefeningen voor eerstbeginnenden, 1796). Her Hymns in Prose for Children saw no fewer than two new translations during these years, the first published by Johannes van Bemmelen in Leiden, and the second translated by a 15-year-old boy who was a member of the English Church in Middelburg, as minister John Low explained in his preface. 82. On this French translation, Bentley, G.E. 1989. “Marie Vollstonecraft Godwin and William Blake in France: The first Foreign Engravings after Blake’s Designs.” Australian Journal of French Studies 26: 125–147; Kirkley, Laura. 2014. “Maria, ou le Malheur d’être femme: Translating Mary Wollstonecraft in Revolutionary France.” Journal for EighteenthCentury Studies 38, no. 2: 239–255, esp. 241. This French translation was based on an edition of Original stories embellished with images by William Blake: Reeves, Amy Carol. 2007. “Saving Mrs. Mason’s Soul: How Blake Rewrites Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life.” In Romanticism and Parenting: Image, Instruction and Ideology, edited by Carolyn Weber: 37–52. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lallemant, a French navel secretary, could have been in De Cambon-van der Werken’s network, since her husband worked as a French officer.

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83. Groot, “Voorlopige bibliografie van M.G. de Cambon-van der Werken”, 37; Vuyk, “Twee vrouwen over vaderland en voorzienigheid”, 145. 84. Cambon-van der Werken, Maria en Carolina, *3: ‘Dit werkjen, voor alle ouders, die belang stellen in de opvoeding hunner kinderen ten hoogste nuttig, is geschreeven door de zich beroemd gemaakt hebbende me­vrouw de Cambon, geboren Van der Werken.’ Cf. Groot, “Voorlopige bibliografie van M.G. de Cambon-van der Werken”, 19. 85. Wollstonecraft’s pan-European fame is, for example, discussed by Kirkley, “Feminism in Translation”. 86. The Dutch translation of A Vindication, made by IJsbrand van Hamelsveld, has not survived, cf. note 80. The same holds for the Dutch translation of Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or The wrongs of woman (1799), anonymously published in 1801 by the Haarlem publisher Johannes Allart: Maria, of Het ongeluk van vrouw te zijn (cf. Buisman J.  Fzn., M. [1960]. Populaire prozaschrijvers van 1600 tot 1815: Romans, novellen, verhalen, levensbeschrijvingen, arcadia’s, sprookjes. Amsterdam: B.M.  Israël, 128, no. 713). We only have one edition of Brieven, geschreven geduurende eene reize door Zweeden, Noorwegen en Denemarken, published with François Bohn in Haarlem in 1799. 87. Vuyk, “Scherpe contrasten bij Margareta Geertruid van der Werken”, 122 and 124; Vuyk, “Twee vrouwen over vaderland en voorzienigheid”, 34; Vuyk, “Zwarte bladzijden uit de geschiedenis van remonstrants Gouda”, 119–131. 88. Vuyk, “Scherpe contrasten bij Margareta Geertruid van der Werken”, 137. 89. Vuyk, “Scherpe contrasten bij Margareta Geertruid van der Werken”, 137. 90. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, 84. Cf. Vuyk, “Twee vrouwen over vaderland en voorzienigheid”, 138. 91. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, V. 92. Vuyk, “Scherpe contrasten bij Margareta Geertruid van der Werken”, 124–126. 93. Vuyk, “Scherpe contrasten bij Margareta Geertruid van der Werken”, 127–132; Groot, “Voorlopige bibliografie van M.G. de Cambon-van der Werken”, 17–18 and 22–24. Cf. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1788. De Tijd bij de gezegende verjaaringe van den Doorluchtigen Vader des Vaderlands, Willem den Geduldigen, den 8sten maart 1788. The Hague: Johannes François Jacobs de Agé. 94. Troost, Wouter. 2016. William III, the Stadholder-king: a political biography. London and New York: Routledge, esp. chapters 10–13. 95. Meerkerk, Edwin van. 2013. Willem V en Wilhelmina van Pruisen: De laatste stadhouders. Amsterdam and Antwerp: Atlas, 34. 96. Dissel, Anita van, and Henk den Heijer. 2014. “Jongens van De Witt of van Oranje? Loyaliteit en opportunisme bij de zeemacht in turbulente

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tijden 1780–1813.” In Oranje onder: Populair orangisme van Willem van Oranje tot nu, edited by Henk te Velde and Donald Haks: 115–137. Amsterdam: Prometheus and Bert Bakker, 117–118. See for an Englishlanguage introduction to this political context: Kloek, Joost J. and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt. 2004. 1800: Blueprints for a National Community. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum; Basingstoke and New  York: Palgrave Macmillan, esp. 21–30; Schama, Simon. 1992. Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813. New York: Vintage Books. 97. Capellen tot den Pol, Joan Derk van der. 1981. Aan het volk van Nederland. Edited by W.F. Wertheim and A.H. Wertheim-Gijse Weenink. Weesp: Heureka, Introduction, esp. 20; Rosendaal, Joost. 2005. De Nederlandse Revolutie: Vrijheid, volk en vaderland 1783–1799. Nijmegen: Vantilt, 17–19. 98. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1782. Onderhoud, tusschen Vredelief en Vryhart, over de tweedracht en oproerigheid. [s.l.]: [s.n.], esp. 15. Cf. Vuyk, “Scherpe contrasten bij Margareta Geertruid van der Werken”, 129. 99. De Cambon-van der Werken, Onderhoud, 6 and 12; Van der Capellen tot den Pol, Aan het volk van Nederland, 64–65. 100. De Cambon-van der Werken, Onderhoud, 6. 101. De Cambon-van der Werken, Onderhoud, 6–7. 102. De Cambon-van der Werken, Onderhoud, 7. 103. De Cambon-van der Werken, Onderhoud, 10–14. 104. Buijnsters, P.J. 1984. Wolff & Deken: een biografie. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 53. 105. De Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Grandisson, vol. 1, V. 106. Van Meerkerk, Willem V en Wilhelmina van Pruisen, 80–86. 107. Eddy, Matthew D. 2016. “The child writer: graphic literacy and the Scottish educational system, 1700–1820.” History of education 45, no. 6: 695–718, quote 718. 108. Baggerman, Arianne, and Rudolf Dekker. 2009. Child of the Enlightenment: Revolutionary Europe reflected in a boyhood diary. Leiden and Boston: Brill; Eck, Otto van. 1998. Het dagboek van Otto van Eck. Edited by Arianne Baggerman, Rudolf Dekker and Jeroen Blaak. Hilversum: Verloren. 109. Cf. Baggerman, Arianne. 1994. “Lezen tot de laatste snik: Otto van Eck en zijn dagelijkse literatuur (1780–1798).” Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 1: 57–88, esp. 77. 110. Van Eck, Het dagboek van Otto van Eck, 24, 29–30 and 36. 111. Cf. Gilleir, Anke, Alicia C.  Montoya, and Suzan van Dijk, eds. 2010. Women writing back/writing women back: Transnational perspectives from the late Middle Ages to the dawn of the modern era. Leiden and Boston:

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Brill, 2: female authors are often ‘considered within the limits of a single nation or language area’, while they often function in an international network. On a more general level (not specifically focusing to the Dutch or Anglo-Dutch context), scholars in the field of children’s books are highly aware of the significance of women writers for the development of children’s literature, for example: Grenby, Matthew O. 2016. “Pay, Professionalization and Probable Dominance? Women Writers and the Children’s Book Trade.” In Women’s Writing, 1660–1830: Feminisms and Futures, edited by Jenny Batchelor and Gillian Dow: 117–137. London and New  York: Palgrave Macmillan; Briggs, Julia. 2015. “‘Delightful Task!’: Women, Children, and Reading in the Mid-Eighteenth Century.” In Culturing the Child 1690–1914: Essays in memory of Mitzi Myers, edited by Donelle Ruwe: 67–82. Lanham, Maryland, Toronto and Oxford: The Scarecrow Press; Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, Introduction.

CHAPTER 7

The Making of Lettered Girlhood: Epistolary Literacy as an Instrument of Peer Mothering in Dutch Girls’ Books

7.1   Introduction As we have seen in previous chapters, eighteenth-century children’s books portrayed literacy as the stepping-stone to future manhood. To conclude this monograph on literacy—which appears to have been a skill mostly defined in terms of masculinity—this final chapter of Lettering Young Readers enquires whether the young girl, for her part, was in fact ever perceived to be a lettered girl. This exploration takes as its background the Enlightenment, an era of growing educational possibilities for women but also a period when people, increasingly aware of biological sex differences, developed strict rules of behaviour to manage the subordinate female sex.1 Under these circumstances, literacy was at once connected to an ideal of femininity and was considered to be a serious threat to the status quo of women. Eighteenth-century Dutch works addressed to women or to female adolescents often express this tension. For example, Geschenk voor de juffrouwen (Present for ladies, 1792–1793), one of the first Dutch journals for young women,2 was derived from the assumption that it was equally important for women and men to be able to read,3 but it also warned its female readers that selecting the wrong books or overconsuming reading material could have dangerous effects. A compulsive woman, the journal argues, ‘is often just as unpleasant and inconvenient for men, as a woman who did not read anything at all’ (‘is dikwils alzo vervelend en © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7_7

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lastig voor de mannen, als eene, die in het geheel niet gelezen heeft’).4 Joachim Heinrich Campe’s (1746–1818) translated Vaderlyke raad aan myne dochter (Fatherly advice for my daughter, 1790–1791) depicts books for young ladies as healthy mental food even as they can also be threats to the female household and the fulfilment of women’s educational duties.5 In the coming of age novel Sara Burgerhart (Sara ‘Civil Heart’, 1782), written by Elisabeth Wolff (1738–1804) and Agatha Deken (1741–1804), Sara is able to develop her virtuousness (at least partly) as a consequence of her praiseworthy reading behaviour, while Cornelia Hartog, a compulsive savante, has come to lose her femininity: low-voiced and resembling a man, she can hardly do her needlework any longer.6 This chapter analyses how this paradoxical idea of literacy as an aspect of as well as a threat to ideal femininity was transmitted by means of children’s books addressed to young girls (up to the age, roughly, of 13). It argues that the late-eighteenth-century introduction of the Dutch epistolary girls’ novel fostered the representation of epistolary reading and writing skills as the foundation of girlhood as a category distinct from women and boys. The Dutch epistolary girls’ novel served this purpose by depicting girls’ epistolary literacy—advanced competence in writing letters that would satisfy common genre and social conventions, as well as in reading, interpreting and answering one another’s letters7—as a means to shape and preserve their young girls’ communities. As such, these fictional books reflect a practice quite common amongst adult women: it is assumed, with respect to female adults, that literacy skills were a driving force behind community building and friendship,8 and that communal literacy practices served as protection against the dangerous effects of the consumption of texts by individual women.9 The fictional girls’ communities in the Dutch epistolary girls’ novels resemble the literary coteries in which the production and exchange of manuscript materials served as a foundation for friendship ties.10 Although the girls in the epistolary girls’ novels restrict themselves to the writing of letters (instead of other literary genres such as poetry), we can clearly recognize Betty Schellenberg’s characteristic features of a literary coterie: the girls encourage one another to write, comment on one another’s products and reflect on shared reading materials.11 Epistolary girls’ novels consist exclusively of letters exchanged between young girls (instead of between children and older educators). These girls’ coteries thus reflect a process of peer learning, through which the girls not only improve one another’s literacy skills but also aim to spur, more

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generally, their intellectual, social and moral growth. In the absence of biological mothers, the girls develop a system of what I call ‘peer mothering’—a variant of the phenomenon of ‘othermothering’ introduced by Julie Pfeiffer to describe the non-biological mothering practices in nineteenth-­century American and German girls’ books.12 Arguing that literate peer mothering in epistolary girls’ novels facilitated a definition of girls as distinct from women and boys, this chapter contributes to scholarship on the representation of girlhood.13 Although early modern scholars have recognized the gendered dimension of childhood for quite some time,14 and several pleas have been made to study female childhood through an intersectional approach in which age and gender are intertwined as related power systems,15 scholarship on early modern girlhood is generally hampered by the traditional conception of the early modern tripartite gender system, which only distinguishes men, women and boys.16 While boys needed to distance themselves gradually from the female domestic world to become men (paralleled in their physical transformation: their abandonment of dresses for breeches),17 girls were required to maintain their position subordinate to men and have thus traditionally been considered—by scholars as well—as the fixed participants of a female world.18 With regard to English sixteenth- and seventeenth-­ century stage plays and pedagogical materials, however, Jennifer Higginbotham and Edel Lamb have recently demonstrated that early modern childhood gradually developed into a gendered system and have argued that girls should be approached as ‘becomings’ rather than fixed ‘beings’.19 Following this approach, I assume that literate peer mothering served as an instrument to define and distinguish girlhood, and as such to empower as well as to discipline girls. Within the international tradition of girls’ books, the peer mothering model was innovative: books were used to depict learning and literacy as a hierarchical process in which older women teach young girls, or to present boys’ and girls’ literacies as equal abilities. As such, this chapter examines the position of Dutch girls’ books production in relation to girls’ books in other languages. At first sight, the Dutch book market appears to stand in contrast to the flourishing girls’ books markets in England and France: Isabel Havelange, for example, listed no fewer than 193 French books for girls published between 1750 and 1830.20 Although the late-eighteenth-­ century Dutch Republic also experienced growth in (moralizing and story) books for girls, only a small minority of books were explicitly addressed to girls, and such girls’ books had mostly been translated from

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English, French and German originals.21 We see here the effect of the smallness of the Dutch linguistic community and book market: as Gert-­ Jan Johannes has calculated, the number of possible Dutch readers and authors ‘formed a minor contingent compared to the potential recruitment fields in the German-, French-, and English-speaking countries, which were at least five to ten times more populous’.22 This minor market limited the possibilities of addressing small target groups. Focusing on periodicals, Johannes has demonstrated that the major linguistic communities witnessed a phase of substantial specialization during the second half of the eighteenth century, while in Holland, ‘this stage was not reached until about 1850’.23 Due to the circumscribed possibilities of the market, the Dutch production of girls’ books in the second half of the eighteenth century was quite small and depended on translations from elsewhere. However, the Dutch market might be taken as an international forerunner in the field of girls’ books. Small but innovative, the Dutch girls’ books tradition could build on a flourishing international girls’ books tradition as well as on (bilingual) girl’s books that were being produced for pupils in French girls’ schools by the second half of the sixteenth century. Reshaping both traditions—the international as well as the older line of girls’ books—the Dutch epistolary girls’ novel was the first genre to define literate girlhood on the basis of peer mothering.

7.2   Lettered Peer Mothering in Dutch Epistolary Girls’ Novels As discussed in the previous chapter, the first epistolary children’s novel, De kleine Grandisson, connected epistolary literacy to emerging manhood. Against this background, the Dutch epistolary girls’ novels published in the 1790s represent an innovative development, as all letters were exchanged between young girls (10–12 years old). Up to then, the phenomenon of girls writing was restricted to individual letters—for instance, published in letter-writing manuals and the Danish weekly periodical Ungdommens Ven (The Friend of Youth, 1770)24—or to novels in which girls correspond with adult educators (Abbé Joseph Reyre published an epistolary novel which had the convent school pupil Emilie correspond with her mother).25 Such manuals and novels represent a hierarchical world, in which girls interacted with adults.26 Epistolary novels with (exclusively) female protagonists had been published throughout Europe

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during the second half of the eighteenth century as well, but the writing protagonists of these epistolary novels were much older adolescents and women (see, for example, Samuel Richardson’s [1689–1761] epistolary novels, French libertine epistolary novels such as Les liasons dangereuses [1782] or Marie-Elisabeth de La Fite’s Eugénie et ses élèves [1787] in which women of varying ages write letters to each other). The first book that portrayed epistolary writing amongst young girls is De kleine Klarissa (The Little Klarissa, 1790), referring in its title to Richardson’s Clarissa (1748). It was written by Margareta Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken, who had previously published De kleine Grandisson.27 To the best of my knowledge, De kleine Klarissa was an innovative effort to present young writing girls around 10  years old— Henriëtte and Emilia here being the main protagonists—who did not write to their adult educators but rather functioned within a girls’ network in which peers fulfil the role of mothers and teachers. Because Henriëtte’s biological mother has died, Henriëtte tries to find an alternative kind of family and mothering within her exclusively female network of friends and sisters. By means of her letter writing, she introduces Emilia to this network, in which the virtuous Klarissa, at 13, a couple of years older than other girls, serves as an inspiring example to Henriëtte and her friend Sophia.28 Klarissa is also a mother for her little eight-year-old sister Wilhelmina, who describes Klarissa as ‘her beloved little mistress’.29 Grown-up women—mothers and aunts—are sometimes discussed in the letters or presented in written conversation, but they play minor roles, and they themselves do not write in the novel.30 Girls primarily learn from one another within a community of people who are the same sex and (more or less) the same age. The girls’ identity in this novel is explicitly connected to their literacy, as the letters are instruments with which to communicate and learn, to comfort and encourage, to share experiences and knowledge. Books are used and shared for these purposes as well. ‘Klarissa has many fine books,’ Sophia writes to Henriëtte, ‘and when we are together, we read, in rotation, one or another story or moral tale’ (‘Klarissa heeft veele fraaye boeken, en als wy by elkander zyn, dan leezen wy by beurten de eene of de andere historie of zedelyk verhaal’).31 Klarissa, Henriëtte and Sophia meet every Wednesday to discuss books—a ‘reading society’ (‘leesgezelschapje’), as Emilia defines it.32 Henriëtte portrays this communal reading practice in detail to Emilia in order to let her participate in the process of discussion and learning and to recommend to her the same sort of

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reading: ‘My dear friend, that work is truly instructive; I think that all young people have to examine it carefully’ (lieve vriendinnetje, dat werkje is recht leerzaam; my dunkt alle jonge luiden behoorden het ernstig te bestudeeren).33 Henriëtte extensively reports how the girls move their teacups aside, gather around Johannes Florentius Martinet’s (1729–1795) Katechismus der Natuur (Catechism of nature, 1777–1779) and together acquire the useful lesson that every small animal in the world has been wonderfully created by God: ‘The smallest substance and grain of sand are truly masterpieces’ (‘Het kleinste stofje en zandkorreltje, is waarlyk een kunststuk’).34 These reflections are interrupted by the young sister Wilhelmina, who, having just seen a spider, appears to be afraid of it.35 Thus arises an extended discussion on the usefulness of small animals, in which Wilhelmina participates as an ignorant girl needing to be taught by her older peers, Klarissa in particular.36 When Sophia’s mother enters to size up the situation, she is pleased to observe this process of peer teaching and treats the girls to ‘chocolate milk and some snacks’ (‘chocolade en eenige versnaperingen’).37 The reading society depicted seems to be a fictional representation of a practice also described by the 12-year-old Middelburg magistrate’s son Pieter Pous (1777–1851) in his diary, kept from 1790 onwards. Pieter Pous writes about ‘Fabricando Fabri Fimus’: a children’s society that devotes its Saturday nights to the discussion of books and the consumption of chocolate.38 Pieter Pous’s society—a children’s appropriation of the then-flourishing Dutch tradition of literary societies39—had already been compared to the children’s society depicted in De Philosophie der tollen en ballen (Philosophy of spins and balls, 1768), also published in Middelburg.40 In this book, a translation of The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies (1761), a group of children regularly gather to practise experimental natural history, while availing themselves of ‘cakes, sweet pastries, sweet drinks and other delicacies’ (‘Taarten, Zuikergebak, zoeten Drank [en] zulke andere Lekkernyen’) that were ‘highly suitable for children’ (‘de Jeugd best geschikt’).41 De kleine Klarissa depicts an exclusively girls’ variant of such a society, again characterized by the shared interest in natural history themes, books and sweets. This girls’ reading society is one the instruments used by De kleine Klarissa to represent the interconnected processes of peer learning, literacy skills and community building. This method is followed in the anonymously published Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen (New magasin for young ladies, 1792, reprinted

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in 1794), its title clearly referring to Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s (1711–1780) Magasin des enfants (The children’s magazine, 1756), and, even more explicitly, to the reprint of Louise d’Epinay’s (1726–1783) Conversations d’Emilie (Conversations with Emilie, 1774) entitled Magasin nouveau des jeunes demoiselles (anonymously published in 1780 and 1783).42 The epistolary Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen again portrays 12-year-old writing girls who grow up without a mother: the orphans Emilia and Lisette, who attend the boarding school of Miss S. They exchange letters with their cousin and friend Carolina, who is now receiving only a poor education at home after the resignation of her governess Mademoiselle Depouir (also the former teacher of Emilia and Lisette).43 In the absence of an adult teacher, Emilia and Lisette fulfil the role of Carolina’s peer mothers. Although their letters sometimes make reference to the writings exchanged by mistresses and mothers, the book includes not a single letter written by adult characters. Neither do boys nor men participate, being referred to only as the girls’ opposite counterparts: Caroline is educated at home, while her brother visits a school in town.44 Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen reflects a girls’ world in which literacy occupies the same level as typically female pastimes: the girls exchange not only letters but also fancywork,45 as ‘early modern people often saw the products of women’s pens and needles as interrelated’.46 Combined with the depiction of Emilia and Lisette’s boarding school as a place where the education in literacy and other female pastimes (such as needling and singing) are fundamentally interwoven, the epistolary novels represent literacy first and foremost as a female skill.47 As with De kleine Klarissa, literacy is here again depicted as the driving force behind the process of peer mothering and learning. But while De kleine Klarissa reflected extensively on the practice of shared reading, Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen mainly focuses on the value and functioning of a girls’ writing community and regularly considers letter writing throughout (‘couleur epistolaire’).48 Carolina, for example, records that she impatiently waited for the messenger, hoping to receive new letters,49 and that she had to break off from writing when hearing about her brother’s death: ‘otherwise you won’t be able to read it anyhow, because of the tears that I drop on the paper’ (‘anders kondet gij denzelven wegens de traanen, die ik op ‘t papier vallen laat, in ‘t geheel niet leezen’).50 Letters also impart the fact that Emilia and Lisette write letters at night despite being forbidden to do so by their mistress.51

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Several epistolary reflections are dedicated to the value of writing as an instrument of communication and friendship. As Emilia and Lisette live at the boarding school and are unable to visit Carolina, letter writing is explicitly depicted as their alternative means of preserving their friendship.52 Miss S., the boarding-school mistress, recommends letter writing as a ‘pleasant pastime’ (‘aangenaame tijdkorting’) that is preferable to visiting theatres or attending dancing parties.53 According to Carolina’s mother, there is nothing like ‘an amusing correspondence with absent friends, in order to tell each other about pleasant and unpleasant events, to share advice amongst each other; in brief, to be glad and sad together’ (‘eene onderhoudende briefwisseling met afweezige vriendinnen, om elkander zoo wel aangenaame als onaangenaame gebeurdtenissen te verhaalen, elkander raad te geven; kortom, zaamen blijde en treurig te weezen’).54 The letters written by Emilia, Lisette and Carolina demonstrate how this epistolary friendship works: they share in one another’s joys (e.g. over Emilia’s and Lisette’s rapid progress in school) and sorrows (e.g. about the death of Carolina’s brother and her poor education), and present one another with (e.g. biblical or science-related) questions that are then answered in ensuing letters. When Carolina’s guardian suggests giving her money once she stops writing letters, Carolina refuses decisively, arguing that she would never exchange her friends for money.55 The correspondence thus reflects Carolina’s network of friends, while the exchanged letters serve as the physical instruments and proofs of shared friendship. More than De kleine Klarissa, the Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen pays attention to how one develops into a good writer. As Emilia and Lisette learn to write letters at their boarding school,56 they in turn teach Carolina. Thanks to this guidance, Carolina becomes increasingly acquainted with writing in a natural way. Carolina takes stock of the progress of her personal growth and firmly resolves to answer Miss S.’s (unpublished) letter ‘without using artifice’ (‘zonder kunst gebruiken’).57 Emilia and Lisette also guide Carolina’s reading behaviour. Emilia, for example, writes Carolina about a schoolmate who has become arrogant through her reading of ‘fool books’ (‘zotte boeken’) and invites her to consider this situation: ‘What do you think of our young lady S.? Please share your thoughts on this in the next letter’ (‘Maar wat dunkt u wel van onze jonge Juffrouw S.? meld uwe gedagten over haar in een volgenden brief aan’).58 Carolina, however, does not reject this reading behaviour explicitly, as Emilia had expected: ‘I don’t know at all what to think about that’ (‘Ik

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weet in ’t geheel niet, wat ik ’er van denken zal’).59 Emilia now appears to be a severe educator: ‘Dear Carolina, I need to reprimand you! […] I will send you some appropriate books, because I have set a little library, as Miss. S. instructed me to do’ (‘lieve Carolina! ik moet u nog over iets berispen […] Ik zal u zeer aartige boeken bezorgen; want ik heb mij een kleine bibliotheek naar het voorschrift van Mevrouw S. verzorgd’).60 So both De kleine Klarissa and Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen create worlds where girls use their literacy skills to achieve social, cognitive and moral growth through a process of peer mothering. Such a didactics of peer learning did not emerge from nowhere. Catherine Dille has argued that it had been developed in English Enlightened youth literature in which siblings of different genders teach one another.61 These books had sometimes been translated into Dutch: for instance, in De Starrekunde, voor Jonge Heeren en- Jufferen (1771)—a translation of James Ferguson’s Easy Introduction to Astronomy for Young Gentlemen and Ladies (1769)—a girl acquires some scientific knowledge from her older, more experienced brother. In the epistolary girls’ novels, however, this form of sibling didactics is developed as a gender-specific type of literate peer mothering, one that invited protagonists to escape from male or adult models of literacy and to shape their communal identity as lettered girls. As such, these novels rather build on, but also differ fundamentally from, the girls’ books that had been produced in the Dutch Republic up to then: older schoolbooks that set female adult literacy or male literacy as a standard and translated girls’ books that depict female literacy as a hierarchical skill directed towards women’s household and maternal competency. The next two sections focus on these forerunner traditions to illuminate the innovative character of epistolary girls’ novels, which succeeded in presenting the girl as a distinctive category, inflected by both age and gender and empowered by literacy.

7.3   Literacy as a Technical Male Quality in Sixteenth-Century Dutch-French Girls’ Books When the epistolary girls’ novels began being published, it had been more than two centuries since girl protagonists had made their debut in Dutch-­ French conversation books. The appearance of such early girls’ books can be linked to the relatively female-friendly character of the Netherlands, which were exceptional in ‘the degree to which they located women in the

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“masculine” spheres of public space and business’,62 and their ‘willingness to teach girls as well as boys to write’.63 Educational practice for females differentiated the Netherlands ‘sharply from their contemporary states’,64 as Margaret Spufford has argued. Even the daughters of farmers’ families were given the advantage of literacy education.65 The early girls’ books were published within the context of the French boarding schools, which were, in contrast to the ‘Nederduytse’ (Dutch) schools as well as the mixed Dutch-French schools, divided into separate schools for boys and girls.66 The French schools, attended mostly by merchants’ children between 7 and 15 years, were aimed at teaching youngsters French language skills as well as the connected codes of behaviour,67 since the standing of the French language depended not only on its professional and practical uses but also on the high level of socially refined behaviour and education it reflected.68 Because these social codes required slightly different curricula for boys than for girls—girls, for example, had to spend less time on mathematics and more on music, needlework and drawing—a (modest) number of girls’ books began to be published.69 Most active in the genre was the Heyns family. Peeter Heyns (1537–1598) wrote several French-Dutch schoolbooks for the progressive ‘Lauwerboom’ (laurel tree) girls’ school in Antwerp, which was known as a ‘famous centre for female education’ whose pupils also included schoolchildren from the Northern Netherlands.70 The books were characterized by their explicit attempt to teach both Dutch and French language skills, as Heyns assumed that bilingualism served good citizenship and the (multilingual) fatherland in general.71 When Heyns was forced to flee Antwerp at the end of the sixteenth century for religious reasons, he continued his educational practices in a new ‘Lauwerboom’ in Haarlem.72 His son Zacharias Heyns (1556–1630) opened a publishing house and bookshop in Amsterdam and published many schoolbooks, several reprints of his fathers’ educational publications amongst them.73 The girls’ books published by the Heyns family are conspicuous in their attempt to introduce (adult) female characters as mirror images of young female readers. This approach is explicitly discussed in Zacharias Heyns’s first publication Vxor Mεμψιγαμοσ, twee-spraeck, van een goede huys-vrouwe, ende een quaet huys-wijf (Dialogue of a good and a bad housewife, 1592), a French-Dutch translation of Erasmus’s Coniugium (one of his Colloquia), suitable for girls learning the French language.74 As Zacharias Heyns explains in his preface, he considers married women to be exemplars— ‘mirrors’—for younger, unmarried girls.75 The bilingual dialogues in the

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book present examples showing the ideal behaviour for adult women, as well as universal moral lessons that were deemed instructive for women of every age. That same approach is followed in Peeter Heyns’s school plays.76 Directed towards the imitation of female role models, these plays made girls aware of their identity as women, characterized by virtuousness, calmness and, sometimes, a powerful voice.77 Although Heyns depicts several female life-stages in his plays (housewives, mothers and widows), his role models were always older than the girls who read and performed these plays. Whereas Peeter and Zacharias Heyns thus initiate girls into the world of womanhood instead of specifically girlhood, without referring to literacy as an aspect of a gendered identity, two Dutch-French conversation books created for French girls’ schools introduced young girls as protagonists and explicitly reflected on their literacy competences. The first book was published in Antwerp in the decades before the Southern and Northern provinces of the Netherlands became politically separated due to the proclamation of the Dutch Republic (1588): Gabriel Meurier’s (1520–1587) La Guirlande Des Jeunes Filles (The garland of young girls, 1564).78 The second was written by Magdaleine Valéry (ca. 1573–ca. 1625) on the occasion of the founding of her girls’ school in the Northern Netherlandish town of Leiden: La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-Bergh (The virgin’s mountain, 1599).79 Both books reflect an aged female educational setting, as is depicted on the title-page of Den maeghden-Bergh, where schoolmistress Valéry (in the middle) and her younger pupils transfer books and pencils (knowledge and skills) between generations (Fig. 7.1). In the case of Den maeghden-­ Bergh, every conversation is a dialogue between schoolmistress Valéry and one of the pupils of her new school, while in La Guirlande Des Jeunes Filles several girls converse with one another. Although sometimes guided and reprimanded by an older female educator, the girls often discuss with and learn from one another, including with regard to their literacy skills: ‘Dear Mayken, my dearest heart, teach me my lesson’ (‘Lieve Maeyken, myn alderliefste herteken, leert my myn lesse.’; ‘Chere Marion, mon tres-doux coeurçon, enseignez moy ma leçon’).80 So the peer mothering model finds an early predecessor in this book, although the epistolary girls’ novels show no more than loose similarities to the sixteenth-century Dutch-­ French conversation books: literacy skills, rather, are here depicted as technical, male skills instead of profound, female epistolary competences.

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Fig. 7.1  Valéry, Magdaleine. 1599. La montaigne des pucelles, en neuf dialogues, sur les noms des neuf muses. Den maeghden-bergh, in negen t’samen spraken, op de namen vande neghen musen. Leiden: Jan Paedts Jacobszoon, frontispiece. Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: H: P 2138 8° Helmst

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Although Den maeghden-Bergh and La Guirlande Des Jeunes Filles both depict an educational context in which literacy skills were taught next to female pastimes such as singing and playing the harpsichord,81 these activities were not connected to each other. In the few passages that explicitly reflect on literacy skills, literacy is represented as a technical competence. ‘Put the side of the pen to the side of the finger’ (‘Den cant vande penne tegende syde van den vinger’; ‘Le costé de la plume selon le costé du doigt’), La Guirlande Des Jeunes Filles explains.82 Schoolmistress Valéry is honoured because of her technical writing skills, displayed in the handwritten dedication83: Many people do not believe that her writing is a woman’s writing, but consider it to be the writing of a skilful writing man. […] jae vele lieden en gelooven niet dat haer geschrifte vrouwe gheschrifte is / maer van een constich schrijvende man. […] voire beaucoup de gens ne croyent que son escriture seroit escriture de femme, ains quelque artificiel escrivain.84

The qualification of writing skills as male competences fits a larger pattern: Valéry’s book does not distinguish a separate ‘girlish’ or female kind of literacy but rather depicts girls’ literacy as equal to that of boys. In her dedication to the city council, Valéry emphasizes that girls, just as much as boys, deserve high-quality education: ‘the female youth has just as much need for good, learned and virtuous teachers and mistresses’ (‘la jeunesse feminine avoit autant besoing de bonnes, doctes, et vertueuses instructrices et maistresses’).85 And while their future activities as mother or housewife remain undiscussed, Valéry holds out the prospect that literacy will be important for their entrepreneurship:86 Just like the art of reading, I consider the art of writing as necessary for daughters as for boys. How many merchants and businesswomen within the Gouwe area [=area south of Leiden, FD] are unable to read and write while still having to trade in the thousands. Ende ick achte / dat de conste van schrijven alsoo noodich is / soo wel voor dochters als voor jongers, als immers de conste is van lesen. […] Hoe menich coopman ende coopvrouwe zijn binnen der Gouwe / die noch lesen noch schrijven en connen / ende nochtans met M. [=thousands, FD] handelen.

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Et quant ànoy, je ties que l’art d’escrire est aussi necessaire aux filles qu’aux fils, que l’art de lire […]. Combien de marchandes y a il en la ville de Goude qui ne scaver lire ny escrire, & toutesfois trafiquent ils par milieurs.87

As it was mostly fathers who were sending their daughters to Valéry’s school and were praising the school’s quality, the suggestion here is that Valéry’s ‘male quality’ is also recognized, and therefore confirmed, by men.88 The plea for gender equality can be related to Valéry’s position: while female teachers from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Low Countries practised their profession under the aegis of their husbands, Valéry was not rooted in a family of teachers and thus had to found her own school.89 La montaigne des pucelles could be considered as an advertisement as well as a mission statement, directed towards parents and the city administrators, who were directly addressed in the preface and dedication. The written conversations between Valéry and her girls aim to establish that Valéry is an extraordinary skilled mistress,90 that the education therefore justifies the parents’ financial investment91 and that the schools’ bedrooms are light and filled with fresh air.92 By portraying the girls as diligent and inquisitive pupils, and by mentioning their different geographical backgrounds—Haarlem, Delft and Rotterdam—Den maeghden-Bergh alludes to the school’s future reputation and its being a great asset to the town of Leiden. It is significant that one of the girls presents herself as a former pupil of Peeter Heyns: Valéry aims to compare herself to this famous teacher.93 The strategy seems to have been successful: the city administrators granted her official permission to open her girls’ school.94 When we compare this approach to female literacy to what we see developed in the epistolary girls’ novels, a fundamental difference becomes evident: in the epistolary novels, the girls’ literacy is not connected to technical ability and a male standard but is rather directed towards the moral and social development of lettered girls within their own communities. And instead of connecting writing competences to future entrepreneurship, literacy is depicted as a female quality and is put on the same level as typical female pastimes. In their depiction of literacy as a female skill, the epistolary novels resemble international Enlightened girls’ books that were available in translation in the Dutch Republic at the time. In these books, an entirely female environment of domestic education was represented as a distinct, self-reliant women’s world. This type of girls’ book, however, depended

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on another literacy standard, one from which the epistolary girls’ novel tried to distance itself: the female authority.

7.4   Literacy as a Hierarchical Female Quality in Translated Girls’ Books The emergence of solely female learning environments in eighteenth-­ century children’s literature can be related to the didactic Enlightened ideal of making women responsible for the education of girls,95 propagated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and repeated by, among others, Elisabeth Wolff in Dutch. Wolff’s Proeve over de opvoeding (Treatise on Education, 1779) argued that girls need exclusively female guidance: ‘No male hand should guide her, as the soft voice of her loved mother is far more suitable to shape her sensitive mind’ (‘Geene manlyke hand moet haar leiden, de zachte stem der beminde Moeder, is veel geschikter om hare aandoenlyke gemoederen te vormen’).96 This ideal influenced not only pedagogical practices but also the content of children’s books.97 In Hieronymus van Alphen’s Kleine gedichten voor kinderen (1778–1782), for example, girl characters are always depicted together with female educators, mostly mothers (while boy protagonists are often guided by their fathers).98 As an even more radical step, a growing amount of books depicted entire learning environments that were exclusively female. In the previous chapter, De Cambon-van der Werken’s epistolary prose was related to the context of an international, multilingual tradition of children’s books written by elite women writers. In many of these books, girl characters are raised and taught by female authorities such as mothers, mistresses and governesses, with every father or boy remaining absent. Chapter 6 has discussed Le Prince de Beaumont’s Magasin des enfants as a very influential exponent of this tradition. This book, in which girls of different ages and characters appeared under generic names and were educated via their conversations with governess Mademoiselle Bonne as the alter ego of Le Prince de Beaumont herself, was republished and translated in the Dutch Republic soon after its original appearance.99 The Magasin des Enfants—in both its French and Dutch editions— resists the view that some types of knowledge are unsuitable for girls or women. I am certainly not the first to point to the strikingly emancipatory character of the Magasin des Enfants.100 Governess Jeanne-Marie Le Prince

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de Beaumont, who worked amongst the London aristocracy from 1748 onwards and launched ‘[o]ne of the first journals in French to be edited by a woman, the Nouveau magasin Français’,101 had been inspired by pleas made by François Fénelon (De l’éducation des filles, 1687) and Jean-­ Jacques Rousseau (Emile, ou de l’ education, 1762) in favour of the education of girls, but she strongly disagreed on their striving for ‘an inferior education based solely on teaching young girls only the attributes that would enable them to fulfill their destiny as wives, mothers, and pleasers of men’.102 In the preface, Le Prince de Beaumont entered into battle with the kind of man who pronounced women unfit for certain types of knowledge and skills. Although Le Prince de Beaumont assumes that a woman needs domestic knowledge to fulfil her female role in society—and even presents girls who lack knowledge about household furniture as a cautionary warning for her readers103—she argues above all that girls and women have to be as literate and knowledgeable as boys and men, since everyone’s potency depends on the possession of a sharp brain and sufficient cognitive development. The most famous tale discussed by Mademoiselle Bonne and the girl pupils during their continuous conversations, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ meaningfully portrays Beauty’s process of self-improvement by means of the books from her father’s library, as Clarissa Campbell Orr argues: Books, and the habits of reasoned thinking and reflection they will encourage, will be the cultural tools for negotiating the unruly aggression of male sexuality, and perhaps too for making good marriage choices by looking beyond sexual magnetism to qualities of mind and heart. […] Thus Beauty discerns that the Beast, who proposes daily, has a kind heart and she likes his sensible conversation.104

Le Prince de Beaumont explicitly presents herself as a teacher who aims to create ‘female logicians’ (in Dutch and French: ‘Redenkunstenaressen’; ‘des Logiciennes’) or ‘thinking beings’ (‘denkende weezens’; ‘des êtres pensans’) instead of ‘machines’ (‘des automates’).105 Yes, Misters Despot, it is my aim to draw them from that stupid ignorance to which you have condemned them. I certainly try to make female Logicians, Geometrists and even Philosophers out of them. I want to teach them to think, to think well, in order to live well. If I had no hope of achieving this goal, I would immediately stop writing and teaching.

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Jaa, Heeren Tyrannen, myn voornemen is haar te trekken uit die domme onweetenheid waar toe gy haar hebt veroordeeld. Zekerlyk zoek ik ’er Reden- en Meetkunstenaressen, en zelfs Filosofen, van te maaken. Ik wil haar leeren denken, net denken, om wel te leeven. Zoo ik de hoop niet had van dit doel te bereiken, zou ik terstond ophouden met schryven en onderwyzen.106 Oui, Messiers les tyrans, j’ai dessein de les tirer de cette ignorance crasse, à laquelle vous les avez condamnées. Certainement j’ai dessein d’en faire des Logiciennes, des Géométres, & meme des Philosophes. Je veux leur apprendre à penser, à penser iuste, pour parvenir à bien vivre. Si je n’avois pas l’espoir de parvenir à cette fin, je renoncerois des ce moment à écrire, à enseigner.107

Le Prince de Beaumont carefully considers her words when talking about girls: she uses ‘enfants’ (‘children’, cf. ‘kinderen’ in the Dutch version) and the pronouns ‘les’/‘leur’ (‘them’/‘their’) (while the Dutch version uses the feminine pronoun ‘haar’). When taking up the girls’ future stage as a topic, however, Le Prince de Beaumont shifts to gendered words: ‘les femmes’ (women; ‘de vrouwen’) and ‘des Logiciennes’ (female logicians; ‘Redenkunstenaressen’). So while Le Prince de Beaumont refrains from making distinctions between male and female children and the education they receive, and in this way subtly defends equality between boys and girls, girls are ultimately being prepared for a gendered future. The supplement to the Magasin des enfants for older girls—Magasin des adolescentes (1760), translated under the more gendered title Magazyn der jonge juffrouwen (The young ladies’ magazine, 1760)—fits this pattern. Le Prince de Beaumont assumes that young ladies have the same cognitive and literacy capacities as boys and are equally obliged to use them: she regrets seeing girls who read novels instead of ‘historical, political, philosophical and religious works’ (‘histoire, politique, ouvrage de philosophie, de religion’; ‘Historische, Staatkundige, Philosophische en Godgeleerde Werken’).108 Gender-neutral education and literacy training, however, was depicted as a vital force behind the making of gendered female adults: this Magasin des adolescents is even more explicitly dedicated than its predecessor to guiding girls in their transition into womanhood.109 This is a general tendency in this type of girls’ books showing the education and literacy of girls being directed towards a future female role—a final destination represented by the mothers, governesses and female

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teachers who are portrayed controlling the educational process. As an effect, literacy is not portrayed as a final state of being but rather reflects a hierarchical organized learning process. In Elisabeth Wolff’s De gesprekken met Emilia (Conversations with Emilia, 1787), a generally overlooked translation of d’Epinay’s Conversations d’Emilie (1774),110 a mother emphatically represents her relationship to her five-year-old daughter as hierarchical: Emilia is ignorant and unskilled (‘onnozel, onkundig’) and is able to acquire reading and writing skills only gradually, through the female guidance of her mother, as well as her governance.111 Because literacy is interpreted as a process of growth in interaction with adult female authorities, it is often related to the girls’ future stage as woman and mother. In De jonge huishoudster (The young housekeeper, 1793), originally written by Joseph Ignaz Zimmerman, Karoline gradually learns to read and write, guided by her mistress and housekeeper Nannette. After writing a letter, recorded in full in the book, Nanette concludes that Karoline is already able to write ‘fine’ but still not ‘regularly’. Her instructions help Karoline to revise her letter.112 Nanette. You have already practiced the art of fine writing; now you also have to learn regular handwriting. Karoline. Is there a big difference between fine and regular writing? Nanette. An enormous difference. Fine writing implies the creation of letters that look neat and legible. […] By writing regularly, you learn to write and distinguish all words and their letters, and to use the different punctuation marks. Nannette. […] In het mooi schrijven hebt gij u reeds goed geöeffend; nu moet gij ook nog regelmaatig leeren schrijven. Karoline. Is ’er dan een onderscheid, tusschen mooi en regelmaatig schrijven? Nannette. Een zeer groot onderscheid. Mooi schrijven, heet de letters zoo maaken, dat het schrift net en leesbaar in het oog valt. […]—Door het regelmaatig schrijven, leert men alle woorden,—met de daarbij behoorende letters te schrijven,—te scheiden, en—de verschillende onderscheiding teekenen te gebruiken.113

Karoline also demonstrates that she can read in a natural, diversified way— ‘Sometimes a bit lower—then a bit higher; now soft, then louder, and with stress’ (‘Nu eens wat laager—dan wat hooger; nu zagt, dan sterker, en met nadruk’)114—and is able to imagine herself as a mother during her reading

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of a conversation between a mother and her child: ‘Today, I have spoken to that child, as if I were a mother!’ (‘ik heb vandaag tegen dat kind, even als of ik moeder was, gesproken!’)115 Thus in this subgenre of translated girls’ books, girls are distinguished from women by means of this growing literacy: literacy reflects their ongoing development towards femininity and helps girls reach the sought-for stage of womanhood. In this way, these girls’ books portray girls as becomings who are dependent on older, more experienced women instead of as autonomous literate beings themselves. With an eye towards this future female destination, the translated girls’ books approach literacy as a gendered skill. Le Prince de Beaumont is an exceptional case in this respect, as she emphatically presents the girls’ capacities as being equal to that of boys. In most other cases, however, girls are—although often implicitly—connected to a distinctive type of female literacy. One antecedent here is Sarah Fielding’s (1710–1768) The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (1749), faithfully translated into Dutch within a year of its publication as De Verstandige Engelsche Leermeestres; of Kweekschool van jonge jufferen (The wise English Mistress, or the or the school of young girls, 1750).116 At first sight, this book largely resembles the Magasin des enfants: Fielding also presents girls with speaking names who are educated by a female teacher and learn by means of pedagogical conversations that often take, as a point of departure, communally discussed tales. In this case, however, the educational activities are situated within Mrs. Teachum’s school for girls between 10 and 14 years old instead of within a domestic context.117 Cheryl Nixon has argued that although The Governess ‘is clearly meant for a young female audience’, its preface ‘makes no claim’ that its educational programme is ‘uniquely female’: ‘In contrast, the preface emphasizes the active pursuit of knowledge as the surest route of achieving happiness.’118 I, in contrast, propose that its preface indeed propagated a gendered approach to reading. It depicts reading as a profound, systematic process directed towards moral growth and self-governance, and opposes this ideal to an unstructured, useless type of reading that sadly results in overloaded brains. These brains are metaphorically compared to the wardrobes of Thomas Watkins’s young daughters, who failed to organize their clothing and were therefore unable to retrace or gain any profit from their properties.119 Literacy skills are thus tellingly related to housekeeping skills, as if their desired useful and moral employment derived from women’s capacities to structure linen. I think we can understand this

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connection against the background of a more general tendency observable in prefaces to publications by women writers: preliminaries regularly represent female housekeeping activities as organizational skills that largely define a female type of knowledgeability and writing capacities.120 The novel itself depicts this desired reading process when the oldest pupil, ‘Juffer Joanna’ (in English: Miss Jenny), teaches younger girls how to digest tales as useful moral lessons: ‘otherwise, she said, it was to no manner of purpose to read ever so many books, which would only stuff my brain, without being any improvement to my mind.’121 The Dutch translation poses an opposition between reading that fills the brain (‘Harssenen’) and reading that improves the heart (‘Hart’).122 This stark contrast shows The Governess distinguishing a male, intellectual way of reading from a female, heart-improving variant. This opposition is regularly repeated in the translated girls’ books, as is illustrated by Brieven aan de jonge Carolina (Letters to the young Carolina, 1789), translated from Joseph Ahorner’s Briefe an Karolinchen (1786–1787). The young Carolina, who is urged to read rather than play with dolls and is advised about suitable books and how to reflect on reading, learns that ‘a girl has to read to develop herself, and not to become learned’ (‘Een Meisje moet leezen, om zig te beschaaven, niet om geleerd te worden’): learning is again contrasted with self-development.123 In Wolff’s De gesprekken met Emilia, Emilia also reads to spur her moral development and alternates her literacy training with embroidery, just as in Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen female pastimes and literacy activities also function on the same level.124 So while Le Prince de Beaumont’s early girls’ books can be interpreted as pleas for a gender-neutral approach to literacy, most Enlightened girls’ books define literacy as a female competence that can be related to specifically female activities (such as housekeeping and fancywork) and is directed towards moral improvement instead of cognitive development or the acquiring of erudition. In the entirely female educational environments envisioned in these books, literacy is defined in relation to girls’ future female status instead of to the other sex. It is used and taught within a hierarchical organized system of young girls and older, more experienced women. The identity of the girl, as such, is defined by her being subordinate to her more developed female authorities. In this respect, the epistolary girls’ novels fundamentally differ from the translated girls’ books: the former not only reflect a female world in which male persons remain (largely) absent, but also exclude the authoritative

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voices of adult women. Now the girls guide one another as equal peers. Although the novels still contrast the older, wiser girls with their younger, more ignorant counterparts, no one exceeds their girlish position.

7.5   Conclusion We see, then, against the background of girls’ books that had up to then been available in the Dutch Republic, that the late eighteenth-century epistolary girls’ novel was an innovative attempt to represent the girl as a peer mothering agent, inflected at once by gender and age and empowered by her epistolary literacy skills. These girls’ novels, developed in continuous interaction with the international book market within and beyond the Dutch Republic, exerted an impact on the production of books in other languages. De kleine Klarissa was translated into English—entitled Letters and Conversations between several young ladies125—while the format of writing young girls was adapted to the American children’s books that would come to market just a few years later: in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Boarding School (1798), girls preserve their friendships ‘by discussion and judgment of books, rational comments on the social scene, and manuscript exchanges of self-authored poems’.126 The measure of girlish literate agency in this type of novel was innovative, but it should nevertheless not be overestimated. For the girls’ literacy functions only within a closed female community, lacking any interaction with male literacy or with the social role of boys and men. Moreover, the girls’ literate agency is restricted by the presence of female authorities looming over these novels. Since literacy abilities are represented as progressive rather than stable skills, the implicit suggestion is that a girlish level of literacy needs to be overcome in order for the girl to develop into a fully literate woman. And as all the disciplined girl writers in these books are mere fictional representations, they have been created by adult women writers who, though they aimed to empower girls, did so within strict social frameworks. It is therefore meaningful to contrast these books to the Almanach voor meisjens, door meisjens, voor ’t jaar 1795 (Almanac for girls, by girls, for the year 1795), in which girls take up their own pens and warn against marriages that turn women into the ‘slaves’ (‘slavinnen’) of dominant ‘barons’ and ‘severe masters’ (‘baronnen’, ‘strenge meesters’) and caution against love affairs that only offer fleeting benefits: ‘Love is just a little child, / that gladly trifles’ (‘De liefde is maar een kindjen, / Dat wonder gaarne beuzelt’).127 Such an attempt to claim female authority via

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a girl’s pen was not at all appreciated: the almanac was suppressed.128 This case, of course, is not about writing children, despite what the title suggests. The almanac was probably written by women (adolescents?) who used the term ‘girl’ to appropriate the position of the thorn in the flesh. As English literary historians have established, the position of the ‘girl’ could be used in literature as a site of disruption and resistance.129 In books addressed to young girls, however, the ‘girl’ exclusively functions as a category that contributes to the consolidation of female communities and the social order. Thus, this type of girls’ literature does not call male norms and values into serious question: rather, in fact, it confirms them. So although the literacy of girls is not defined as a sociopolitical competence—in contrast to male literacy, as previous chapters have demonstrated—the representation of the lettered girl again fits the larger discourse on progress within Dutch children’s books: young readers are first and foremost dedicated to placing themselves in the service of a collective system in which each person has their own social position, and even must maintain this hierarchy to contribute to the improvement and stability of society as a whole. A case in point is Lisette, one of the writing protagonists of Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, in her desiring to be a man who could dedicate his life to reading and knowledge. The girl nevertheless fully accepts the fact that ‘female time is not fully intended for that’ (‘daartoe is de tijd van een vrouwsperzoon niet geheel bestemd’).130 So while she, in a sense, attempts the impossible by dreaming of a different position in society, she sees no possibility of liberating her female group. In an implicit way, the girls’ books express the idea that progress—communal as well as individual—is the effect of the consolidation of and conforming to gender roles, instead of a fundamental resistance to the girls’ subordination. In the end, the girls’ agency is encouraged as long as it helps confirm social structures and hierarchies.

Notes 1. Knott, Sarah, and Barbara Taylor. 2005. Women, Gender and Enlightenment. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. During the last two decades, there has been done quite some research on the characteristics of female reading. For example, Brayman Hackel, Heidi. 2005. Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Ferguson, Margaret. 2003. Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender and Empire in Early Modern

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England and France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Snook, Edith. 2005. Women, Reading and the Cultural Politics of Early Modern England. Aldershot: Ashgate. On (often paradoxical) attitudes to educated women in the early modern period: Charlton, Kenneth. 2002. Religion and Education in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge. 2. Jensen, Lotte. 2001. ‘Bij uitsluiting voor de vrouwelijke sekse geschikt’: vrouwentijdschriften en journalistes in Nederland in de achttiende en negentiende eeuw. Hilversum: Verloren, 43–45; Rietveld-van Wingerden, Marjoke. 2009. “Kneedbare meisjes en weetgierige jongens: Nederlandse tijdschriften voor jongens en meisjes (1757–2008).” Literatuur zonder leeftijd 23: 64–78, 64–65; Rietveld-van Wingerden, Marjoke. 1995. Jeugdtijdschriften in Nederland & Vlaanderen, 1757–1942: bibliografie. Leiden: Primavera Pers, number 15. Two volumes of this journal were published in September 1792 and March 1793. I used the reprint from 1810. 3. [Anonymous]. 1810. Geschenk voor de juffrouwen. Dordrecht: F. Boekee, 70–71. 4. Geschenk voor de juffrouwen, 76. 5. Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1790–1791. Vaderlyke raad aan myne dochter, in den smaak van Theophron: aan de huuwbaare jufferschap gewyd. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Widow of Jan Dóll, vol. 1, 75, 131–132. 6. Wolff, Elisabeth, and Agatha Deken. 1782. De Historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart. The Hague: Isaac van Cleef, C-CI.  Cf. Dietz, Feike, and Lidewij Ponjee. 2013. “Sara Burgerhart als leeswijzer: literaire socialisatie via lezende personages.” Nederlandse Letterkunde 18, no. 3: 79–100, 87–88. 7. I again use Susan Whyman’s definition of ‘epistolary literacy’, as the ‘dynamic set of practices that involves letter writing, reading, interpretation and response’, cf. Chap. 6 of Lettering Young Readers. Whyman, Susan. 2007. “Letter Writing and the Rise of the Novel: The Epistolary Literacy of Jane Johnson and Samuel Richardson.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 70, no. 4: 275–307, esp. 578. 8. Haslett, Moyra. 2018. “‘All pent up together’: Representations of Friendship in Fictions of Girls’ Boarding-Schools, 1680–1800.” Journal for Eighteenth-­Century Studies 41, no. 1: 81–99. Susan Whyman has already paid attention to the formative relationship between epistolary literacy and female community building in her case study on letter-writer Jane Johnson: Johnson’s epistolary skills brought her ‘to a higher form of literacy’, which gave access to a community of women who ‘are united by their possession of reading and writing skills, access to printed materials,

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and enjoyment of poetry and prose’. Whyman, “Letter Writing and the Rise of the Novel”, 379. 9. Williams, Abigail. 2017. The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, chapter 6. 10. Schellenberg, Betty A. 2016. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture 1740–1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2. 11. Schellenberg, Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture, 2. 12. Pfeiffer, Julie. 2016. “The Romance of Othermothering in Nineteenth-­ Century Backfish Books.” In Mothers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism, edited by Lisa Rowe Fraustino and Karen Coats: 59–74. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 13. Higginbotham, Jennifer. 2013. The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters: Gender, Transgression, Adolescence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; Higginbotham, Jennifer. 2011. “Fair Maids and Golden Girls: The Vocabulary of Female Youth in Early Modern English.” Modern philology 109, no. 2: 171–197; Higginbotham, Jennifer. 2013. “Shakespeare and Girlhood.” Literature Compass 10, no. 2: 189–200; Williams, Deanne. 2014. Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Lamb, Edel. 2016. “‘Shall we playe the good girles’: Playing Girls, Performing Girlhood on Early Modern Stages.” Renaissance Drama 44, no. 1: 73–100; Lamb, Edel. 2018. Reading Children in Early Modern Culture. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Bicks, Caroline. 2016. “Incited Minds: Rethinking Early Modern Girls.” Shakespeare Studies 44: 180–202; Bicks, Caroline. 2016. “Repeat Performances: Mary Ward’s Girls on the International Stage.” Renaissance Drama 44, no. 2: 201–215; Chedgzoy, Kate. 2013. A Renaissance for Children. Unpublished Paper, Newcastle University. 14. Miller, Naomi J., and Naomi Yavneh. 2011. Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood. Farnham: Ashgate. 15. Gardiner, Judith Kegan. 2002. “Theorizing Age with Gender: Bly’s Boys, Feminism, and Maturity Masculinity.” In Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions, edited by Judith Kenan Gardiner: 90–118. New York: Columbia University Press. With regard to the early modern period: Lamb, Edel. 2009. Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre: The Children’s Playing Companies (1599–1613). Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 7. 16. Orgel, Stephen. 1996. Impersonations: the performance of gender in Shakespeare’s England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Higginbotham, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters, esp. 3.

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17. Higginbotham, “Fair Maids and Golden Girls”, 187; Kuus, Saskia. 2000. “Kinderen op hun mooist: Kinderkleding in de zestiende en zeventiende eeuw.” In Kinderen op hun mooist: het kinderportret in de Nederlanden 1500–1700, edited by J.B.M.F. Bedeaux: 73–84. Gent: Ludion, 79–81; Calvert, Karin. 1982. “Children in American Family Portraiture, 1670 to 1810.” The William and Mary Quarterly 39, no. 1: 87–113. 18. Higginbotham, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters, 3. 19. Higginbotham, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters, esp. 185; Lamb, Reading Children in Early Modern Culture, 153–154 (on reading girls) and chapter 4 (on reading boys). 20. Havelange, Isabelle, and Ségolène Le Men. 1988. Le magasin des enfants: La littérature pour la jeunesse (1750–1830). Montreuil: Ville de Montreuil, Bibliothèque Robert-Desnos, esp. 27. 21. Cf. Buijnsters, P.J., and L.  Buijnsters-Smets. 1997. Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800. Zwolle: Waanders, 111–112. The most recent companion to Dutch youth literature assumed that the Dutch children’s books market also developed into a gendered market during the eighteenth century: Ros, Bea, and Sofie de Jonckheere. 2016. “Een geval apart: Meisjes- en jongensboeken.” In Een land van waan en wijs: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse jeugdliteratuur, edited by Rita Ghesquière, Vanessa Joosen and Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer: 248–279. Amsterdam and Antwerp: Atlas Contact. 22. Johannes, Gert-Jan. 2001. “The development of the literary field and the limitations of ‘minor’ languages: The case of the Netherlands 1750–1850.” Poetics 28, no. 5/6: 349–376, esp. 360. 23. Johannes, “The development of the literary field”, 362 and 372. 24. An example of an exemplary letter written by a girl in a letter-writing manual from around 1750: [Anonymous]. [s.d.]. Handleiding tot de kunst van brieven schryven. Amsterdam: Bernardus Mourik, 86–87. On the many popular letter-writing manuals including exemplary letters, see, for example, Rutten, Gijsbert and Marijke van der Wal. 2014. Letters as loot: A sociolinguistic approach to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, chapter 5; Brouwer, Judith. 2014. Levenstekens: Gekaapte brieven uit het Rampjaar 1672. Hilversum: Verloren, chapter 2; Buijnsters and Buijnsters-Smets, Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken, 36–42. On the Danish magazine: Christensen, Nina. 2009. “Lust for Reading and Thirst for Knowledge: Fictive Letters in a Danish Children’s Magazine of 1770.” The Lion and the Unicorn 33, no. 2: 189–201; Appel, Charlotte, and Nina Christensen. 2017. “Follow the Child, Follow the Books: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to a Child-­Centered History of Danish

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Children’s Literature 1790–1850.” International Research in Children’s Literature 10, no. 2: 194–212, esp. 202–203. 25. Reyre, Abbé Joseph. 1786. L’École des jeunes demoiselles ou Lettres d’une mère vertueuse à sa fille: avec les réponses de la fille à sa mere. Paris: Varin; Brown, Penelope. 2007. A Critical History of French Children’s Literature. Vol. 1: 1600–1830. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 118. 26. Harris, Amy. 2009. “‘This I beg my aunt may not know’: Young Letter-­ writers in Eighteenth-century England, peer correspondence in a hierarchical world.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2, no. 3: 333–360. 27. Cf. Chap. 6 on De kleine Grandisson. 28. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1790. De kleine Klarissa. The Hague: Johannes François Jacobs de Agé, 65. 29. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 72. 30. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 50–56, 77–83, 151–159, 173–175 and 219–225.  There seems to be one exception: the second letter in the book is written by Emilia’s older sister, who is presented as a ‘woman’. 31. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 54. 32. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 59. 33. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 90. 34. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 90. See on Martinet’s Katechimus der Natuur, Chap. 4 of Lettering Young Readers. 35. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 91. 36. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 91–99. 37. Cambon-van der Werken, De kleine Klarissa, 99. 38. Baggerman, Arianne. 2000. “Otto van Eck en de anderen: Sporen van jonge lezers in schriftelijke bronnen.” In Tot volle waschdom: Bijdragen aan de geschiedenis van de kinder- en jeugdliteratuur, edited by Berry Dongelmans, Netty van Rotterdam, Jeroen Salman and Janneke van der Veer: 211–224. The Hague: Biblion, 119–120; Dietz, Feike. 2019. “Het achttiende-eeuwse jeugdboek als instrument van Zeeuwse genootschappelijkheid: kennisverspreider, stimulator en toegangspoort.” In Een hoger streven: Bouwstenen voor een geschiedenis van het Zeeuwsch Genootschap, 1769–2019, edited by Arjan van Dixhoorn, Henk Nellen and Francien Petiet: 137–160. Vlissingen: Archief, esp. 157–158. 39. According to Singeling, there were no less than 30 ‘literary societies’ in the Northern Netherlands in the period 1750–1800 and about 1500 participants: Singeling, C.B.F. 1991. Gezellige schrijvers: Aspecten van letterkundige genootschappelijkheid in Nederland, 1750–1800. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

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40. Newbery, John. 1768. Philosophie der tollen en ballen, of Het Newtoniaansche zamenstel van wysbegeerte. Middelburg: Christiaan Bohemer. 41. Newbery, Philosophie der tollen en ballen, 19. 42. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 116, presents this as a book in the tradition of Le Prince de Beaumont, but it is, in fact, a reprint of d’Epinay’s Conversations: [Anonymous]. 1783. Magasin nouveau des jeunes demoiselles, ou conversations entre la jeune Emilie et sa mere, qui par forme de délassement insinue dans son esprit des notions claires & des principes intéressants pour leur âge. Neuchatal: De l’Imprimerie de la Société Typographique. 43. [Anonymous]. 1794. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, in hondert eenvoudige brieven, gewisseld tusschen Emilia, Carolina en Lisette: Bye ene gouvernante, aan welke een reeks van jaaren de opvoeding van jonge dames was toevertrouwd. Amsterdam: Harmanus Keyzer, Leiden: David Du Mortier, The Hague: Johannes Thierry, 7 and 10. 44. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 5. 45. Cf. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 19–20. 46. Frye, Susan. 2010. Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, xvi. 47. Cf. Dietz, Feike, and Nina Geerdink. [In preparation]. “Clever, but not learned? Practical Knowledge Discourses in Paratexts of Literary Publications by Dutch Female Authors (1600–1800).” In Understandings of Knowledge, edited by Marieke Hendriksen and Fokko-Jan Dijksterhuis. London and New York: Routledge. 48. On ‘couleur epistolaire’: Berg, Willem van den. 1993. “Wolff en Deken publiceren hun eerste briefroman: Epistolair onderricht: Sara Burgerhart als briefroman.” In Nederlandse Literatuur, een geschiedenis, edited by Riet Schenkeveld-van der Dussen: 355–360. Groningen: Nijhoff, esp. 357; Buijnsters, P.J. 1971. ‘Sara Burgerhart’ en de ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse roman in de 18e eeuw. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 12; Berg, Willem van den. 1978. “Briefreflectie in briefinstructie.” Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 38: 1–22. 49. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 71. 50. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 188. 51. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 106. 52. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 1–2. 53. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 16. 54. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, letters 1 and 2. 55. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 61. 56. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 18. 57. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 130.

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58. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 86 and 90. 59. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 93. 60. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 106–107. 61. Dille, Catherine. [In preparation]. “Deputy mothers and brother tutors: Siblings educating siblings in the long eighteenth century.” 62. Moran, Sarah Joan, and Amanda C.  Pipkin, eds. 2019. Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500–1750. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2. Cf. on the female participation in trade and labour: Heuvel, Daniëlle van den. 2007. Women and Entrepreneurship: female traders in the Northern Netherlands c. 1580–1815. Amsterdam: Aksant; Nederveen Meerkerk, Elise van. 2007. De draad in eigen handen: Vrouwen en loonarbeid in de Nederlandse textielnijverheid, 1581–1810. Amsterdam: Aksant; Moor, Tine de, and Jan Luiten van Zanden. 2010. “Girl power: The European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period.” The Economic History Review 63, no. 1: 1–33. 63. Spufford, Margaret. 1995. “Literacy, Trade and Religion in the Commercial Centres of Europe.” In A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective, edited by Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen: 229–283. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, esp. 259. On female literacy in the Dutch Republic: Boone, Marc, Therese de Hemptinne, and Walter Prevenier. 2014. “Gender and Early Emancipation in the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.” In Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe, edited by Jessica Munns and Penny Richards: 21–39. London and New York: Routledge, esp. 25; Kuijpers, Erika. 1997. “Lezen en schrijven: Onderzoek naar het alfabetiseringsniveau in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam.” Tijdschrift voor sociale geschiedenis 23, no. 4: 490–522, esp. 507. 64. Spufford, “Literacy, Trade and Religion”, 259. 65. Bruijn, Enny de. 2019. De hoeve en het hart: Een boerenfamilie in de Gouden Eeuw. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 328–337. 66. Boekholt, P.Th.F.M., and E.P. de Booy. 1987. Geschiedenis van de school in Nederland vanaf de middeleeuwen tot aan de huidige tijd. Assen and Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 49–50; Noël, J.M.J.L. 1983. “L’ecole des filles et la philosophie du mariage dans les Pays-Bas du XVIe et du XVII siècles.” In Onderwijs en opvoeding in de achttiende eeuw: Verslag van het symposium, Doesburg 1982, edited by Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw: 137–153. Amsterdam and Maarssen: APA-Holland University Press; Dodde, Nan L., and C. Esseboom. 2000. “Instruction and education in French schools: A Reconnaissance in the Northern Netherlands 1550–1700.” In Grammaire et enseignement du français, 1500–1700,

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edited by Jan De Clerq, Nico Lioce and Pierre Swiggers: 39–60. Leuven: Peeters, 39–60. 67. Haar, Alisa van de. 2019. The Golden Mean of Languages: Forging Dutch and French in the Early Modern Low Countries (1540–1620). Leiden and Boston: Brill, 145. 68. Frijhoff, Willem Th.M. 1989. “Verfransing? Franse taal en Nederlandse cultuur tot in de revolutietijd.” BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review 104, no. 4: 592–609; Van de Haar, The Golden Mean of Languages, chapter 2 on the position of French (in relation to Dutch) in the multilingual Low Countries, see esp. 65–67. 69. Boekholt and De Booy, Geschiedenis van de school in Nederland, 50; Bakker, Nelleke, Jan Noordman and Marjoke Rietveld-van Wingerden. 2006. Vijf eeuwen opvoeden in Nederland: idee en praktijk: 1500–2000. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 534. 70. Van de Haar, The Golden Mean of Languages, 150. 71. Van de Haar, The Golden Mean of Languages, chapter 4. 72. Haar, Alisa van de. 2015. “Beyond nostalgia: The exile publications of the Antwerp schoolmaster Peeter Heyns (1537–1598).” De Zeventiende Eeuw: Cultuur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief 31, no. 2: 327–343, esp. 328–329; Dodde, Nan L. 2020. Franse scholen in Nederland: Ontstaan en ontwikkeling vanaf de vijftiende eeuw tot het midden van de negentiende eeuw. Oud-Turnhout and ’s Hertogenbosch: Gompel&Svacina, 104–105. Heyns and his wife Anna Smits initially searched for refuse in Germany. 73. Meeus, Hubert. 1990. Zacharias Heyns, uitgever en toneelauteur: Bio-­ bibliografie met een uitgave en analyse van de Vriendts-Spieghel. 3 vols. PhD Diss., Catholic University of Leuven. Cf. Alisa van de Haar on these reprints (and their meaningful Antwerp orientation): Van de Haar, “Beyond nostalgia”. The most famous reprinted book is the Cort onderwijs van de acht deelen der Fransoischer talen (1605), cf. Heyns, Peeter. 2006. Cort onderwijs van de acht deelen der Fransoischer talen (1571 en 1605). Edited by Els Ruijsendaal. Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU, Münster: Nodus Publikationen. 74. Heyns, Zacharias. 1592. Vxor Mεμψιγαμοσ: twee-spraeck, van een goede huys-vrouwe, ende een quaet huys-wijf. Haarlem: Gillis Rooman; Meeus, Zacharias Heyns, vol. 2, 137–139. 75. Heyns, Vxor Mεμψιγαμοσ, fol. A2r-A2v. On this preface: Meeus, Zacharius Heyns: vol. 1, 2. 76. Printed in Antwerp, and reprinted by Zacharias Heyns in Amsterdam: Heyns, Pierre. 1595. Miroir des mesnageres: Comedie tres honneste. Haarlem: Gillis Rooman, for Zacharias Heyns; Heyns, Pierre. 1597. Iokebed: Miroir des vrayes meres: Tragi-comedie de l’enfance de Moyse: Exod.

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2. Haarlem: Gillis Rooman, for Zacharias Heyns; Heyns, Pierre. 1596. Miroir des vefves: Tragédie sacrée d’Holoferne & Iudith. Haarlem: Gillis Rooman, for Zacharias Heyns. Peeter Heyns has already written these plays in Antwerp, where they were performed by his pupils of the ‘Lauwerboom’, cf. Meeus, Hubert. 2003. “Peeter Heyns’ Le Miroir des Vefves: meer dan schooltoneel?” In Mémoire en Temps Advenir: Hommage À Théo Venckeleer, edited by Alex Vanneste, Peter De Wilde, Saskia Kindt and Joeri Vlemings: 115–134. Leuven: Peeters. 77. Haar, Alisa van de. 2016. “Both One and the Other: the Educational Value of Personification in the Female Humanist Theatre of Peeter Heyns (1537–1598).” In Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion, edited by Walter Melion and Bart Ramakers: 256–283. Leiden and Boston: Brill. 78. On this book: Berrio-Salvadore, E. 1982. “L’emploi du temps d’une écolière à Anvers, en 1580, d’après ‘La Guirlande des Jeunes filles’, par Gabriel Meurier.” Bibliothèque de l’école des Chartes 44, no. 3: 533–544. 79. On this book: Vanhulst, Henri. 2008. “La musique et l’éducation des jeunes filles d’après La montaigne des pucelles / Den Maeghden-Bergh de Magdaleine Valéry (leyde, 1599).” In “Recevez ce mien petit labeur”: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Ignace Bossuyt, edited by Mark Delaere and Pieter Bergé: 275–284. Leuven: Leuven University Press; Vanhulst, Henri. 2005. “La musique dans les manuels de conversation bilingues de la Renaissance: Les ‘Seer gemeyne Tsamencoutingen / Collocutions bien familieres’ de Jean Berthout.” Revue belge de Musicologie 59: 93–124; Haar, Alisa van de. 2015. “Van ‘nimf’ tot ‘schoolvrouw’: De Franse school en haar onderwijzeressen in de zestiende- en zeventiendeeeuwse Nederlanden.” Historica 38, no. 2: 11–16, esp. 14–15; Dunn, Leslie C., and Katherine R. Larson. 2014. “Introduction.” In Gender and Song in Early Modern England, edited by Leslie C. Dunn and Katherine R. Larson: 1–14. New York: Ashgate, 5; Toorn, Annemarie van, Marijke Spies, and Sietse Hoogerhuis. 1990. “‘Christen Jeugd, leerd Konst en Deugd.’” In De hele Bibelebontse berg: De geschiedenis van het kinderboek in Nederland & Vlaanderen van de middeleeuwen tot heden, edited by Harry Bekkering, Nettie Heimeriks and Willem van Toorn: 104–164. Amsterdam: Querido, 140; Veldhorst, Natascha. 2009. Zingend door het leven: Het Nederlandse liedboek in de Gouden Eeuw. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 132–133. Valéry’s brother was Valerius, who wrote the famous Nederlandtsche gedenck-clanck (1626): Haar, Alisa van de. 2015. “Van ‘nimf’ tot ‘schoolvrouw’”. 80. Meurier, Gabriel. 1580. La Guirlande Des Jeunes Filles Contenat [sic] Une Singularité de Menus propos quotidicns par le moyen, des-quels elles

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pourront facilement apprendre Francois & Flamen: Par Gabriel Meurier. Antwerp: Jan van Waesberghe, 16r. 81. Valéry, Magdaleine. 1599. La montaigne des pucelles, en neuf dialogues, sur les noms des neuf muses: Den maeghden-bergh, in negen t’samen spraken, op de namen vande neghen musen. Leiden: J.  Paedts Jacobsz., esp. the third conversation on the curriculum and the fifth conversation on the clavicembalo. Previous research on this book often focused on the role of musical education in the book: Vanhulst, “La musique et l’éducation des jeunes filles”; Vanhulst, “La musique dans les manuels de conversation bilingues de la Renaissance”; Veldhorst, Zingend door het leven, 132–133. Meurier’s book depicts several activities of girls on her boarding school days: they eat, learn and do some household activities. 82. Meurier. La Guirlande Des Jeunes Filles, 26r. 83. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh, handwritten dedication to the parents. 84. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh, for example fourth conversation, fol. Bvir. 85. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh, fol A2r. 86. In this example, literacy is depicted as a stepping-stone to a trading career, practised by relatively many Dutch women at the time. Cf. note 62. 87. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh: eighth conversation, fol. E v v. 88. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh: see for example the fifth conversation. 89. Van de Haar, “Van ‘nimf’ tot ‘schoolvrouw’”, 11–16. Other school mistresses worked in the school of their husband (cf. Anna Smits, who was Peeter Heyns’s wife) or father (cf. Maria Strick). 90. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh, for example fourth conversation. 91. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh, for example first conversation. 92. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh, for example second conversation. 93. Valéry, La montaigne des pucelles / Den maeghden-bergh, seventh conversation. Magdaleine Valéry and Peeter Heyns knew each other: Valéry visited the Antwerp ‘Lauwerboom’ in 1582, as a nine-year-old girl, cf. Van de Haar, “Van ‘nimf’ tot ‘schoolvrouw’”. 94. Van Selm, Bert. 1987. Een menighte treffelijcke boecken: Nederlandse boekhandelscatalogi in het begin van de zeventiende eeuw. Leiden and Boston: Brill, ‘t Goy: Hes & De Graaf, 314, note 281. 95. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 93.

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96. Wolff, Elisabeth. 1977. Proeve over de opvoeding. Edited by H.C. de Wolf. Meppel: Boom, 57. 97. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 93. 98. Alphen, Hieronymus van. 1998. Kleine gedigten voor kinderen. Edited by P.J. Buijnsters. Amsterdam: Athenaeum - Polak & Van Gennep: 15–16, 37–38, 132–133, 134–135 and 157–158. 99. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 99–116; Brown, Penelope. 2009. “‘Girls aloud’: Dialogue as a Pedagogical Tool in Eighteenth-Century French Children’s Literature.” The Lion and the Unicorn 33, no. 2: 202–218. On this book in the context of Le Prince de Beaumont’s larger oeuvre and pedagogical programme: Montoya, Alicia. 2018. “Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711–1780): A popular religious pedagogue.” In Women, Enlightenment and Catholicism: A transnational biographical history, edited by Ulrich Lehner: 22–34. London and New York: Routledge. 100. Cf. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 103–116; Clancy, Patricia A. 1982. “A French Writer and Educator in England: Mme le Prince de Beaumont.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century Norwich 201: 195–208, 195; Clancy, Patricia A. 1979. “Mme Le Prince de Beaumont: Founder of Children’s Literature in France.” Australian Journal of French Studies XVI: 281–287; Janssens-Knorsch, U. 1987. “‘Virtuous hearts and critical minds’: The progressive ideals of an eighteenth-century governess, Marie le Prince de Beaumont (1711–1780).” Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 14, no. 1: 1–16. 101. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 100; Janssens-­ Knorsch, “‘Virtuous hearts and critical minds’”, 5. 102. Brown, “‘Girls aloud’”, 203. 103. Prince De Beaumont, Jeanne Marie le. 1757–1758. Magazyn der Kinderen, of Samenspraaken tusschen eene wyze Gouvernante en verscheide van haare Leerlingen van het eerste fatsoen. Translated into Dutch. The Hague: Ottho van Thol, xiv. 104. Orr, Clarissa Campbell. 2005. “Aristocratic Feminism, the Learned Governess, and the Republic of Letters.” In Women, Gender and Enlightenment, edited by Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor: 306–325. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 309. 105. Le Prince De Beaumont, Magazyn der kinderen, fol. xiv, xx; Prince De Beaumont, Jeanne Marie le. 1756. Magasin des enfants, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves de la première distinction. London: J. Haberkorn, xvii. 106. Le Prince De Beaumont, Magazyn der kinderen, fol. xx–xxi.

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107. Prince De Beaumont, Jeanne Marie le. 1769. Magazin des enfans, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves de la première distinction. The Hague: Pierre Gosse junior, fol. xvii–xviii. 108. Prince De Beaumont, Jeanne Marie le. 1660. Magasin des adolescentes, ou dialogues entre une sage gourvernante, et plusieurs de ses élèves de la première distinction. 4 vols. The Hague: Pierre Gosse junior, Leiden: Elie Lusac, vol. 1, fol. xxix. On the French edition and its popularity: Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 1600–1830, 113–116. 109. Prince De Beaumont, Jeanne Marie le. 1760. Magazyn der jonge juffrouwen, of Zamenspraaken tusschen eene wyze gouvernante en verscheide van haare leerlingen van het eerste fatsoen. The Hague: Ottho van Thol. 110. [d’Epinay, Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d’Esclavelles marquise]. 1787. De gesprekken met Emilia. Translated by Elisabeth Wolff. The Hague: Isaac van Cleef. According to Brown, Conversations d’Emilie (1774) was frequently translated in several languages: Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 126; Brown, “‘Girls aloud’”, 211. Brown, however, does not mention the Dutch translation. De gesprekken met Emilia has never been studied as a translation by Wolff. See Chap. 4 of Lettering Young Readers on Wolff as a translator of children’s literature. 111. d’Epinay, De gesprekken met Emilia, quote on 9. See for an explicit reflection on this hierarchical relationship and the subordinate position of children: 8–10. The gradual development of writing skills: 22–23. Mother’s guidance in book reading: 71 and 78. 112. Cf. Zimmerman, Joseph Ignaz. 1793. De jonge huishoudster, een boek voor moeder en dochter. Gouda: Matthijs van Loopik and comp., 84. 113. Zimmerman, De jonge huishoudster, 79. 114. Zimmerman, De jonge huishoudster, 29. 115. Zimmerman, De jonge huishoudster, 29. 116. Verwer, Pieter Adriaen. Transl. 1750. De Verstandige Engelsche Leermeestres; of Kweekschool van jonge jufferen. Haarlem: Izaak and Johannes Enschede, Haarlem: Jan Bosch. Translator Verwer was also responsible for the Dutch translation of John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1753), cf. Los, Willeke. 1999. “Locke in Nederland: de receptie van zijn ideeën over individualiteit in opvoeding en onderwijs bij P.A.  Verwer (1696–1757) en K. van der Palm (1730–1789).” De Achttiende Eeuw 31, no. 2: 173–186. Verwer also translated Sarah Fielding’s L’orpheline angloise: ou, Histoire de Charlotte Summers: Historie van het verlatene en gelukkige weeskint Charlotte Summers (1751), cf. Los, “Locke in Nederland”, 176. Nota bene: there seems to have been a second translation (or reprint?) of Fielding’s novel on the Dutch market: Vorster, P.A. 1758. De verstandige Engelsche Leermeester of Kweekschool van jonge Jufferen, naar het

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begryp der teedere jaren tot vermaak en onderwys der jeugd van goeden huize, uit het Engelsch vertaald. Amsterdam: P. Swart. The book is mentioned in Arrenberg, Reinier and Johannes van Abkoude. 1788. Naamregister van de bekendste en meest in gebruik zynde Nederduitsche boeken, welke sedert het jaar 1600 tot het jaar 1761 zyn uitgekoomen. Rotterdam: Gerard Abraham Arrenberg, 557. Buijnsters and BuijnstersSmets included this title in their Bibliografie van Nederlandse school- en kinderboeken 1700–1800 (number 1260), but did not find any edition. 117. Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, 103–116, on the comparison between Magasin des Enfants and The Governess. On the role of the fairy tales and stories in The Governess: Rowe, Karen E. 2005. “Virtue in the Guise of Vice: The Making and Unmaking of Morality from Fairy Tale Fantasy.” In Culturing the Child, 1690–1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Meyers, edited by Donelle Ruwe: 29–66. Lanham: Children’s Literature Association and Scarecrow; Downs-Miers, Deborah. 1985. “For Betty and the Little Academy: a Book of Their Own.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 10, no. 1: 30–34, esp. 31. There is a lot of scholarship on The governess, often discussing the question this was an emancipatory and (proto)feminist novel or not. While June Jameson considered Fielding to be a predecessor of later feminist thinkers as Mary Wollstonecraft, and Deborah Down-Miers has argued that The Governess ‘demonstrates the positive powers of women as rulers, counselors, and teachers’, Candace Ward, Arlene Fish Wilner and Judith Burdan, conversely, think that Fielding rather confirmed patriarchal gender patterns and a conservative pedagogy of surveillance and control, since reading girls portrayed in The Governess behave as passive recipients of social norms and moral lessons, often transmitted by means of traditional fairy tales. Fielding, Sarah. 2005. The Governess: or, The Little Female Academy. Edited by Candace Ward. Plymouth and Sydney: Broadview Press: 32; Fish Wilner, Arlene. 1995. “Education and Ideology in Sarah Fielding’s The Governess.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 24, no. 1: 307–327; Burdan, Judith. 1994. “Girls Must be Seen and Heard: Domestic Surveillance in Sarah Fielding’s The Governess.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 19, no. 1: 8–14. 118. Nixon, Cheryl L. 2002. “‘Stop a Moment at this Preface’: The Gendered Paratexts of Fielding, Barker, and Haywood.” Journal of Narrative Theory 32, no. 2: 123–163, quote on 128. 119. Verwer, De Verstandige Engelsche Leermeestres, preface by the author; Fielding, Sarah. 2013. The Governess: Or, The Little Female Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: preface by the author. (The Governess was first published in 1749 and reissued in 2013  in its 1765 printing.)

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120. Cf. Dietz and Geerdink, “Practical Discourses about Knowledgeable Women Writers”. 121. Fielding, The Governess: Or, The Little Female Academy, 54. 122. Verwer, De Verstandige Engelsche Leermeestres, 76. 123. Ahorner, Joseph Georg Franz. 1789. Brieven aan de jonge Carolina. Amsterdam: Nicolaas Theodorus Gravius, 8, 26, 30–37. 124. d’Epinay, De gesprekken met Emilia, first conversation. 125. Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de. 1795. Letters and Conversations between several young ladies, on interesting and improving subjects. 2nd ed. London: C. Dilly. 126. Bannett, Eve Tavor. 2017. Eighteenth-Century Manners of Reading: Print Culture and Popular Instruction in the Anglophone Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 115; Pettengill, Claire C. 1992. “Sisterhood in a Separate Sphere: Female Friendship in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette and The Boarding School.” Early American Literature 27, no. 3: 185–200. One year before, Hannah Webster Foster has already (anonymously) published the famous epistolary novel The coquette; or, The history of Eliza Wharton. 127. [Anonymous]. 1796. Almanach voor meisjens, door meisjens: voor ’t jaar 1796. Amsterdam: Jan van Gulik, quotes on 60–61; Buijnsters, P.J. 1989. “Nederlandse kinderboeken uit de achttiende eeuw.” In De hele Bibelebontse berg: De geschiedenis van het kinderboek in Nederland & Vlaanderen van de middeleeuwen tot heden, edited by Harry Bekkering, Nettie Heimeriks and Willem van Toorn: 169–228. Amsterdam: Querido, 208. 128. Jongenelen, Ton. 1998. Van smaad tot erger: Amsterdamse boekverboden 1747–1794. Amsterdam: Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman, 74, number 254. 129. Higginbotham, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters, esp. chapter 2. 130. Nieuw magazijn voor jonge juffrouwen, 109.



Epilogue

Lettering Young Readers assumed as a starting point the idea that books for children reflect an ambivalent approach towards the agency of their audience, empowering as well as regulating young readers. It aimed to understand how this inescapable ‘paradox of agency’ took shape in eighteenth-­century Dutch children’s books, which perceived literacy as a vehicle to spur societal progress in a Republic that, at least from the perspective of its contemporary inhabitants, found itself in the midst of a troubling phase of historical decline. Close examination of a wide range of children’s literacy books reveals that child reading was perceived as a progress-­oriented and -creating activity precisely because reading children were ‘disciplined agents’. This perspective on the value of child reading must be understood against the background of that era’s conception of ‘progress’. While the term may at first seem to imply an orientation towards ‘change’, in the late-eighteenth-century Dutch Republic it equally involved the idea of ‘preservation’. As people assumed that their country’s social decline contrasted sharply with the Republic’s prior flourishing, the idea of progress was related to a much-desired social, moral and intellectual restoration. The exact perception of social progress found in children’s books varied according to specific political circumstances and the political orientation of their authors and publishers. Children’s books published during the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7

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politically divided 1780s disseminated a plea for radical change more often than books published after the Batavian Revolution of 1795; Johan Hendrik Swildens’s radical Patriot programme of sociopolitical revolution contrasted sharply with the ambition of elite authors such as Willem Emmery de Perponcher or Margareta Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken, who aimed to preserve the Orange dynasty and the Republic’s class structure. But although authors and book producers represented a range of fundamentally different sociopolitical positions, they all believed that the Republic needed a stable, hierarchically organized social structure, to which all citizens would contribute in an active, industrious way according to the rules and morals that aligned with their own age, gender and class. Thus the agency that young readers acquired or were expected to develop was situated within the restricted space accorded to a child defined by a specific gender and social background. Children were not urged to change society, but they were entrusted with the equally important tasks of understanding (ideal) social orders and of developing the kind of knowledge and behaviour necessary to maintain or support such systemic social orders. In this way, young readers were expected to fulfil a role that was inherently ambivalent: it was grounded just as much on the capacity to be active and inquisitive as on a far more passive kind of acceptance and conformity. Both attitudes—inquiry and acceptance—were crucial pillars of the type of Enlightened moral citizenship that these children were urged to develop through their process of reading and of mastering reading as a skill. Although children’s books were often assumed to advocate univocal lessons of obedience, these eighteenth-century books in fact expect their readers to develop more critical literacy skills, such as the interpretation of different types of knowledge, the assessment of truths and the employment of writing competences that reflect the external world and the self. These books, in sum, embody the idea that literacy served as a stepping-­ stone to independent and productive citizenship: reading is portrayed as a vehicle to a successful future life, economic independence, intellectual growth and the empowerment of one’s peer group. As such, literacy seemed to facilitate the engineering of the individual self. At the same time, however, the space for individual development is highly restricted by the books’ guidance—often by means of indirect, fictional strategies—towards what is assumed to be the only valid interpretation of knowledge and truths, and the internalization of undisputable moral ideals or political opinions. Moreover, the books situated, and as

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such restricted, the development of individual child readers within fixed social structures. Consequently, the individual improvement of the male protagonist of the epistolary children’s novel De kleine Grandisson serves as a metaphor for the virtuous masculine citizenship meant to contribute to stability on a sociopolitical and international level, while epistolary girls’ novels depict girls who develop the female skills suitable for and restricted to their own peer group. We find here a distinguishing characteristic of eighteenth-century Dutch children’s book production in comparison to its international counterparts: as these books place community spirit above personal development, the reading child was valued according to the youngster’s capacity to support larger social structures rather than in terms of individual potency. The Dutch ideal of moral citizenship was not only a stepping-­ stone to independence and responsibility but also a mould to restrict children’s freedom to act as individuals.

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Index1

A Aa, Cornelis van der, 158–160 ABC books, 13, 14, 29–59, 70 Agé, Johannes François Jacobs de, 36 Agency, 3–11 Ahorner, Joseph Georg Franz, 222 Allart, Johannes, 107, 134n28 Almanac, 36, 62n30, 115, 223, 224 Alphen, Hieronymus van, 12, 74, 76, 77, 217 Ariès, Philippe, 4 Attack on Hattem, 151 Audiovisual didactics, 29–59 B Baggerman, Arianne, 120 Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, 73, 74, 82, 83, 90, 91, 96n19, 97n55, 104, 121, 182, 199n81

Barentsz, Willem, 127 Basedow, Johan Bernhard, 42, 82 Batavian Republic, 8, 9, 73, 155, 158, 161 Batavian Revolution, 8, 73, 154, 155, 158, 184, 240 Battle of the Dogger Bank, 187 Bekker, Elisabeth, see Wolff, Elisabeth Berquin, Arnaud, 165n34, 181, 184, 196n57, 198n79 Berthaud, Claude-Louis, 66n71 Betskoi, Ivan, 46 Black and white legend, 4 Book prices, see Market for children’s literature Book-toy hybrid, 42, 79, 104 Bronkhorst, Jacobus, 153 Brugsma, Berend, 34 Buijnsters, P.J., 12, 13, 30, 63n38, 165n25, 236n116

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dietz, Lettering Young Readers in the Dutch Enlightenment, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69633-7

279

280 

INDEX

Buijnsters-Smets, L., 12, 63n38, 165n25, 236n116 Burdan, Judith, 236n117 C Calvert, Karin, 90 Cambon, Jacques Louis Ricateau Boncam de, 180, 185 Cambon, Jean-Jacques de, 180 Cambon-van der Werken, Margareta Geertruid de, 16, 172–175, 179–188, 190, 192n17, 196n62, 197n63, 199n80, 207, 217, 240 Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 82, 123, 125–127, 143, 204 Capellen tot den Pol, Joan van de, 187 Carolina of Orange, 186 Chais, Charles, 194n48 Charlotte, Queen, 180 Christensen, Nina, 5 Christian Enlightenment, 9, 105 Citizenship, 8, 9, 11, 14, 46, 72, 73, 76, 91, 101, 105, 156, 161, 185, 188, 190, 212, 240, 241 Cleef, Isaac van, 106, 107, 134n28, 181 Collins, Benjamin, 39, 40 Comenius, Johann Amos, 30–39, 103 Conversational style, 108, 113, 122, 180–181, 217–218 Crain, Patricia, 30, 42, 43, 69–71, 92, 93n7 Crawford, Keith A., 160 Crusius, Siegfried Leberecht, 49 D Daston, Lorraine, 144 Deken, Aagje, see Deken, Agatha

Deken, Agatha, 1, 71, 91, 106, 110, 134n21, 134n22, 135n35, 173, 174, 204 Dellebarre, J. Ph., 66n71 d’Epinay, Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d’Esclavelles marquise, 209, 220 Dille, Catherine, 211 Does Pieterszoon, Frans de, 112, 113, 116, 118, 120 Dutch-French schools, 211–217 Dutch Republic, 2, 6–12, 14, 16, 17n6, 30, 35–37, 45, 46, 48, 53, 58, 59, 66n71, 71, 72, 79, 83, 91, 92, 93n11, 101, 104, 107, 111, 120, 121, 138n83, 145–147, 151, 171, 173, 174, 180, 183, 185, 187–190, 205, 211, 213, 216, 217, 223, 239 Dutch Revolt, 7, 10, 146, 150 Dutch States Army, 180 Duytse school, 11, 34 E Eck, Otto van, 11, 140n97, 189 Emdre, Samuel van, 103, 122, 127 Empirical knowledge, 103, 104, 115, 126, 129 Endter, Balthasar Joachim, 36 Enlightenment, 2, 7–11, 30, 34, 46, 105, 120, 138n83, 203 Epistolary children’s literature, 16, 134n24, 172–190, 206–211, 241 Epistolary literacy, 172, 174–179, 181, 183, 189, 190, 203–224 Erasmus, Desiderius, 35, 81, 212 F Fénelon, François, 218 Ferdinand William II of Prussia, 8, 151

 INDEX 

Ferguson, James, 211 Fielding, Sarah, 221, 236n117 Fish Wilner, Arlene, 236n117 Fite, Jean-Daniel de La, 180 Fite, Marie-Elisabeth de La, 180, 181, 185, 194n49, 207 Flötner, Peter, 64n52 Foster, Stuart J., 160 Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, 8, 186, 187 Francq van Berkhey, Johannes le, 105, 111-129, 133n21, 137n64, 138n81 French boarding schools, 212 G Galison, Peter, 144 Gellert, Christian, 121 Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité, 174 Geography, children’s books on, 105–111, 127, 129 George II, King, 187 George III, King, 186 Gimblet, Ph. and P., 36, 37, 39 Godwin, William, 182, 183 Goldsmith, Oliver, 174 Grand Pensionary, 7, 150, 152, 159 Grave, J.E., 135n30 Great, Catharine the, 46 Grenby, Matthew O., 62n29 Gubar, Marah, 6 H Hake, Barry J., 66n65 Hall, John, 121, 139n92, 181, 182, 193n17, 196n61, 196n62 Hamelsveld, IJsbrand van, 9–11, 200n86 Haneboek, see Rooster primer Havelange, Isabelle, 205 Heemskerck, Jacob van, 127

281

Heyns, Peeter, 212, 213, 216, 231n72, 232n76, 233n89, 233n93 Heyns, Pierre, see Heyns, Peeter Heyns, Zacharias, 212, 213 Higginbotham, Jennifer, 205 Hilton, Mary, 26n72 History textbooks, 15, 122, 143–162 Holtrop, Willem, 45, 48, 50, 54–57 Hoole, Charles, 32 Horace, 35 Hornbook, 31, 40 Huguenots, 180 Human alphabet, 43 I Initial reading education, 29–59 J Jacobmeyer, Wolfgang, 162n2 James, Adrian, 3 James, Allison, 3, 4 Jameson, June, 236n117 Jansz, Anthony Mens, 125 Johannes, Gert-Jan, 91, 206 Johnson, Jane, 172, 225n8 Johnson, Joseph, 73, 95n19, 121, 139n92, 181, 182, 197n63 Johnson, Richard, 174 K Klemann, Heather, 42 Kloek, Joost J., 8 L Lallemant, Antoine-Jean-Noël, 184, 199n82 Lamb, Edel, 6, 30, 205

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INDEX

Latimer, Bonnie, 174, 197n67 Leemans, Inger, 91 Leeuwestijn, Johannes Coenradus, 184, 198n78 Lehmann, Ann-Sophie, 34 Letter-writing manuals, 174, 206 Literary coterie, 204 Locke, John, 14, 70, 71, 79, 103 Loosjes Pz, Adriaan, 81, 82, 112, 122, 124 Louis XIV, King, 147 Luyken, Casper, 50, 51 Luyken, Jan, 48, 50, 51, 67n74, 115 M Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen, see Society of the Common Good Maerlant, Jacob van, 147 Market for children’s literature book prices, 45, 65n57, 107, 112, 135n32, 137n56 print runs, 45, 65n32, 107, 135n29 size of the reading public, 12, 45, 206 Martinet, Johannes Florentius, 1, 45, 107, 112, 120–122, 128, 138n81, 182, 186, 197n63, 208, 228n34 Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, 150, 152, 159–160 Merken, Lucretia Wilhelmina van, 173 Meurier, Gabriel, 213 Meyer, Adam, 33 Mijnhardt, Wijnand W., 8 Moderate Enlightenment, 9 Moritz, Karel Philips, 30 Murphy, Kathryn, 150 N Napoleon, Louis, 8 Napoleon Bonaparte, 8

National Conference, 9 Natural history, children’s books on, 111–122 Newbery, John, 39, 40, 74, 79, 92, 93n11, 121, 174 Nicholas, St, 36, 62n30 Nieuwenhuyzen, Martinus, 72, 79, 81, 94n15, 147 Nieuwentijt, Bernard, 120 Nieuwold, Johannes Hendricus, 35, 62n25 Nixon, Cheryl L., 221 O Oldenbarnevelt, Johan van, 150, 152, 159 Ollefen, Willem van, 148, 165n25 Orange, Carolina of, see Carolina of Orange Orange Restoration, 9, 52 Orange, William (I, III, IV, V) of, see William (I, III, IV, V) of Orange Orangists, 7, 62n30, 83, 133n21, 146, 150–152, 154–156, 158, 163n10, 173, 182, 184, 186, 188, 190 Oswell, David, 4 Othermothering, 205 P Paedts Jacobszoon, Jan, 214 Paradox of agency, 6, 239 Patriots, 7-9, 46, 52, 58, 73, 83, 106, 122, 146, 150–152, 155, 156, 186, 187, 188, 240 Peer modelling, 172 Peer mothering, 16, 203–224 Perponcher Sedlnitzky, Willem de Emmery de, 42, 43, 45–47, 52, 58, 64n45, 65n57, 65n62, 66n71, 73, 74, 76, 82, 83, 84,

 INDEX 

86, 87, 87n57, 90, 91, 95n19, 103, 127, 128, 240 Pfeiffer, Julie, 205 Philip II, King, 7 Physico-theology, 120–122, 138n83 Poot, Hubert Korneliszoon, 81 Pous, Pieter, 208 Primer, 2, 13, 14, 30, 31, 34, 41–43, 45–47, 64n52, 73, 78 Prince de Beaumont, JeanneMarie Le, 108, 180, 181, 185, 194n49, 195n51, 209, 217–219, 221, 222, 229n42, 234n99 Print runs, see Market for children’s literature R Raff, Georg Christian, 101–130, 135n30, 135n33, 135n36 Realia, 103 Realistic emblematics, 48 Remonstrants, 180, 185 Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, see Dutch Republic Reyre, Abbé Joseph, 206 Richardson, Samuel, 172–174, 207 Ripa, Cesare, 101, 102 Rooster primer, 31, 34 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 5, 33, 103, 123, 186, 217, 218 Ruyter, Michiel de, 123 S Salman, Jeroen, 62n29 Salzmann, Christian Gotthilf, 183, 184, 197n72, 199n80 Schelle, Pieter van, 112

283

Schellenberg, Betty A., 204 Schneither, Jean Jacques, 66n71 Schoemaker, Bobbie O., 61n16 Servaas, Pieter, 36 Shapiro, Barbara J., 149 Shefrin, Jill, 26n72 Smith, Charlotte, 182 Society of the Common Good, 72, 83, 88, 122, 147, 199n81 Spufford, Margaret, 212 Stadholder, 7, 8, 46, 83, 146, 151, 152, 159, 173, 184, 186, 187 States General, 7, 83 States of Utrecht, 42, 83 Stearns, Peter, 69, 71 Stockdale, John, 181 Straley, Jessica L., 104, 129 Stuart II, Mary, 186 Swildens, Johan Hendrik, 31, 45–59, 65n62, 66n65, 66n71, 67n75, 240 T Terveen, Widow Jan van, 77 Terveen II, Widow Jan van (=son of Jan), 77 Thol, Ottho van, 180 Traninger, Anita, 150 Transnational exchange of children’s books Anglo-Dutch exchange, 12, 14, 39–42, 69–92, 221–222 French-Dutch exchange, 211–223 German-Dutch exchange, 15, 47–52, 101–130, 220–222 Travel literature for children, 123 Trimmer, Sarah, 130, 182 Twelve Years’ Truce, 159 Tyranny books, 149

284 

INDEX

V Valcooch, Dirck Adriaensz, 34, 35 Valéry, Magdaleine, 213–216, 232n79, 233n93 Vuyk, Simon, 185, 186 W Wagenaar, Pieter Jr., 45, 65n55 Walk-reading, 120 Webster Foster, Hannah, 223 Weigel, Johann Christoph, 38 Weiner, Annette, 70 Weiße, Christian Felix, 47–49, 52, 66n72, 165n34 Wharton, Joanna, 104 Whyman, Susan, 172, 225n7, 225n8 Wilhelmina of Prussia, 8, 151, 184, 186, 187 William I, King, 188

William (I) of Orange, 150 William III of Orange, 186 William IV of Orange, 173, 186 William V of Orange, 7, 8, 46, 146, 151, 184, 186–188 Wit, Kornelis de, 40–43, 52, 58 Wolff, Adrianus, 106 Wolff, Elisabeth, 1, 33, 71, 91, 105–113, 120–129, 134n21, 134n22, 134n28, 135n30, 135n33, 137n64, 173, 174, 204, 217, 220, 222, 235n110 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 181–185, 196n60, 198n80, 200n85, 200n86, 236n117 Z Zimmerman, Joseph Ignaz, 220 Zuylekom, Maria van, 173