Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780-1900 3031190270, 9783031190278

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Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900 Irene Euphemia Smale

Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900

Irene Euphemia Smale

Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900

Irene Euphemia Smale Chichester, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-19027-8    ISBN 978-3-031-19028-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 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: IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to Ish

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Sue Morgan without whose support both academic and pastoral I would not have completed this study. Sue provided not only exemplary mentoring throughout with her sagacious and infinite knowledge of all things academia and a continuous drip feed of relevant historical and theological texts, bibliographic material, and erudite pearls of scholarly wisdom, but also steered me through with insightful compassion and understanding some very challenging years of personal trauma including my husband’s leukaemia, the loss of two close family members, and also my ordination training. During all of that time, Sue was my rock and provided the much needed continuity to help me refocus my attention back to my academic research at times when I needed such positive motivation, influence, and encouragement. I feel honoured to have had her as my supervisor, not only did she treat me with the greatest sensitivity, respect, and acknowledged faith in my research but she also proved to be an inspirational role model for me on my pilgrimage through the often intimidating and extraordinary world of academia. I will be forever indebted to her for her kindness, time, patience, and unfailing generosity of spirit. I am grateful for the wonderful encouragement and sagely wisdom of the late Professor William Gray, who was the fount of all knowledge on Victorian children’s literature and theology. Bill guided me with the utmost enthusiasm and inspiration, his intellect and knowledge far exceeded any I have met in this particular field of research. He is sorely missed. I am also grateful to Professor Jenny Daggers Honorary Fellow Liverpool Hope University (Lecturer in Gender Studies, Women’s Studies, vii

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and Christian Theology), and also Professor Mark Willems, University of Chichester, who both read and examined my work and encouraged me to pursue its publication. My appreciation also to Professor Graeme Smith at the University of Chichester for the opportunity of teaching theology to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. I am grateful to the teaching staff in the History and Theology Depts Chichester especially Professor Steve Moyise, Dr Andrew Foster, Deacon Rebecca Swyer and friend, colleague, and lecturer in Childhood Studies, Rob Abbot for their encouragement. My thanks also for the assistance of various members of staff at the University of Chichester library in particular subject librarian Janet Carter. Much of my research was also conducted at the University of Roehampton library, in particular their National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature and I am grateful to Pat Pinsent, Senior Research Fellow, Roehampton for sharing her extensive knowledge with me on Roman Catholic children’s literature. I would also like to acknowledge Westhill College Library, Birmingham University where I was able to conduct archival research on several primary sources published by the National Sunday School Union. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their patience and support throughout the long journey of research and the writing of this study. In particular, my devoted husband Ish, whose love, encouragement, and practical support have sustained me throughout, despite his own personal debilitating battle with leukaemia. It was he who first encouraged me to take an interest in researching this area of study. Also, my appreciation for the love and support of our children Joss, Dan, and Suzy, and my friends, family, and colleagues who have uncomplainingly endured my unsociable preference for isolation during times of academic study and yet have shown great generosity of understanding and moral support in taking an interest in my work. My thanks also to Palgrave Macmillan editorial staff for their support and help with preparing this manuscript for publication.

Contents

1 A  n Introduction to Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900  1 Introduction   1 Signposting this Study   3 Definitions of Childhood and Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century   5 Sources for the Historicization of Christian Literature for Children   7 Theological Themes in Evangelical Children’s Literature  19 Signposting the Chapters  20 Concluding Reflections  23 Bibliography  30 2 D  efining Distinguishing and Disseminating Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900 35 Introduction  35 Defining Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Children’s Literature as a Distinctive Literary Genre  36 An Exploration of Scholarly Definitions of Evangelicalism and the Evangelical Movement  40 The Clarification of Evangelical Children’s Literature, its Nature, Main Characteristics, and Principal Doctrines Found Prevalent in the Texts  43

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Contents

The Identification and Context of the Historical Community of Authors and Publishers of Children’s Christian Literature 1780–1900  47 Anglican Authors of Children’s Christian Literature 1780–1900  48 Nonconformist Children’s Authors  53 Roman Catholic Authors and Publishers  57 Disseminating the Word: Evangelical Publishing Companies  60 Concluding Reflections  63 Bibliography  71 3 R  evolution and Counter-revolutions: Evangelical Children’s Literature Within the Socio-Political and Theological Climate of 1780–1900 75 Introduction  75 The Impact of the French Revolution on the Deluge of Evangelical Children’s Literature  76 Counter-revolutionary Literature and the Reconstruction of Childhood  81 Denominational Tensions Revealed in Evangelical Literature  86 Protestant and Catholic Tensions in Evangelical Children’s Literature  86 Conflict in Protestant Children’s Literature: High Church and Low Church Tensions  90 Nonconformist Children’s Literature: Universalism and Fantasy  95 Concluding Reflections  98 Bibliography 105 4 S  oteriological Themes in Nineteenth-­Century Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900111 Introduction 111 Childhood, Original Sin, Repentance, and Conversion 113 Salvation for Children Body and Soul 116 The Child as Evangel 118 Redeeming Eve: Hesba Stretton and the Female Child Exemplar 120 Colonial Perspectives on the Child Evangel: The Writings of Martha Sherwood 123 Child Salvation and Debates on Baptismal Regeneration 129

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Evangelical Children’s Literature and Child Emigration 132 Concluding Reflections 136 Bibliography 144 5 B  iblical Authority in Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900149 Introduction 149 Educating Children in the Bible Through the Sunday School Movement 150 Women Exegeting, Adapting, and Theologising Biblical Narratology for Children 152 The Bible as the Moral Code for Children’s Righteous Living 158 The Bible and Sabbatarianism in Children’s Literature 163 Bible Play in Children’s Literature 167 In Defence of the Bible: The Evangelical Apologists 169 Concluding Reflections 175 Bibliography 182 6 E  schatological Themes in Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900185 Introduction 185 Debates and Controversies in Christian Eschatology 1780–1900 186 The Development of Child Death Literature 189 Eschatological Themes in Children’s Literature 196 Concluding Reflections 208 Bibliography 216 7 E  pilogue: Contextualising Theology and Childhood Today: A Developing Field of Theological Scholarship221 Bibliography 227 Appendix229 Index231

CHAPTER 1

An Introduction to Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900

Apart from the praiseworthy efforts of John Newbery in the eighteenth century, little attempt was made to provide children with reading matter designed especially for them until Maria Edgeworth, Mrs Sherwood, and the Sunday School tract writers sharpened their pens in the nineteenth century. Then came the deluge; but that story requires a volume to itself. (Altick, Richard. D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1880–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). p. 9.) —Richard Altick

Introduction Over half a century ago, Richard Altick identified a fascinating area of research as yet barely explored by literary, social, or ecclesiastical historians, that is, the meteoric rise of specifically Christian publications written for children during the nineteenth century. This particular ‘deluge’ of literary output is often consigned or subsumed erroneously into the analytical interrogation of what is termed ‘moral and didactic’ texts for children, but there appears to be an omission of any critical examination of its theological content and meaning. I believe that this oversight is due to the failure of theologians to take seriously the subjects of childhood and children’s literature. Therefore, this multi-disciplinary study aims to examine the deluge of nineteenth-century Sunday School literature more fully, with a particular focus on its theological content, it’s fascinating historical community of authors, their motivation for writing, and their affiliative © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. E. Smale, Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5_1

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networks and publishers. It also identifies and critically analyses three specifically prevalent theological themes perceptible in the literature that have previously been neglected. The themes of soteriology, biblical authority, and eschatology, although rarely acknowledged, are predominant throughout the material and correlate with the principal Christian doctrinal debates of the period. I argue that the scale, content, idiosyncratic context, and wide-ranging influence of its theological dimensions’ renders ‘Evangelical children’s literature’ as a distinctive literary genre. While I am aware of the complex debates surrounding the use of the word ‘genre’, for example, criticisms of blurred or misleading classifications used for the purpose of marketing strategies, I agree with Gunther Kress who observed that, ‘Every genre positions those who participate in a text of that kind. … Each written text provides a “reading position” for readers, a position constructed by the writer for the “ideal reader” of the text.’1 Thus, I apply the term genre here in order to clarify and classify Evangelical children’s literature as a substantive, distinct, literary category as evidenced vis-à-vis its inimitable Christian theological content consciously constructed by its authors for their specific ideal readers. Its stylistic overtly religious stance ‘positions’ both those authors and readers who chose to participate in such idiosyncratic texts. The enormous popularity of the texts also provides evidence of its vast scale and scope through its staggering publishing and sales statistics.2 The authors who constructed such texts were motivated not only by a passionate commitment to their faith but also the compelling desire to persuade, convert, and make disciples of their readers.3 I underscore this argument with evidence from research conducted on the authors, the texts, and the readers’ response evinced in publishing statistics. Furthermore, in Chap. 2 I delineate between the type of explicitly constructed Evangelical publications which are the focus of this study and the more conventional ‘moral and didactic’ educational literature typical of the period. There was arguably a plethora of cautionary, moralising, and didactic material produced in this period aimed at educating children in good behaviour, manners, morality, and self-discipline but without any reference to faith or spirituality.4 Alternatively, Evangelical publications sought to promote not only Christian moral values but principally the tenets of the Christian faith with the purpose of leading its readers to a personal conversion experience and a lifetime of Christian commitment. And therein lies the difference. It is also important to note that my use of the term ‘theology’ in this study does not follow conventional definitions, that is, the systematic and

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comprehensive study of the nature of God and God’s relationship with the world and of religious doctrines, practices, or rituals. Instead, I use the term ‘theology’ in a broader, more popular sense as a sometimes intellectual, sometimes critical but always revelatory reflection upon the encounter and experience of the divine.5

Signposting this Study This multi-disciplinary study centres on Christian authors, mainly women, who taught theological principles, published prolifically via the medium of Evangelical children’s literature, and who sincerely believed it was their vocation and mission in life to make converts. Therefore, this study will aim first, to draw the attention of scholars of women’s history, theology, ecclesiastical history, sociology, and children’s literature to this neglected yet vast historical body of source material. Second, it aims to contribute to scholarship on the influence of Evangelical theology upon nineteenth-­ century childhood. And third, it offers evidence of the significant influence of its literature and its legacy upon future generations of children when considering the ways in which the terms theology and childhood have merged more recently within academic research.6 The rationale for this study originated with my undergraduate research on the origins of the Sunday School Movement in the late eighteenth century and my subsequent doctoral thesis on Evangelical children’s literature in the nineteenth century.7 My interest in tracing the trajectory of theological themes and ideas in nineteenth-century Evangelical children’s literature arose due to a number of issues addressed during the course of that research. These issues both signified and inspired the necessity of a more nuanced approach to this subject than previous scholarly texts because of their lack of attention to the diversity of Sunday School institutional models, reading materials and pedagogical methods employed across a broad range of Christian traditions and denominations during the period. In pointing to this vast corpus of literature I argue that unfortunately, it has been addressed only minimally by scholars either focusing on a few individual authors or merely included as a chapter or paragraph embedded within the wider context of children’s literature critiques rather than the subject of a complete manuscript. Indeed, only two academic texts, which are now several decades old, have dealt centrally and adequately with the origins of the Sunday School Movement itself. Regardless of the significant role of women authors and their publications, this

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movement had a profound effect on children’s education and their spiritual formation across the last 200 years.8 This current dearth of theological and historical research into children’s Christian literature more generally is equally surprising, particularly given that the nineteenth-century authors of such religious publications recognised only too well the potential for disseminating vast quantities of reading material as a proselytising device not simply for morally educating the young but principally for moulding their religious faith. As Altick has highlighted, the printed word was not only used as an aggressive weapon for evangelisation, but the distribution of Bibles and other such literature became a large marketable and profitable industry9 in a fertile religious and socio-political climate where the concept of Victorian morality and sensibility thrived, characterised by stereotypical, Christian, strict gender, and societal norms. Notwithstanding the wealth of historical scholarship in nineteenth-century Evangelicalism, virtually no research has been conducted into literary constructions of Evangelical childhood with reference to theology. Conversely, literary histories of nineteenth-century children’s publications have rarely considered the breadth of its theological content in any sustained manner. As a result, the acknowledgement of Evangelical children’s literature as a distinctively theological literary genre has fallen between these two categories of academic neglect. While many critiques of nineteenth-century children’s literature do, of course, assimilate theories of sociohistorical and cultural contexts,10 this study will argue, such contextualisation rarely focuses upon the significance of any theological analysis. This said, the corresponding failure of theologians and ecclesiastical historians to consider seriously the valuable contribution of the subject of children’s Christian literature, women authors, and childhood spirituality to church history has necessitated my heavy reliance on critiques located within the history of English children’s literature, several of which I refer to below in the section on historicization.11 This research, therefore, seeks to remedy such historiographical lacunae by advancing previous scholarship through an exploration of selected theological themes and ideas in order to demonstrate that this vast body of Evangelical children’s literature was a vital, progressive, highly competitive, and prominent literary genre throughout the nineteenth century. It also seeks to highlight its influence and its legacy for the succeeding centuries by engaging with current theological scholarship.12

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Definitions of Childhood and Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century At the outset, it may be useful to contextualise definitions of childhood and what constitutes children’s literature within the timeframe of this specific period, simply because the defining and hypothesisation of the term ‘childhood’ has experienced remarkable diversification and maturity over the past century, thus signifying that conceptions of childhood more recently have shifted quite dramatically to become diverse, independent, and legitimate fields of study. Current scholarship on childhood transcends a much broader range of academic disciplines, including not only the usual suspects of sociology, education, literature, history, anthropology, ethics, psychology, and law, but more recently, media, consumerism, cultural studies, spirituality, and theology.13 Consequently, interest in childhood has burgeoned beyond those fields that typically dealt with mainstream studies and have moved outside of developmental concerns to focus instead on the invaluable contribution that conceptualisations of the child and childhood can offer to spiritual and theological scholarship as subjects of critical analysis. Therefore, this book, which is situated within the developing framework of research in theology juxtaposed with childhood, an emergent and evolving scholarly specialism, offers a current and significant interdisciplinary study on the effects of theologically engendered literature upon nineteenth-century children and succeeding generations. However, to establish what constitutes childhood and children’s literature in nineteenth-century England is fraught with ambiguity. Hugh Cunningham’s seminal text, The Invention of Childhood, begins by questioning, ‘What is a child?’14 He draws attention to Henry Mayhew’s documented interview with a young girl selling watercress on the streets of London in the middle of the nineteenth century, who declared, ‘I ain’t a child. … I’m past eight’. The shocked and bewildered Mayhew believed that the stage of childhood did not transition to adulthood until beyond the age of fifteen years. Furthermore, scholarly conceptualisations of childhood have argued that the ‘notion of childhood’ only emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while the nineteenth century is viewed as the watershed for the shift in attitudes towards childhood as a separate vital stage in human development. This is corroborated by the unique deluge of children’s literature produced during the period, as stated by Altick at the beginning of this chapter. However, we should bear in mind that various types of Evangelical literature, in particular simple

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tracts, were not only read by children of varying ages and stages and their parents but also by those adults who often in their attempt to attain literacy might thus secure more ambitious opportunities of employment. While this period gave rise to new vocational opportunities for Christian women within the realms of writing, publishing, and preaching, a contentious development addressed throughout this study, it was also an age that ushered in a revival of patriarchalism, including ‘separate spheres’ ideology15 and witnessed the gendering of those books and periodicals written distinctly for boys and girls. Josephine Bratton has highlighted that publishers and writers utilised popular marketing strategies by catering via the ‘simpler criterion of sex’, for example, books and tracts designed to appeal to boys featuring seafaring escapades and adventure missionary stories16 and guidance manuals for girls on the praiseworthy rewards of dutiful domesticity and piety, thus communicating a somewhat stereotypical oppressive doctrinal emphasis on the allocation of status according to gender. I will return to this theme in Chap. 3 on the effects of late eighteenth-­ century and early nineteenth-century revolutionary thought. As Cunningham has highlighted, the number of years spanning the beginning and end of childhood has been defined in various ways throughout history, and theoretical approaches as to what exactly constitutes childhood have also contributed to a somewhat abstruse identification of categories for age-appropriate reading material during this period. Nevertheless, Matthew Orville Grenby’s study, The Child Reader 1700–1840,17 offers a comprehensive examination of children’s readership, children’s acquisition of books, their chosen interests, and the influence books had on the experience of childhood. Perhaps we should also bear in mind that many middle- and upper-class families often sought reading together as an enjoyable household Sunday leisure pastime to while away the hours of the Sabbath.18 Of course, devout families would read the Bible together on a Sunday evening and clergy might explain Bible stories to their children by adapting or rewriting the narratives for them, as in the case of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.19 Grenby has observed that even in the late eighteenth century, ‘Ideas of children as readers encompassed infancy, boyhood, and girlhood, adolescence and overlapped with adulthood. Indeed, the first reviewer of children’s literature, Sarah Trimmer, was prepared to consider books designed for child readers up to the age of twenty-one.’20 Therefore, although the reading material was aimed at children in general and was often described as ‘juvenile’ literature, whether for male or

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female, rich or poor, at various ages and stages, from infants to adolescents, it was available to all who had sufficient means to purchase it. It also ranged from simple illustrated primers and tracts to more complex catechisms, sermons, history, fiction novels, and periodicals. Undeniably, the principal consumers were upper-class and middle-class families who acquired books for their own children’s religious instruction and edification. However, it must be noted that Evangelical children’s literature was also uniquely published for the specific purpose of disseminating the Gospel message to as wide a readership as possible and millions of copies of printed materials were given away by philanthropic Christians as a mission tool to the masses.21 Such philanthropic generosity and missionary impetus also accounts for the huge demand and the anomalous deluge of publications produced. I now turn to the historicization of children’s literature within the broader spectrum of children’s publications in general to contextualise the unique deluge of Evangelical texts that ensued in the nineteenth century.

Sources for the Historicization of Christian Literature for Children In order to signpost the evolving and often obscured landscape of specifically Christian material for children’s readership it has been necessary to draw upon the work of erudite historians of children’s literature in general. As mentioned previously, there is a dearth of any critical theological analysis to be found in the history of children’s literature. I offer below a brief but necessary assessment of several selected studies that I have gleaned from the historicization of children’s literature that have proved to be informative for this specific research. While it is not intended as a literature review per se, I have presented these texts mainly in chronological order, listing the principal authors whose research extends over 100 years from 1892 to 1995. Regardless of the significant merits of this historiographical body of scholarship, I draw upon it specifically to illustrate my argument that by subsuming the deluge of Sunday School literature into the general corpus of children’s ‘moral and didactic’ texts, scholars have eluded its spiritual significance, misappropriated the genre, and unfortunately overlooked its purpose. Therefore, whilst the sources below have aided this study in identifying several authors of Evangelical

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children’s literature, the scholars’ research ultimately offers only a limited critique of its theological content and meaning. In 1932, the scholar and literary historian F. J. H. Darton (1878–1936) declared in his renowned tome, Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life (1932), that the only other work published prior to his own pioneering, comprehensive study of English children’s literature was that of a little-known late-Victorian, children’s author and historian Mrs E.  M. Field (1856–1941). 22 The Darton family had been involved in publishing since 1787, initially producing ecclesiastical and theological texts, followed by William Darton’s pioneering and innovative development in publishing children’s literature. The company Wells, Gardner and Darton & Co. published Field’s volume titled: The Child and His Book: Some Account of The History and Progress of Children’s Literature In England.23 Written in 1892, it offered a systematic, chronological approach to children’s literature spanning nearly 1500 years from the fifth to the nineteenth centuries. Field grew up in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and so her manual is a valuable primary source critiquing many familiar texts that she read during her own childhood. Although now obviously outdated, her original research at that time comprised a truly ground-breaking survey of children’s books, authors, and publishers across four designated historical epochs that she identified as shaping the development of children’s literature. Field argued that the close of one literary era and the beginning of the next usually coincided with some great crisis in British national history and that interestingly, within each period, new forms of children’s literature were correspondingly initiated. Field’s first epoch encompassed the monastic era, throughout the fifth to the thirteenth centuries, during which she states the only writers for children were monks.24 Her second era spanned the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries and witnessed the Renaissance of Greek and Latin learning to the exclusion, in her view, of almost all other forms of education. The third era began in the eighteenth century when a new literary genre of Puritan themes emerged that Field believed initiated the origins of child-oriented literature focusing on the experience of childhood. A prevalent subject, for example, was sentimental accounts and prayers of precociously pious children on their deathbed. In this period, according to Field, the renowned hymn-writer, theologian and logician, Isaac Watts emerged as the forerunner of uniquely instructive religious writing explicitly for children’s readership with Divine Songs, attempted in easy language for children. By I.  Watts, D.D.  To which are

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added poems, instructive and entertaining.25 This text that was published and reprinted in over 1000 editions and used in schools and Sunday Schools for over 200 years. Field’s designated fourth era, the nineteenth century, witnessed an increase in the production of moral, didactic, and educational works for children, which she declared: ‘dampened down the fire of Puritan zeal into dull embers of morality’.26 However, I argue that zeal was revitalised by Evangelical authors who wrote an incalculable number of tracts, fiction novels, manuals, catechisms, sermons, hymns, and confirmation preparation material for children. Thus, while Field’s research has provided some fascinating biographical details of a number of lesser-known nineteenth-­ century children’s authors, several of whom feature in later chapters of this study, she paid only modest attention to Evangelical texts and writers of particular religious significance apart from: Martha Sherwood and her sister Lucy Cameron who I refer to frequently throughout this study. She also acknowledged Favell Lee Mortimer (1802–1878), a rather controversial author who produced her first book in 1836, The Peep of Day, or A series of the earliest religious instruction the infant mind is capable of receiving, published by the Religious Tract Society. It reached the ‘bestseller list’ in 1867 with copies sold in thirty-seven different dialects and languages.27 However, Mortimer’s grandniece Rosalind Constable publicly lambasted the book as, ‘one of the most outspokenly sadistic children’s books ever written’.28 She was referring to her great aunt’s explicitly Calvinist approach to teaching children about the pains of Hell that would result from sin if they were to reject the way of salvation. Mortimer went on to adapt well-known biblical narratives to instruct children further in Evangelical doctrines and subsequently published Line upon Line (1837) and More about Jesus (1839). This practice of rewriting and explaining biblical narratives for children in a simplified form was also adopted by Mary Elizabeth Southwell Dudley Leathley (1818–1899). As Field stated, Leathley published over ninety titles, her most popular being Chickseed Without Chickweed (1860), of which over 250,000 copies were sold in the author’s lifetime. 29 I expand on this practice of women theologising, exegeting, adapting, and interpreting biblical narratives for children’s readership more fully in Chap. 5 and offer research on the use of biblical authority as a method for shaping not only children’s faith but rules for a life of Christian commitment. But it was F. J. H. Darton, who forty years later developed Field’s work more extensively in his quintessential authoritative volume Children’s

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Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life (1932). Hailing from a Quaker background of renowned publishers, Darton’s own shortened lifespan reads like a fiction novel in itself. In 1906, he married Emma Lucretia Bennett, the granddaughter of J. T. Sheridan Le Fanu.30 However, their marriage was annulled in 1920 on the grounds of non-­consummation as petitioned by Emma.31 Darton eventually retired to Cerne Abbas in Dorset and lived in the village’s Red Lion pub for the last two years of his life. According to Margaret Drabble, he died tragically of cirrhosis of the liver on 26 July 1936 at the age of 57, in Dorchester County Hospital.32 Darton stated that his aim was to study only those books which were ‘ostensibly to give children spontaneous pleasure and not primarily to teach them’.33 Therefore, he excluded from his extensive critical analysis all schoolbooks, religious literature and, in short, reviewed only those texts that he considered were pleasurable. Darton treated religious publications for children as ‘moral tales’ and apart from a brief discussion on the leading Evangelical author Martha Sherwood, he omitted any specifically Evangelical doctrinal or theological themes. Nevertheless, his work has been hailed as insightful for its sheer detail alone such is its wide-­ ranging biographical and bibliographical content. 34 Darton contended that the increasing demand for children’s literature in the nineteenth century ushered in its metamorphosis from simplistic moral tales into ‘a semi-artistic literary form with philosophic purpose subordinate to the story’.35 Only very few authors were noted by him for their religious predilections; he commented that the gentle writing style and subtle themes of Quakers, stood in stark contrast to Martha Sherwood’s and Sarah Trimmer’s more combative Evangelical Calvinist dogmatism and Lucy Cameron’s far from restrained anti-Catholicism.36 Darton also noted that moral tales were replete with recurrent themes of slavery, cruelty to animals, and reprobation of belief in fairies. He surmised that the average English middle-class writer wrote solely about principles and morals and, as a result, ‘they were neither voices crying out in the wilderness nor evangels’.37 He sincerely believed that these moralists were not interested in converting their readers, but instead, they exuded a kind of abstract benevolence where ‘the real child’ was completely overlooked ‘except as a tabula rasa for a heavy pen’.38 Oddly, he pays negligible attention to the significant role played by Evangelicalism in the production of children’s literature even though he edited a comprehensive biography on Sherwood in 1910 whose titles alone exceeded 400.39 Darton’s work, like Field’s, helpfully identified a number of obscure and lesser-known authors,

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but unfortunately he omitted popular Christian authors, in particular the overwhelming number of Evangelicals who wrote throughout the period. I contend that such authors although prolific have either been ignored, misrepresented, or simply written off as writers of moral and didactic works with little or no reference to their Christian faith. In 1954, twenty-two years after Darton’s book, Percy Muir published English Children’s Books 1600–1900.40 In acknowledging the extent to which he had drawn on Darton’s work, Muir argued it was never his intention to supplant Darton’s scholarship but to offer instead a much broader, bibliographical approach. His text consisted of a semi-illustrated history of children’s literature spanning the years 1600 to 1900 organised thematically under the categories of fairy tales, nursery rhymes, school stories, fantasy, and nonsense tales. Despite the usefulness of Muir’s bibliographic format containing widespread lists of primary sources and brief analyses of numerous authors and publishers, he is distinctive for his repeated disparagement of several female authors, labelling them as a ‘Monstrous Regiment’. For example, he described Sarah Trimmer as a ‘preposterous woman’ 41 and castigated Martha Sherwood’s writing as ‘truly appalling, tedious, and dreadful’.42 In his ‘monstrous regiment’ of female children’s authors, he included Hannah More, Anna Barbauld, Lady Ellenor Fenn, the Kilner sisters, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Priscilla Wakefield, and Ann and Jane Taylor. Muir commented that he found the moral didacticism of these authors ‘nauseating’.43 While his valid critique of overtly saccharine sentimentality may appear excessively pejorative, his biographical details on selected authors and his annotated bibliographic lists of their work at the end of each chapter is useful for researchers of children’s literature history in general, although again quite outdated. In the 1960s there was an evident resurgence of scholarly interest in the history of children’s literature, primarily initiated by Gillian Avery’s seminal work, Nineteenth-Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900.44 Not only did Avery offer a broad-ranging assessment of nineteenth-century publications for children, their purpose and response to moral and didactic themes, she also explored the relationship between the writer, the text, and the authors’ target audience. In her chapter on ‘Evangelistic Fiction’, she examined a range of Evangelical tracts, and proposed that a gradual transformation took place, from the rigidly puritanical Calvinist tone typical of the early Sherwood to a softer, more child-oriented approach in content by the end of the century. Both Avery’s and Darton’s views concur that there existed a strong element of

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opposition and disquiet among many Christian writers during the period caused by their anxiety over the role of fantasy and fairy tales in children’s literature. According to Darton, the Christian’s disapproval of fairy tales at the time, manifested itself in ‘a deep-rooted sin complex, because it involved the belief that anything fantastic on the one hand, or anything primitive on the other, is inherently noxious; or at least so void of good as to be actively dangerous’.45 While Avery questioned the reasons for the opposition of Christians to the use of fantasy, she proposed that this may have been due to their belief that children, in their naivety, would be unable to discern between truth and lies. Did they think that children who imbibed fantasy material that promoted fictional, faraway kingdoms of Fairyland, should instead concentrate on learning about Christian missionary enterprise, colonial expansion, and the Kingdom of God? In their view, was fantasy a completely sinful, waste of children’s time and would they not be better employed reading biblical stories that propounded more edifying truths? 46 However, along with other literary historians such as Margaret Cutt and Josephine Bratton, Avery concurred that while the fairy tale was treated as an anathema by many Christian clergy, parents, authors, and publishers at the beginning of the nineteenth century, attitudes towards childhood changed and so did the minds of Christian literature custodians. By 1919, the children’s magazine, The Sunday Fairy, was able to tell its young readers: ‘I shall come to you every week, and tell you all about fairies, and gnomes and little brownie men in Fairyland. … Best of all, I shall tell you those sweet stories we read of in the Bible—the best book in the world, that tells us of Jesus, the Friend of little children, and His great love.’47 And thus, by the early twentieth century, in a complete U-turn, The Sunday Fairy was transformed into an evangelist who preached the Gospel to children! Avery hailed Darton’s tome as a major study of the landscape of children’s literature and an essential contribution to the history of English social life.48 While this cannot be denied, it is difficult to see how she reaches such a resolute conclusion, given Darton’s neglect of the vast number of religious titles and their influence not only upon children’s literature but also Victorian society and culture, when considering his omission. Avery also observed that around 1780, a shift took place from a somewhat over-simplified conception of the state of childhood to acknowledge that children may be capable of reading and understanding more advanced, imaginative, and resourceful texts.49 And so, the development

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of the juvenile novel, with storylines originally written by adults from an adult perspective, instructing children on how they thought children should behave, eventually began to make way for the child’s perspective. The people mainly responsible for the metamorphosis of the child into a serious reader via the vast and rapidly expanding enterprise of children’s literature, was the Clapham Sect. They included Hannah More, Henry Venn, William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, and Zachary Macaulay, who sponsored, campaigned, and published profusely in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Their entrepreneurial Evangelical mission was successful not only as a result of the growth of the book trade but also promoted and sustained by Christian philanthropists, teachers, moralists, conscientious middle-class parents, and in no small measure the Sunday School Movement. Thus, two of Avery’s arguments have been particularly pertinent in shaping the development of this study: first, her analysis of the impact of the Sunday School on cultural constructions of childhood, and second, her brief discussion on the literature that shaped the lives of Evangelical children and parents. The staggering success of popular writers such as Hannah More who reached 300,000 sales in the first six weeks of publication, rising to in excess of two million in the first year is remarkable.50 Avery also points to Evangelical male authors, the majority of whom were clergy, including significant figures such as the Rev John Campbell, Rev Basil Woodd, and Rev George Burder; however, no man could match the success of More. Avery argued that the idealistic portrayal of the conscientious Sunday scholar also became the foundation stone of propagandist themes promoting ‘the vast empire of Victorian industry and respectability’.51 While the children’s book trade successfully forged the promotion of Evangelical publications within the wider historical context of restricted ‘Sunday Reading’, a new innovative incentive emerged that was temptingly neat— the Sunday School ‘reward book’. This developed into an entire genre of theologically themed publications wherein proof of scholars’ intellectual capabilities and spiritual virtues were rewarded since the content provided the principal reading and spiritual guidance for the pious child’s nurture. Interestingly, such books were also greatly prized in later life to give evidence of the scholar’s regular church attendance, validated, awarded, and certified, by respected members of the clergy. Reward books provided aspiring youth with a vital character reference for future employment.52 Within the next few years, an important series of publications surveyed the history of children’s literature, thus highlighting the increasing

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interest in this field. In 1979, Margaret Nancy Cutt published Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-century Evangelical Writing for Children, which focused specifically on the development of Evangelical tracts.53 Cutt argued that the provision of didactic tracts at the end of the eighteenth century was a means of simplistic, direct instruction offering moral and ethical training directed towards the improvement of society.54 The tracts aimed to mould the child into a socially acceptable adult, and guided him or her into their allotted station in life.55 Cutt concurred with Avery’s chronological perspective noting that publications at the beginning of the nineteenth century focused on the child receiving religious instruction from adults; but by the end of the century, the roles were reversed, and adults had become the recipients of spiritual guidance from Evangelical children. I discuss this concept and the soteriological influence of the ‘child evangel’ in more detail in Chap. 4.56 Throughout the nineteenth century, the tract societies’ productivity exemplified their efforts to demonstrate the relevance of Evangelical themes to the increasing demands of social and industrial transformation. In this way, tract literature was explicitly used as a vehicle for social, religious, and political comment on the poverty and plight of the working classes. Cutt acknowledged the compelling influence of the following Evangelical children’s authors: Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821–1893), who wrote under the pseudonym of ALOE (an acronym for A Lady of England);57 Maria Charlesworth (1819–1880), the author of Ministering Children;58 and Hesba Stretton (1832–1911), the author of Jessica’s First Prayer;59 amongst others, as noteworthy writers who promoted in the main, reform and spiritual conversion.60 According to Cutt, Evangelical authors, publishers, and their philanthropic collaborators intentionally set out to highlight the social conditions of the lower classes and thus challenge the moral and spiritual values of their readers, thereby initiating conversion through children’s tract literature. The authors, mostly women, were highly influential and often financially supported by various Christian philanthropists, and members of the clergy who by endorsing their books bestowed on them kudos, credibility, licence, and of course a vital role and purpose in a society that until now had neglected the role of women. Since women were denied the right to an ordained vocation, they could now, however, legitimately express their spirituality, faith, and theological views by writing, albeit for children. Evidence of such sponsorship and affiliations in the case of individual authors, along with their particular support networks, public, private, and ecclesial associations, is provided in

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succeeding chapters; suffice it to say that Evangelical children’s literature, including works of fiction, was heavily invested in by many parties to broadcast their theological beliefs and fulfil their mission far and wide. Nancy Cutt has charted the Evangelical influence on children’s fiction and its development through particular narrative and thematic approaches in Ministering Angels. Thus, social tracts were often used as vignettes of the contrasting worlds of the experience of childhood through the polarised social conditions of extreme poverty and wealth.61 Invariably, formulaic conversion themes of ‘rags to riches’, juxtaposed with the dire consequences of sin and immorality, rewards and punishments were portrayed. The tracts proved very effective indeed, what child living in abject poverty and the awful terror of the workhouse could not resist the dream of being rescued from the gutter and a life of piety rewarded with good food, clean clothes, and a roof over their head. The historical tract, by contrast, was often constructed to promote Protestant critiques of Roman Catholic theology and practice, while the missionary tract was based on exciting escapades laced with underlying themes of benign Christian colonialism and imperialism. Cutt argued that throughout these various literary contexts, writers like Charlesworth, Stretton, Tucker, and Walton, showed immense imaginative flair in the use of highly emotive and persuasive storylines, portraying the subject of destitute children sensationally suffused with pathos. 62 Needless to say, their publications became increasingly popular and marketable products. They emphasised the importance of broadcasting the terrible reality of the lives of neglected street children, using graphic descriptions astutely contrived to point their readers to spiritual salvation. Saccharine sentimentality was habitually employed to impassion their readers, a literary trope utilised to its ultimate effect both socially and politically of course by Charles Dickens, whose own authorial interests lay not in preaching spiritual regeneration but in eliciting action against the evil of the prevailing domestic and social injustices wrought upon children. Dickens, who is normally accredited particularly for his social comment, wrote a religious book for his own children titled: The Life of Our Lord: Written Expressly for His Children By Charles Dickens. Written in 1849, twenty-one years before his death, it was not published until March 1934 at the specific wishes of his family. The first chapter begins, ‘My dear children, I am very anxious that you should know about the History of Jesus Christ. For everybody ought to know about him.’63

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The impassioned, graphic portrayal of the slums and Evangelical formulaic writing conventions of the so-called Street Arab Tale, particularly prevalent in books by authors such as Hesba Stretton, is also explored by Josephine Bratton in The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (1981).64 According to scholars Bratton and Doreen Rosman, writers in the earlier part of the century were often naïve, unlearned, and unsophisticated in literary skills, and they have argued that Evangelical writers, in particular, had little contact with the cultural world of serious art and literature.65 Understandably so, in a world that contrasted radically with the dystopian milieu they were writing about. But from the religious publishing boom of the 1850s and 1860s through increasingly commercial organisations such as the Religious Tract Society and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Bratton identified a shift in the religious and cultural messages being conveyed to children after the 1870 Education Act. As literacy skills improved66 and day schools superseded Sunday Schools, rewards such as Bibles and prayer books waned and were rapidly supplanted by the latest titles in juvenile fiction.67 Tracing the trajectory of developments in literacy skills in the nineteenth century, Richard D. Altick’s research critically analyses popular trends of the mass reading public. In terms of children’s literature, Altick’s vital data collection of the readers’ social and demographic composition, literacy, and sales figures has also helpfully revealed the distribution of the most popular works in children’s literature.68 He observed that whether working-class or bourgeoisie, the printed word became a major social phenomenon for the ‘common reader’ in the nineteenth century. The increased demand for English literature had evolved directly out of profound social and demographic shifts wherein the population of England and Wales more than trebled from nearly nine million in 1801 to thirty-­ two million in 1901. Although, of course, population figures cannot be used directly to measure trends in readership or distribution figures of religious literature, it may be safely speculated that such significant population increases along with the rise in literacy as previously discussed, indicate that children’s literature was set to become an increasingly prolific and profitable business. As Altick stated, ‘Since the printed word was the chosen weapon of aggressive, proselytising religion, the distribution of Bibles and didactic literature became a large industry.’69 Altick’s insightful section on the readership statistics of juvenile literature provides substantial evidence for the incalculable scale of the production and dissemination of Evangelical children’s literature. He noted as one example, that Hesba

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Stretton sold over one and a half million copies of Jessica’s First Prayer.70 The enormity of the scale and dissemination of Evangelical publications will be discussed further in this study when focusing on the individual authors, but it demonstrates my argument that the scope and scale cannot be ignored. As one of two fascinating texts written in the 1990s, on religion and morals in children’s literature, Patricia Demers’s Heaven Upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature to 1850 explored popular religious texts from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries on the theme of imagining ‘Heaven upon Earth’.71 My contention that, historically, religious children’s literature has been seriously neglected by the literary establishment is also reinforced by Demers, who set out to illustrate that religious literary themes are indeed worthy of further in-depth discussion. She has examined the way in which children’s catechisms, poetry, allegories, parables, short stories, novels, and plays all handle this specific theme. But whilst Demers certainly breaks open a cache of literature that has previously been secreted, I believe that nineteenth-century Evangelical children’s literature offers far more scope and deserves more theological analytical treatment to reveal its rich and complex nature as well as its fascinating historical community of authors. Two years after Demers’s work, Peter Hunt charted the flourishing of the moral, didactic tale and fervour of Evangelical themes in juvenile literature, alongside shifting concepts of childhood, in a tight timeframe between 1820 and 1850.72 According to Hunt, the early Calvinist emphasis on children’s original sinfulness was replaced as the century wore on by an increasingly sentimental and romantic conviction of the child’s innate virtue. As a result, writers such as Maria Charlesworth, mentioned previously, invited children to explore their vocation as Ministers and Evangelists in their own right.73 The conceptual development of childhood within Evangelical religious literature thus shifted from the need for didactic children’s literature to encourage children to become more proactive. This transformative theme of the child implementing the authoritative role of ‘evangel’ is expanded in Chap. 4 of this study. Hunt also questioned Darton’s selective survey, since Darton had declared he wished to review only literature that was produced primarily to give children pleasure, not to teach them to be good or to keep them quiet. Hunt astutely pointed out that no literature can ever be completely free from didacticism or adult ideological ‘freight’ because, as Hunt argued, children’s books written by adults convey more about how adult

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authors wished children to be, and often by implication society, than they do the interests of its juvenile readers. Evangelical authors and publishers clearly regarded their children’s books as integral to ‘God’s work’ and the conversion and transformation of society; they saw themselves as the chosen instruments of God to ensure that children received the Gospel message via their sanctified literature and in their language of Christian clichés. Hence, as Hunt clearly points out, much children’s literature was inescapably prescriptive and regulated by adults who were responsible for the subject matter and content that was imposed upon their young readers. Hunt raised an interesting further series of points on the feminisation of children’s religious literature, contending that, in general, it has not been exposed to the same extent of male hegemony that is often exercised in literature for adults. Women did, and continue to have, a major influence on children’s religious literature, and this is hardly surprising since Sunday Schools were historically a female domain within the spheres of religious education and domesticity. By the end of the nineteenth century, Sunday School teaching had become a well-established route into women’s wider civic and religious activity, as did philanthropy and missionary work. Indeed, the majority of Evangelical writers, certainly during the nineteenth century who expounded theological themes and who wrote literary theology for their juvenile readers, were female.74 And the accomplishment of writing, when formal preaching in the established Church was not a viable vocation for women, became in itself an act of theologising and renders such writers as popular, public theologians. Although they would never be publicly acknowledged as such in the period. However, since the majority of teachers and authors of children’s Christian literature were women, it has also been argued by David Newsome, Norman Vance, John Tosh et  al. that male writers and educational reformers such as Thomas Arnold, Thomas Hughes, and Charles Kingsley emerged mid-­ century with their emphasis upon ‘Christian Manliness’ precisely in part to counteract the overwhelmingly conceptual and increasingly feminisation of Christian education.75 There is certainly plenty of scope for rethinking and developing theories of children’s Christian literature in the light of theological discourse vis-à-vis gender studies, whether to explore further the prominence of so many female writers or indeed those nineteenth-century male authors whether clergy or laity, who have also been forgotten or neglected within the ivory towers of ecclesiastical history.

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Of course, the deluge of literature continued and expanded into the twentieth century, and although time and space restrict us in this particular study, Philip Cliff’s comprehensive treatment of the rise and development of the Sunday School Movement, 1780 to 1980, is a vital source for informative statistics beyond the period covered in this book. Cliff lists numerous examples of Sunday School library catalogues holding thousands of titles, as the extensive range of reading and teaching materials including the all-important Sunday School curriculum developed during the nineteenth-century and beyond.76 As this brief historiographical overview reveals, although scholarly treatments of children’s literature to date have raised many significant issues around periodisation, changing content, shifting notions of the child, and the relationship between the author, the reader, and the text, there is as yet no sustained treatment of theological themes as a central focus. I now turn to that subject as evidence for my argument.

Theological Themes in Evangelical Children’s Literature In selecting the theological themes, I have drawn upon three of the principal theological and doctrinal controversies during the period: (i) Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), (ii) Biblical Authority (the importance of literal interpretations of the Scriptures), and (iii) Eschatology (the doctrine of heaven, hell, death and judgement). That these three doctrinal emphases were consistently dominant within nineteenth-century children’s Christian literature will be demonstrated throughout this research. The influence brought to bear on children’s authors and their writing, by theologians, clergy, politicians, and publishers during the period was highly significant; therefore, this study argues that we cannot assume that Evangelical literature for children proffered merely simplistic, amusing, moral, and didactic tales for the young. Instead, I contend that many Evangelical authors, because of their personal commitment to faith, sought proactively to develop and disseminate their principal theologies through this mass medium. The authors’ primary aim was to influence the spiritual formation of children and ultimately, the future spiritual condition of the nation through the mass publication and dissemination of their doctrinal views. I also note that these views often became subject to a considerable change in emphasis across the century from a tenacious,

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inflexible, revivalist tone at the beginning to a softer, less proselytising approach towards the end of the century, but nevertheless the persistent aim was to win converts. Thus, in presenting this research in a thematically focused methodology, this study offers a contextualised analysis of these three highly pertinent nineteenth-century Evangelical doctrines and a critique of the form and content of religious children’s literature within its social and cultural milieu. As will be illustrated, Evangelicalism was a far more capacious phenomenon than has often hitherto been recognised, shaping the lives and minds of generations of Victorian children and beyond.

Signposting the Chapters In this interdisciplinary study, Chap. 2 assimilates theological and historical research incorporating definitions of Evangelicalism and contextualised socio-historical critiques on the community of authors and publishers. As a consequence, I conclude with my threefold working definition of nineteenth-­century Evangelical children’s literature through: (i) An exploration of the origins and scholarly definitions of Evangelicalism and the Evangelical Movement. (ii) The clarification of the Evangelical Movement’s nature, main characteristics, and principal doctrines. (iii) The identification and context of many of its historical community of authors and publishers across the spectrum of children’s Christian literature throughout the period. Thus determining that this is a distinctively Christian religious genre of children’s literature and a separate category worthy of further investigation. Evangelicalism was a movement, not a particular denomination, and so having established the commonality of the content and form of the literature, this chapter presents an overview of the historical community of authors that fall within this classification. I acknowledge that although they hail from differing traditions and denominations, they are included in this category by virtue of their own personal religious faith and credentials. This period was dominated primarily by predictable concerns over soteriology, biblical authority, and eschatology, as I will demonstrate throughout this study. Evangelical writings also frequently employed anti-­ Catholic sentiment and encompassed both public and political theological critiques. Chapter 3 situates Evangelical children’s literature within the contextual framework of late-eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century

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revolutionary themes and ideas. This area of research is significant for this study because as will be evidenced, the response of Evangelicals to the rising tide of revolution was considerable. Christian anti-revolutionary literature acted as a catalyst for the theological content and form of children’s publications during the period. It is proposed that Evangelicals created their own ‘counter-revolution’ by producing what Altick termed the ‘deluge’ of children’s literature in part as a response. Kevin Gilmartin has also made clear that during the nineteenth century, counter-revolutionary ideology and social control themes were recurrent aspects of children’s narratives developed initially through the tracts of Hannah More.77 Furthermore, such counter-revolutionary ideologies were propounded by leading Evangelical children’s authors from varying denominational backgrounds, all of whom used children’s literature as a device through which to communicate their theological views on revolution and social control.78 Thus, having defined my working hypothesis for what constitutes Evangelical children’s literature and established the authors’ ecclesiastical, political, and socio-historical context in the first three chapters, I proceed to conduct a detailed close textual analysis of the three selected dominant theological themes of soteriology, biblical authority, and eschatology. Drawing upon these themes provides evidence for the historical recovery of many forgotten authors, their works, their networks of support and affiliations, and the publishing companies that promoted and disseminated their material to the widest readership possible. Then, Chap. 4 provides the basis for identifying the numerous soteriological themes and ideas prevalent in nineteenth-century Evangelical children’s literature. An exploration of the fundamental biblical metanarrative in the Book of Genesis chapters 1–3 described as ‘The Fall of Man’ or ‘original sin’ puts into context the literary emphasis upon soteriology. This includes some of the main controversies surrounding nineteenth-century debates on infant baptismal regeneration that raged throughout the century, many of which were explicitly or implicitly addressed in tracts and novels by various children’s authors. Discourse, for example, focuses on the language employed and investigates contentious terms such as sin, repentance, and conversion, and also selected themes that point to children as both the recipients and evangels of the Gospel, children as missionary exemplars and child emigration as a paradigm of both spiritual and physical salvation. Chapter 5 then offers evidence of the significance and influence of biblical authority as a recurrent theme in Evangelical children’s literature and

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rules for a life of piety. Given that the Evangelical Movement was underpinned by the belief in the Bible as the absolute authoritative ‘Word of God’, this is hardly surprising. I discuss selected relevant material and those authors who compellingly directed children about the importance of believing and obeying biblical maxims as a paradigm for living. This chapter highlights the authors’ use of intertextuality, allegory, redaction and theories of gender and the socio-cultural understanding of Sabbatarianism. As Sönke Finnern has critically observed, the selection, presentation, and ethical application of biblical accounts offer a fascinating insight into the potential of narratology for Christian pedagogy.79 In Chap. 6, the eschatological themes of heaven, hell, death, and judgement, are examined, particularly in relation to the resurgence of biographical narratives of the conversion, piety, and joyful deaths of children as a recurring motif in Evangelical children’s literature. Eschatology was not a new theological controversy in the nineteenth century, but it was discussed with more intensity than in any previous age. The Victorians were renowned for their preoccupation with death, and Evangelical literature offered highly prescriptive spiritual guidance that was to be understood literally and adhered to rigorously. Authors and publishers offered a plethora of devotional literature and guidance manuals on ars moriendi, the art of dying, carefully crafted, constructed, and served up in a palatable or more often unpalatable form for children, suitably adapted to the class, gender, intellectual ability, and the churchmanship of the child. The Epilogue summarises the ways in which this study is pertinent not only for the historical development of nineteenth-century children’s Christian literature but also its spiritual legacy and impact on succeeding generations. By contextualising theology and childhood as a developing field of theological scholarship, it identifies and breaks new ground in the historical origins across the wider current spectrum of child theology, theologies of childhood, and the creators of modified theologies for children. It acts principally as a lens through which to critique the implicit and explicit construction of customised theologies in children’s literature and questions whether children were simply passive recipients of such resolute teaching or active participants as both readers and exemplars. It examines the effectiveness of the Church’s influence on the nation during the period 1780–1900 and its subsequent outcomes in the twentieth century and beyond.

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Concluding Reflections Throughout the period the Christian Church realised the potential of recruiting and sustaining children within their congregations using whatever means, mostly through Sunday Schools and literature as a means of effective communication, to eventually become active members of the Church and to ensure its continuity. As well as the plethora of literature, children’s societies also emerged later in the period including the highly popular uniformed organisations such as ‘Brigades’, whose ethos was of course Christian and whose claim was to meet the educational, physical, and, most importantly, the moral and spiritual needs of children. The needs of the societies were met in practical ways by many philanthropists and patrons drawn from the aristocracy as well as wealthy Christian businessmen and entrepreneurs including prominent families such as Rowntree, Cadbury, MacIntosh, Colman, and also city bankers who financed Sunday Schools, Sunday School books and materials, and also Christian societies for children. The total enrolment of Sunday Schools in Britain was noted as three and a half million by 1870 rising to almost six million by 1903. However, a decline in attendance was noticeable after 1910. This was due to a number of factors according to Laqueur and Cliff, but quite significantly the diminishing interest in Christian spirituality amongst youth.80 I discuss this further in the Epilogue. Therefore, this study provides an original investigation and set of conclusions in four related areas. First, by taking a predominantly theological rather than sociological, historical, or English literary approach, it argues that nineteenth-century Evangelical children’s literature is of sufficient significance, theologically stylistic consistency, and substantive in corpus to be treated as a separate genre or literary category, as distinct from wider literary historical treatments of children’s moral and didactic literature of the period. Rather than seeking to simply educate children to be good, upright, moral citizens, I argue that Evangelical writers during this period sought to convert, and recruit followers via the theological themes and ideas conveyed in their publications because of their own personal faith commitment. Of significance to this study is the differentiation between authors of moral and didactic texts who focused more generally on improving children’s education, behaviour, and manners, and Evangelical authors who aimed to inculcate children in specific theological doctrines, influencing their religious and spiritual as well as social and cultural formation. Patricia

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Demers has rightly argued that there is an incontestable link between morality and religion in the nineteenth century.81 Yet my research has revealed that the tendency of scholarly approaches to nineteenth-century children’s literature is to conflate these two categories to such an extent that has thus led precisely to the exclusion of any theological analysis. I argue that Evangelical writers aimed not simply to educate their children through the medium of informative, aesthetically attractive literature in order to produce morally upright, church-going citizens, but rather to ensure that their children were not only spiritually ‘fit for purpose’ in this life but, more significantly, adequately prepared to attain salvation in the afterlife. The moral lessons and values they imposed, often through systems of rewards and punishments, were simply the visible manifestations of the foundational strength of the authors’ underlying belief in Evangelical doctrines. Second, while a detailed survey of the diverse range of the churchmanship of Evangelical authors reveals denominational disparity, it provides evidence for spiritual commonality as their motivational impetus for writing. There were, of course, countless children’s authors from various Christian traditions producing Sunday School materials, for example, Roman Catholic, Tractarian, and Dissenting churches at work during the period and I offer a brief summary of these in Chap. 2, but my main focus throughout is the voluminous output of the authors concerned with the Evangelical Movement. Third, this study represents the first theological and historical critical analysis of the three predominant Evangelical themes of soteriology, biblical authority, and eschatology in children’s literature and their impact upon the formation of nineteenth-century childhood spirituality. And finally, as mentioned above, this study provides a wealth of information about significant Christian authors and their profiles and classifies the types and categories of nineteenth-century Evangelical children’s literature, tracing the ecclesiastical networks and religious affiliations between the authors and publishers of Evangelical literature for children alongside the theologians, scholars, and clergy of the period. Evangelical literature became one of the most prolific and profitable forms of publishing in the nineteenth century with a large proportion of its output aimed at children and it was eventually developed into a vast industry whose magnitude, scope, and scale are discussed throughout this book. Therefore, in what ways did Evangelicalism influence the growth and content of children’s literature and how do we define Evangelicalism? A

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more nuanced working definition of this term is integral to a fuller understanding of its far more capacious character than has hitherto been recognised. Rather than dismissing Evangelical children’s literature as simplistic, formulaic, moral didacticism, I argue in the following chapter that, in attempting to meet the eclectic demands of a multitude of readers, nineteenth-­century authors and publishers alike sought to develop an all-­ encompassing, highly competitive genre of children’s religious literature.

Notes 1. For scholarship on the complex debates surrounding the term ‘genre’ see Chandler, Daniel. An Introduction to Genre Theory. PDF—https://www. researchgate.net/publication/242253420_An_Introduction_to_Genre_ Theory, accessed 08.05.22. Duff, David. (Ed) Modern Genre Theory (Harlow: Longman 2000). Kress, Gunther. Communication and Culture: An Introduction (Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press, 1988) p. 107. Some scholars argue that classification methods used to categorise literary works could mislead, restrict, and undermine the text by judging it according to labels that do not accurately fit the work. Such marketing strategies may not only influence the sales of publications but also the writing process and content. 2. Altick (1957. p. 101). 3. See the section below on the historicization of children’s literature for a review of critical analyses by a range of scholars of children’s literature of this period, who refer only in the main to the moral and didactic nature of the material, whereas this study focuses uniquely on its specifically religious and theological content and style. 4. See Darton, F. J. Harvey (1966) Chapter 6. 5. For a discussion of more populist historical uses of the term ‘theology’, see Morgan, Sue. A Passion for Purity: Ellice Hopkins and the politics of gender in the late-Victorian Church (Bristol: University of Bristol Press, 1999). p. 155. 6. For a list of works on Childhood, Theology, and Spirituality, see note 13. See also the Epilogue where I expand on Child Theology as a developing field, and Rahner, Karl. ‘Ideas for a Theology of Childhood’, in Theological Investigations Volume VIII: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2 Trans: David John Bourke. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971). Blair K (2016) Children’s literature and theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Journal of Literature and Theology, 30 (2), pp.  125–130. P.  Hunt, ‘The Loss of the Father and of God in English-Language Children’s Literature (1800–2000)’ in J. De Maeyer et al. (eds.) Religion,

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Children’s Literature and Modernity in Western Europe 1750–2000 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005), pp. 295–303, p. 295. 7. Smale, Irene Euphemia. Robert Raikes and the Origins of the Sunday School Movement: A Case Study in Late Eighteenth Century Philanthropism, submitted as a BA Dissertation, University of Chichester, 2004. The Child in the Midst: Theological Themes and Ideas in Nineteenth Century Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900, submitted as a thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Southampton 2015. 8. For the origins of the SS Movement see Laqueur, T.W. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working-Class Culture 1780–1850 (New Haven London: Yale University Press, 1976). Cliff, P.  B. The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England 1780–1900 (Redhill: National Christian Education Council, 1986). 9. See Altick, p. 100. 10. Avery, Gillian. Childhood’s Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children’s Fiction 1770–1950 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975). Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965). Darton, Harvey. Children’s Books in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Hunt, Peter. Children’s Literature an Illustrated History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 11. Secondary source literature has been drawn from the work of English literature scholars cited in the historiography section. 12. Many of these texts continue to be popular and are currently available both in digital and reprinted versions. 13. See—Bakke, O. M. When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, Trans. Brian McNeil (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005); Berryman, Jerome W. Children and the Theologians: Clearing the Way for Grace (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2010); Bunge, Marcia J. (Ed.) The Child in Christian Thought and Practice (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B.  Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001); Bunge, Marcia J.; Fretheim, Terence E.; and Gaventa, Beverly Roberts (Eds.) The Child in the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B.  Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008); Jensen, David H. Graced Vulnerability: A Theology of Childhood (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2005); Lawson, Kevin (Ed.) Understanding Children’s Spirituality: Theology, Research, and Practice (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2012); Mercer, Joyce Ann. Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology of Childhood, annotated ed. (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2007); Miller-McLemore, Bonnie J. Let The Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective, 1st ed. (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2003); Phillips, Anne. The Faith of Girls (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Shier-Jones, Angela. (Ed) Children of God: Towards a Theology of Childhood (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007).

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14. See Cunningham, Hugh. The Invention of Childhood (London: BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd., 2006). 15. For separate spheres ideology see: Cordea, Diana. Two Approaches on The Philosophy Of Separate Spheres In Mid-Victorian England: John Ruskin and John Stuart Mill (Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 71 (2013) pp. 115–122. 16. See Bratton, Josephine. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1981). p. 102. 17. Grenby, Matthew Orville. The Child Reader 1700–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 18. Williams, Abigail. The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home (Yale: University Press, 2017) p. 105. 19. See Chap. 5 of this study on Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. 20. Grenby (2011. p. 11). 21. For a discussion on the various methods employed see Chap. 4 of this study. 22. According to F. J. H. Darton, its only shortcoming was that it inevitably omitted works during the period when children’s literature in the modern sense really ‘grew up’. See Darton, F. J. H. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932). p. v. 23. Field, E.  M. The Child and His Book: Some Account of the History and Progress of Children’s Literature in England (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1892). 24. Field. p. 13. 25. Watts, Isaac. Divine Songs, attempted in easy language for children. By I.  Watts, D.D.  To which are added poems, instructive and entertaining (Burslem: John Tregortha, 1715). See the CTS Hockliffe Project: http://hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/0462.html, accessed 15.08.22. The British Library catalogue lists over one hundred different editions published during the nineteenth century, including translations into Welsh, Manx, Yoruba, and a phonetic language. It was more popular in the nineteenth century, and many more new editions published in the eighty-five years post 1800 than in the similar period before. 26. Field. p. 4. 27. Altick (1957. p. 388). 28. See—Constable, Rosalind. Department of Amplification, The New Yorker, 4 March 1950. 29. Including A Life of Our Saviour (n.d.); The Star of Promise or From Bethlehem to Calvary (1873); Papa’s Stories for Younger Children (1850); The Children of Scripture (1856 & 1864); The Story of Stories or Bible Narratives for the Very Young (1875).

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30. Son of an Irish Protestant clergyman with strong Calvinist leanings and related to a family of numerous authors. J.  T. Sheridan le Fanu wrote Gothic tales, mystery novels, and horror fiction. 31. Drabble, Margaret. The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws (Edinburgh: Grove Atlantic Ltd., 2009). p. 237. 32. Drabble. p. 236. 33. Darton (1932, p. 1). 34. The high esteem for Darton’s work continues in the prestigious award given in his honour by the Children’s Books History Society. 35. Darton. p. 158. 36. Ibid., p. 179. 37. Ibid., p. 180. 38. Ibid., p. 180. 39. Sherwood, Mary Martha. and Sherwood, Henry. The Life and Times of Mrs Sherwood (1775–1851): From the Diaries of Captain and Mrs Sherwood (London: Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd., 1910). 40. Muir, Percy H.  English Children’s Books: 1600–1900 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1954). 41. Muir, p. 87. 42. Ibid., p. 87. 43. Ibid., p. 83. 44. Avery (1965). 45. Avery, p. 41. 46. Avery (1965, p. 41). 47. Avery (1975, p.  120). The Sunday Fairy was a comic published by the Amalgamated Press (AP). It was launched on 10 May 1919, renamed The Children’s Sunday Fairy on 11 October 1919, then The Children’s Fairy on 1 November 1919. On 16 April 1921 it was re-launched as Bubbles and the Children’s Fairy. The AP was a comic, magazine and newspaper publishing company founded in 1901 by Alfred Harmsworth and became the largest newspaper company in the UK under the banner of IPC magazines and Fleetway publications. 48. Avery (1975, p. 9). 49. Avery (1965, p. 25). 50. Avery (1975, p. 66). 51. Ibid., p. 70. 52. Ibid., p. 74. 53. Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-century Evangelical Writing for Children (Broxbourne: Five Owls Press Ltd., 1979). 54. Ibid., p. 1. 55. Ibid., p. 2.

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56. The word ‘evangel’ is used throughout this study to describe an evangelist or messenger of the Gospel message of the Christian faith and its affinity with Evangelicalism. 57. As a missionary to India most of Tucker’s work was published for Indian children. 58. Charlesworth, Maria Louisa. Ministering Children: A Tale Dedicated to Childhood (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1854). 59. Stretton, Hesba. Jessica’s First Prayer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1860). 60. Cutt (1979, p. 101). 61. For the effects of tract literature see, Cutt. 1979, Chapter VII Poverty in Tract Literature. 62. See Cutt, 1979, Chapter VII on Poverty in Tract Literature and Walton, Mrs A.  C. A Peep Behind the Scenes (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1877). 63. Dickens, Marie. (ed.) The Life of Our Lord: Written Expressly for His Children by Charles Dickens (London: Associated Newspapers Ltd. 1934). 64. Bratton, Josephine. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble, 1981). p. 81 65. Ibid., p. 18. Also, Doreen Rosman addresses this point in Evangelicals and Culture (London: Croom, Helm Ltd., 1984). 66. According to Altick, for example, in 1841 the percentage of literate males in England and Wales was 67.3 and females was 51.1, but by 1900 had risen to 97.2 per cent and 96.8 per cent, respectively. See Altick, p. 171. 67. Bratton, p. 18. 68. See Altick, Appendix B: Best Sellers. 69. Altick, p. 100. 70. Altick, pp. 388–389. 71. Demers, Patricia. Heaven Upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature to 1850 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993). 72. Hunt, Peter. Children’s Literature an Illustrated History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 73. See Charlesworth, Maria Louisa. Ministering Children: A Tale Dedicated to Childhood (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1854). Circulated over 300,000 copies during her lifetime and was designed to teach children by example. It was especially popular as a ‘Reward Book’ for Sunday School prizes and was also translated into French, German, and Swedish. 74. See, for example, Melnyk, Julie. Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers (New York: Garland Press, 1998). And Styler, Rebecca. Literary Theology by Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Hilton, Mary. Women and

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the Shaping of the Nation’s Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750–1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007). 75. There is now an extensive literature on Christian manliness or ‘Muscular Christianity’. See, for example, leading early texts in the field such as Newsome, David. Godliness and Good Learning (London: John Murray, 1961); Vance, Norman. The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Tosh, John. and Roper, Michael. (Eds) Manliness and Morality: Middle-class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991). 76. See Cliff, P. B., 1986. 77. Gilmartin, Kevin. Writing against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832 (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Chapter 2 Hannah More and Counterrevolutionary Moral Reform. Kathryn Sutherland, ‘Hannah More’s Counter-Revolutionary Feminism’, in Revolution in Writing: British Literary Responses to the French Revolution, ed. Kelvin Everest (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991). 78. Ibid., p. 99. 79. See Finnern, Sönke. Narration in Religious Discourse in The Living Handbook of Narratology, (Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2014). 80. See Cliff, P.  B. pp.  165–204. See also Laqueur, T.W. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working-Class Culture 1780–1850 (New Haven London: Yale University Press, 1976). 81. Demers, Patricia. Heaven Upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature, to 1850 (University of Tennessee Press, 1993). p. 1.

Bibliography Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1880–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). Avery, Gillian. Childhood’s Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children’s Fiction 1770–1950 (London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1975). Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965). Bakke, O.  M. When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, Trans. Brian McNeil (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005). Balleine, George Reginald. A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908). Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyam, 1989).

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Bebbington, David W. The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005). Berryman, Jerome W. Children and the Theologians: Clearing the Way for Grace (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2010). Berryman, Jerome W. Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach To Religious Education, 1st ed. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1999). Boff, Leonardo. and Boff, Clodovis. Introducing Liberation Theology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987). Bratton, Josephine. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble, 1981). Bunge, Marcia J. (Ed.) The Child in Christian Thought and Practice (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001). Bunge, Marcia J. Fretheim, Terence E. and Gaventa, Beverly Roberts (Eds.) The Child in the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008). Cavalletti, Sofia. The Religious Potential of the Child: 6 to 12 Year Old (Illinois: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Publications, 2002). Chadwick, Owen. The Victorian Church (London: S.C.M. Press, 1987). Charlesworth, Maria Louisa. Ministering Children: A Tale Dedicated to Childhood (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1854). Cliff, P. B. The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England 1780–1900 (Redhill: National Christian Education Council, 1986). Cordea, Diana. Two Approaches on The Philosophy of Separate Spheres In Mid-­ Victorian England: John Ruskin and John Stuart Mill (Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 71 (2013). Croce, Diane Della. and Everett, Graham. Emerging Meaning: Reading as a Process, in Robertson, Alice, and Smith, Barbara. Teaching in the 21st Century: Adapting Writing Pedagogies to the College Curriculum (London: Routledge, 1999). Cunningham, Hugh. The Invention of Childhood (London: BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2006). Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-century Evangelical Writing for Children (Broxbourne: Five Owls Press ltd., 1979). Daggers, Jenny. Postcolonial Theology of Religions: Particularism and Pluralism in World Christianity (London: Routledge, 2013). Daggers, Jenny. The British Christian Women’s Movement: A Rehabilitation of Eve (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002). Darton, F. J. H. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932). De Mause, Lloyd. The History of Childhood. (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974). Demers, Patricia. Heaven Upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature to 1850 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993).

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Devitt, Amy J. Writing Genres (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). Drabble, Margaret. The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws, (Edinburgh: Grove Atlantic Ltd., 2009). Field, E. M. The Child and His Book: Some Account of the History and Progress of Children’s Literature in England. (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1892). Finnern, Sönke. Narration in Religious Discourse in The Living Handbook of Narratology, (Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2014). Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983). Ford, David. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918., 3rd ed. (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005). Gibellini, Rosino. The Liberation Theology Debate (Maryknoll, New  York: Orbis Books, 1988). Gilmartin, Kevin. Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832 (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Grenby, Matthew Orville. The Child Reader 1700–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Gutierrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, trans. Inda, Caridad. and Eagleson, John. Revised (New York: Orbis Books, 1988). Hay, David. The Spirit of the Child: Revised Edition, (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006). Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). Hunt, Peter. Children’s Literature an Illustrated History (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995). Jay, Elizabeth. The Religion of the Heart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Jensen, David H. Graced Vulnerability: A Theology of Childhood (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press. 2005). Laqueur, T.W. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working-Class Culture 1780–1850 (New Haven London: Yale University Press, 1976). Larsen, Timothy. “Defining and Locating Evangelicalism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology. Edited by Larsen, Timothy. and Treier, Daniel. 1–14. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Larsen, Timothy. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals (Leicester: Inter Varsity Press, 2003). Lawson, Kevin (Ed.) Understanding Children’s Spirituality: Theology, Research, and Practice (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2012). Lovegrove, Deryck (Ed.) The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism. (London: Routledge, 2002).

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Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor (1851), Morning Chronicle Volume I. Melnyk, Julie. Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers (New York: Garland Press, 1998). Mercer, Joyce Ann. Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology of Childhood, annotated ed. (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2007). Miller-McLemore, Bonnie J. Let The Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective, 1st ed. (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2003). Moltmann, Jürgen. et al., Theology of Play (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Morgan, Sue. A Passion for Purity: Ellice Hopkins and the politics of gender in the late-Victorian Church (Bristol: University of Bristol Press, 1999). Muir, Percy H. English Children’s Books: 1600–1900 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1954). Myers, Mitzi. ‘Missed Opportunities and Critical Malpractice: New Historicism and Children’s Literature’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 13, 1 (1988). Newsome, David. Godliness and Good Learning (London: John Murray, 1961). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the British Academy, 2004–2015). Phillips, Anne. The Faith of Girls (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Rahner, Karl. ‘Ideas for a Theology of Childhood’, in Theological Investigations Volume VIII: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971). Trans: David John Bourke. Richards, Anne. Through the Eyes of a Child: New Insights in Theology from a Child’s Perspective (London: Church House Publishing, 2009). Rosman, Doreen. Evangelicals and Culture (London: Croom, Helm Ltd., 1984). Rowland, Christopher. The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983). Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985). Schwarzkopf, Jutta. Women in the Chartist Movement (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1991). Sherwood, Mary Martha. and Sherwood, Henry. The Life and Times of Mrs Sherwood (1775–1851): From the Diaries of Captain and Mrs Sherwood (London: Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd., 1910). Shier-Jones, Angela. (Ed) Children of God: Towards a Theology of Childhood (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007).

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Smale, Irene Euphemia. The Child in the Midst: Theological Themes and Ideas in Nineteenth Century Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900, submitted as a thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Southampton 2015. Smith, Mark (Ed.) British Evangelical Identities Past and Present: Aspects of the History and Sociology of Evangelicalism in Britain and Ireland. (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2008). Storr, Vernon F. The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913). Stretton, Hesba. Jessica’s First Prayer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1860). Styler, Rebecca. Literary Theology by Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Sutcliffe, John. Tuesday’s Child: A Reader for Christian Educators. (Birmingham: Christian Education Publications, 2001). Taylor, Ann and Jane Taylor. Hymns for Infant Minds: XV The Way to Cure Pride (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1808). Taylor, Helen. Sabbath Bells: A Series of Simple Lays for Christian Children (Piccadilly; London: Edwards and Hughes; Hatchard and Son, 1845). Tosh, John. and Roper, Michael. (Eds) Manliness and Morality: Middle-class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991). Vance, Norman. The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Walton, Mrs O.  F. A Peep Behind the Scenes (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1877). Watts, Isaac. Divine songs, attempted in easy language for children. By I.  Watts, D.D.  To which are added poems, instructive and entertaining (Burslem: John Tregortha, 1715). Weber, Hans Ruedi. Jesus and the Children: Biblical Resources for Study and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979). Wheeler, Michael. Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Willmer, Haddon. and White, Keith. Entry Point: Towards Child Theology with Matthew 18 (London: WTL Publications Ltd, 2015). Wolffe, John. The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, Chalmer, and Finney (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007).

CHAPTER 2

Defining Distinguishing and Disseminating Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900

All the little Sunday books in those days were Mrs Sherwood’s, Mrs Cameron’s and Charlotte Elizabeth’s, and little did my mother guess how much Calvinism one could suck out of them, even while diligently reading the story and avoiding the lesson (Coleridge, Christabel. Charlotte Mary Yonge, Her Life and Letters (London; New York: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1903). p. 97.). —Charlotte Yonge

Introduction Christabel Coleridge’s biographical account drawn from the life and letters of the renowned High Church children’s author Charlotte Yonge was published by Macmillan and Co. in the year 1903. The above quotation from that volume gives an interesting insight into Yonge’s childhood years and her personal experience of Evangelical theology that emerged from her Sunday reading. Catherine Spence also offered a satirically entertaining insight into the authorial devices that Evangelicals could zealously employ in the writing of sensationalist and persuasive propagandistic publications designed to appeal to nineteenth-century readers, for example: ‘At the present time there is nothing that pays so well as an exciting religious novel on evangelical principles. Make all your unbelievers and worldly people villains, and crown your heroine, after unheard-of perils and persecutions, make your fashionable conversation of your worldly people slightly blackguardly, and that of your pets very inane, with spots

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. E. Smale, Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5_2

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of religion coming out very strong now and then, and you will have more readers than Dickens, Bulwer, or Thackeray.’1 Richard Altick observed that as well as books, various types of Evangelical literature were set to become a popular and ubiquitous part of the nineteenth-century landscape. He declared that the whole country was awash with tracts that were flung unreservedly from carriage windows, distributed at railway station platforms, army camps, on naval vessels, in prisons, hospitals and workhouses and that: ‘[T]hey were distributed in huge quantities at Sunday and day schools, as rewards for punctuality, diligence, decorum and deloused heads’.2 Thus, the ‘Evangelical Revival’ that began in the eighteenth-century was responsible not only for an unparalleled interest in children’s spirituality but was of course the catalyst for the production of the deluge of Evangelical material in the succeeding century. The carefully crafted and customised publications were developed specifically with children’s readership in mind. The origins of the Sunday School Movement can be traced to this period, and it was Evangelicalism more than any other religious movement that recognised the spiritual potential in children and resolved to actively pursue the conversion and nurture of future generations ‘in the ways of the Lord’. As Patricia Demers stated, ‘They also showed great confidence in children’s capacity and malleability’.3 The magnitude and scope of this material I believe renders it a ‘distinctive genre’ that has been completely overlooked, as has the passionate commitment and determination of its authors and publishers. I will turn to this subject now by way of clarification.

Defining Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Children’s Literature as a Distinctive Literary Genre As referred to in Chap. 1, genre theory within the bounds of literature has moved away from its customary elementary conventions of poetry, prose, plays, letters, journals, etc., and genres have become far more narrowly defined as subjective constructs of their underlying purpose by their writers, for their readers, and their particular context. In Aesthetic Approaches to Children’s Literature: An Introduction, Maria Nikolajeva, notes that the word ‘genre’ is derived from the Latin genus meaning ‘race’ or ‘kind’, and the word ‘gender’ is of the same derivation. She argues that while we may

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classify ‘children’s literature’ as a homogeneous genre, we can identify and define other genres within that corpus through a comparison of the texts, thus deepening and defining particular further genres or sub-genres.4 The problem arises when boundaries overlap or are blurred, for example, fantasy literature may also convey an underlying ideological meaning or layers of meaning. Whilst Kingsley’s allegorical tale of The Water Babies5 is often assumed to be a social comment on the dreadful conditions of child chimney sweeps, it has also been critically analysed with reference to Darwin’s origin of species, and also Kingsley’s obsession with sanitation and the spiritual merits of baptismal regeneration. I refer to this further in Chap. 4. So with these obstacles in mind, how do I define and demarcate nineteenth-­century Evangelical children’s literature as a distinctive literary genre and why? In this chapter, I offer my threefold method for identifying and defining this as a particular genre thus: (i) Through an exploration of mainstream scholarly definitions of Evangelicalism and the Evangelical Movement. (ii) By identifying its main characteristics, and principal doctrines found prevalent in the texts. (iii) Research conducted on the context, motivation, and beliefs of its historical community of authors and publishers. The speed at which this vast body of Christian literature for children developed was unprecedented, as the tidal wave of Anglican High, Low and Broad Church, Roman Catholic, and Dissenting publications gathered momentum throughout the century. The definition of the principal term, Evangelical, will be considered in greater detail below. However, I need to point out that I apply the term Evangelical beginning with the upper case with reference to the Evangelical Movement as a proper noun when demarcating it as part of the unique movement, group, or style, because of its distinctive material content. I also acknowledge that it may be used as a descriptive term in the sense that a type of communication may be evangelical (lower case), that is, zealous, enthusiastic, etc., without reference to the Evangelical Movement per se. Research reveals that a number of theologians have used both the upper and lower case, which also adds to the general confusion, but the consensus appears to use the capitalised form when associated with that particular movement. As noted previously, my initial research into the origins of the Sunday School Movement noted a striking absence of any sustained critical theological examination with reference to Evangelical children’s literature. Therefore, the first issue of import in selecting, researching and constructing the relevant authors’ profiles was the very term ‘Evangelical’, that is,

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what constitutes nineteenth-century Evangelical children’s literature and what methods might be used to identify its authors? In addition, how might my working definition of ‘Evangelical’ substantiate my further contention that Evangelical children’s literature should be classified as a distinctive literary genre? My starting point was a comprehensive study of scholarly treatments of nineteenth-century Evangelicalism beginning with the seminal works of theologians David Bebbington, John Wolffe, Timothy Larsen, Deryck Lovegrove, Mark Smith, and Elisabeth Jay.6 As my findings illustrate, Evangelicalism has proved a somewhat elusive phenomenon due in part to its shifting and nebulous nature. Furthermore, on the basis of a broad consensus of historiographical opinion, many relevant Evangelical authors were identified through numerous biographical and historical sources.7 This research is based upon my own originally constructed database of biographical information consisting of an extensive sample in excess of seventy authors’ profiles to date.8 It was compiled specifically for the purpose of identifying more obscure and neglected as well as prominent authors of children’s literature during the nineteenth century, whose own religious position or thematic content may be designated ‘Evangelical’. The authors were initially selected based on a number of critical questions that interrogated, for example, their churchmanship at the time of writing, into which religious tradition were they born, subsequently educated, and spiritually sustained? What was the ecclesial context of their families and their loyalty to that tradition over time? Many, of course, were born into large families, and so the influence of parents and siblings was also explored. Were other notable mentors, patrons, or publishers influential in their writing? And finally, what were their authorial intentions, for example, what did they write about, and for whom did they write? Second, by turning to primary sources, a further systematic search was conducted to identify Evangelical publishers and book titles by author and to note the frequency of particular theological references and themes within the published material. In this process, a substantial corpus of various literary formats was identified. Evangelical authors and publishers worked collaboratively and were resolutely committed to the circulation of diverse types of reading material specifically targeted for children’s readership, bearing in mind also children’s bookshops emerged after 1810.9 In the course of my research, multifarious types of Evangelical literature have been identified, including Sunday School reward books, tract fiction,

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novels, missionary tales, parables, instruction manuals, periodicals, hymns, prayers, published sermons, catechisms, and ephemera. Finally, an examination of the wider socio-historical, political, and theological contexts in which the children’s authors lived and wrote, based on their own spiritual experience, was to prove most productive in defining a workable structure evidenced by their specific literary themes and the historical community of authors. Mitzi Myers has argued for the validity of integrating text and socio-historic context, demonstrating how the vital interventions of extra literary, cultural formations shape literary discourse, and the influence of literary practices upon life. ‘By shaping the psychic and moral consciousness of young readers but also by performing many more diverse kinds of cultural work, from satisfying authorial fantasies to legitimating or subverting the dominant class and gender ideologies. Such an approach would need to explore the context and environment of a particular tale or poem, the needs of its audience and the kinds of cultural statements and questions the work was responding to.’10 This approach has proved vital for this research. In addition, the circumstances surrounding production, publishing history, and reception were examined, as Diane Della Croce and Graham Everett contend in Emerging Meaning: Reading as a Process, ‘Text and context are always part of the same process, the same moment; they are the inseparable essence of intertextuality which incorporates the world of the writer, the history of the text in the world, and the world of the reader.’11 Throughout this study, a comprehensive analysis of Evangelical children’s literature, its authors and readership, sought to establish this vital triangulation between the author, the text, and the reader.12 Therefore, leading questions through which such contextualised analyses have been made include: To what extent did children’s Christian literature reflect broader ecclesiastical or political controversies during the period? And might that be a way to identify dominant or significant themes underpinned by the writers’ own theological views? This methodological approach of contextualising and critically analysing the themes led to the realisation that Evangelical children’s literature had far more influence than has been previously acknowledged. By working thematically and taking the three central theological debates as my starting point opened the way to the identification of numerous soteriological controversies that raged throughout the century, many of which were explicitly or implicitly addressed in tracts and novels by various children’s authors. For example, prevailing issues such as the rites of infant

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baptismal regeneration and confirmation, church attendance, ritual in worship and tradition are apparent. Such soteriological themes led to publications focusing on the importance of biblical authority as commonplace. The use of emotive storytelling in nineteenth-century religious education was very popular; biblical narratives were adapted by authors and Sunday School teachers alike, usually through teaching materials and illustrated children’s Bibles. Finally, as might be expected amongst Evangelical authors, eschatological emphases, or the doctrine of the four last things of heaven, hell, death, and judgement were propounded by prominent authors. Death, bereavement, and funeral rituals were a preoccupation with Victorians in particular, and authors published a plethora of consolation literature for children’s deathbed scenes.13 In presenting this research via a thematically focused methodology, this study offers a fully contextualised analysis of these three highly pertinent nineteenth-century Evangelical doctrines and a critique of the form and content of children’s Christian literature within its social and cultural milieu. As will be illustrated, Evangelicalism was a far more capacious phenomenon than has hitherto been recognised, shaping the lives and minds of nineteenth-century children and their descendants for over 200 years.

An Exploration of Scholarly Definitions of Evangelicalism and the Evangelical Movement The evolution of Evangelicalism between the years 1780 and 1900 became renowned over time for its historical nebulousness, as Andrew Boyd Hilton observed: ‘The word “Evangelical” is seriously inadequate, being in some ways too vague and in others too precise. … While almost every historian acknowledges the role of Evangelicalism in shaping the mentality of the period, none has yet defined its impact at all precisely, and the task may well be impossible, for it was not a precise phenomenon.’14 Scholarly definitions, however, have attempted to demythologise Evangelicalism and to establish its doctrinal principles. As David Bebbington summarised in his seminal tome, Evangelical religion was a popular Protestant movement encountered across numerous institutional forms and better regarded as a spiritual climate or attitude rather than the property of a particular denomination.15 Bebbington’s concisely neat summation is encompassed in his quadrilateral schema of conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism. Whereas Elisabeth Jay’s bipartite study

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juxtaposed Anglican Evangelicalism vis-à-vis her literary criticism of selected nineteenth-century novels, her focus is solely on the manifestation of the Evangelical impetus uniquely within the Church of England. 16 However, her fascinating recovery of Sir Richard Hill’s observations on the various disparaging characterisations provocatively apportioned to Evangelicals at the turn of the century by critics includes terms such as: ‘Methodists–Enthusiasts–Schismatics–Evangelical preachers–Disturbers of quiet congregations–Calvinists–Puritans–Canters–Hypocrites–Fanatics, and even Antinomians’.17 Thus, the amorphous nature of Evangelicalism meant that definitions of the term were fraught with ambiguity from the outset and dependent on one’s theological outlook. I return to this discussion again later in this chapter when exploring various denominational approaches to Evangelicalism. However, on a related and important stylistic point, in her definition of the word ‘Evangelical’, Jay differentiates between the use of the upper and lower cases, whereby she denotes the use of the upper case ‘Evangelical’ to members of the Anglican Church who assented to a shared group of doctrines commonly identified as ‘Evangelical’ and the lower case ‘evangelical’ with reference to non-Anglicans (mainly Dissenters) of like mind.18 It is important to note that Jay’s argument in defence of this stylistic distinction states that the negative influence of the French Revolution caused establishment Anglicans to disassociate themselves from Dissenters for fear of accusations of religious and political radicalism or sedition. I develop the discussion on the effects of revolutionary ideas on Evangelical children’s literature in Chap. 3 of this study. Altick uses a similar distinction, the term ‘evangelical’ uncapitalised, he designates to nineteenth century Protestant or so-called Low Church denominations ranging from Methodists to older dissenting churches, for example, Baptists. For those belonging to the Evangelical Anglican wing he applies ‘Evangelical’ beginning with the upper case.19 Nevertheless, Bebbington noted that while there were doctrinal divergences between certain denominations, the common spiritual parentage of Anglican and non-Anglican Evangelicals was undeniable. He has argued further that he has applied the term ‘Evangelical’ beginning with the upper case to any aspect of the organisational ‘Evangelical Movement’ from its origins in the 1730s.20 In this study, the upper-case ‘E’ appropriation is used concerning any aspect of the Evangelical Movement. However, as previously stated, we need to acknowledge the ambiguity of the term since there were, of course, those authors who did not wish to be

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associated with the Evangelical Movement but who wrote just as enthusiastically and passionately about the tenets of their faith. In particular, those authors from within a High Church context who propounded the importance of the sacraments such as baptism, confirmation, and holy communion, also children’s authors from the Broad Church and Roman Catholic traditions. In cases where such authors, who would never have claimed to be associated with the Evangelical Movement but nevertheless are ‘evangelical’ in the style, intent, and content of their texts, the word ‘evangelical’ beginning in the lower case is used as a descriptive term with reference to their commitment to promote and expound their faith through their writing. The origins of the Evangelical Movement itself have also suffered similar tenuous qualms. Welsh historians purported that the beginning of this vast global movement began with the conversion of Brecon schoolmaster Howell Harris in the spring of 1735, subsequently followed by that of curate Daniel Rowland of Llangeitho.21 They claimed that these impassioned, itinerant, and highly popular field preachers quickly amassed large audiences around South Wales. Whereas English scholars claim that the Oxford undergraduate George Whitefield, who underwent a dramatic conversion experience whilst under the influence of the Holy Club and in particular his mentor Charles Wesley, began the movement around Bristol and London also in the spring of 1735.22 Although it was three years later that Charles Wesley himself was to experience his own personal epiphany in the same week as his brother John who exclaimed on 24 May 1738 that he ‘felt his heart strangely warmed’, as he trusted in Christ alone for his salvation. In fact, the itinerant ministry of John Wesley was said to be prompted by the zealous encouragement of Whitefield as he began to traverse the length and breadth of the country preaching outdoors. However, both men later became divided over their doctrinal principles. While Whitefield advocated the Calvinist doctrines of election and predestination, John Wesley publicly preached Arminianism.23 I refer to the differing doctrinal emphases reflected in children’s literature across various denominations throughout this study. In 1887, just 150 years after the popularly documented spiritual conversion of John Wesley and the first stirrings of the Evangelical Movement, Edwin Hodder, author of The New Sunday School Hymn Book (1863) and biographer of The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (1887) cited Shaftesbury himself as declaring: ‘I know what constituted an Evangelical in former times, I have no clear notion what constitutes one

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now.’24 According to Bebbington’s definition, an exploration of the etymology of the word ‘Evangelical’ and its historical trajectory can be traced as far back as 1531 when Sir Thomas More referred to advocates of the Reformation as ‘Evaungelicalles’.25 Alister McGrath concurs that the word may be found in texts dating from the 1520s when the terms evangelique (French) and evangelisch (German) featured prominently in the polemical writings of the early Reformers, denoting those Catholic writers who wished to revert to more biblically based beliefs and practices than those customarily associated with the late medieval church.26 During the eighteenth century, the normal meaning of the word ‘evangelical’ was simply ‘of the Gospel’, eventually supplanting terms such as ‘Calvinism’ or ‘Methodism’ as the standard description of the doctrines or ministers of the Evangelical Revival Movement that began in 1735; it was eventually used with reference to a broad range of religious traditions inside and outside of the Church of England.

The Clarification of Evangelical Children’s Literature, its Nature, Main Characteristics, and Principal Doctrines Found Prevalent in the Texts Theologians concur that the notion of a demonstrably spiritually transformed life was a central feature of Evangelicalism.27 The term ‘vital religion’ was first used by the founding fathers of the Evangelical Revival to characterise its intense, emotionally charged experience that was, according to Ian Bradley, a return to seventeenth-century Puritan traditions and a direct reaction to the rational Enlightenment philosophies of the time.28 Hilton has also observed that the enthusiasm, simplicity, and seriousness with which Evangelicals practised their faith and worship was particularly distinctive. The following discussion briefly explores the central tenets of Evangelical theology and thereby establishes a basis for the specific theological themes prevalent in children’s literature discussed in later chapters. Central to what Hilton defined as the ‘Evangelical scheme of salvation’ found in seminal works including Henry Venn’s Complete Duty of Man (1763), Thomas Scott’s Commentaries (1788–1792), and William Wilberforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (1797), was a conscious, unambiguous physical

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experience of personal conversion.29 As Vernon Storr observed, soteriology, or the doctrine of salvation, occupied the central place in all nineteenth-­century Evangelical teaching, and the main thrust of almost every sermon was the salvific Gospel message.30 The chronicling of an identifiable time and place of an individual’s first awareness of their own redemption in Christ meant that conversion experiences were often dramatic and emotionally overwhelming for the believer.31 The following extract from the autobiography of the eighteenth-century military officer and Methodist preacher, Sampson Staniforth, provides a typical example of the physical, emotional, and spiritual experience of such an Evangelical conversion: ‘As soon as I was alone, I kneeled down, and determined not to rise, but to continue crying and wrestling with God. … How long I was in that agony I cannot tell; but as I looked up to heaven, I saw the clouds open exceeding bright, and I saw Jesus hanging on a cross. At the same time these words were applied to my heart, “Thy sins are forgiven thee”. My chains fell off; my heart was free. All guilt was gone, and my soul was filled with unutterable peace.’32 Staniforth’s reference to the cross epitomised the Doctrine of the Atonement and was central to the Evangelical experience of salvation. Hilton’s succinct explanation of the Evangelical scheme of salvation briefly follows: ‘God transcends this world. … His creatures are all in a state of natural depravity, weighed down by original sin … The all-important contractual relationship is directly between each soul and his or her maker, and such intermediaries as priests and sacraments are of relatively little significance. The organ of redemption is the individual conscience, and the means are provided by Christ’s Atonement on the Cross, which purchased ransom for the sins of all mankind. Justification comes through faith in that Atonement, and through faith alone.’33 As Chap. 4 makes clear, the Doctrine of the Atonement thus understood became increasingly morally controversial for many Victorian intellectuals, but it remained a central plank of Evangelical theology. The celebrated Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon declared, ‘If you leave out the Atonement, what Christianity have you got to preach?’34 Evangelicals also reserved complete reverence for the Bible as the infallible and inspired word of God, the Bishop of Exeter, Edward Bickersteth, exclaimed in 1838, ‘The Bible is altogether TRUE. It is truth without any mixture of error.’35 The authority of ‘The Word’ was the mainstay for Evangelicals who believed that the Bible was the primary means whereby God revealed His purposes to humanity and that it contained the whole

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truth necessary for salvation. Biblicism, therefore, was an indisputable feature of nineteenth-century Evangelical doctrine and evidence as such can be found repeatedly in children’s literature as the final arbiter of moral judgements, as demonstrated in Chap. 5 of this study. Despite their strong belief in a visible manifestation of conversion, that is, a changed life, the doctrine of the Atonement, and the authority of Scripture, however, no nineteenth-century Evangelical was theologically and spiritually fulfilled without a lifetime’s commitment to duty, service to others, philanthropic endeavour, and the joyful expectation of the afterlife in Heaven. ‘Activism’ was a characteristic of Evangelicalism, and this study contends that the writing and publishing of children’s literature on such a mass scale did, in fact, constitute precisely just such an expectation of a life committed to active service in the name of Christ. Indeed, the power of the conversion experience meant that Evangelicalism was a profoundly proselytising faith. In an enthusiastic effort to recruit others, Evangelicals held vast numbers of meetings, preached sermons, and maximised their time spent in pastoral visitations, always with a constant emphasis on missionary activity. As Bebbington notes, the expectation of a Methodist preacher’s working week was approximately 90–100 hours, ‘small wonder that the Connexion established and maintained a Worn Out Ministers Fund’.36 Death of course was a popular subject amongst Victorians, many of whom were preoccupied with the afterlife. The early nineteenth-century doctrinal views concerning Millennialism were responsible for an increasing interest in eschatological texts concerning the Second Coming of Christ, which were also closely allied to the growth and global expansion of the British Empire.37 Jay noted that literature and art reflected the period’s millenarian apocalyptic tenor.38 England’s victory in the Napoleonic Wars ushered in the founding of a plethora of missionary societies by Evangelicals and the notion that the British nation held a monopoly over the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. In her later writings, the popular children’s author, and devout Evangelical, Martha Sherwood (1775–1851) shifted her theological focus from Calvinism to Millennialism,39 the belief that Christ would return to earth a second time to reign over one thousand years of peace. She propounded this view in her stories for children.40 In fact, in the History of Henry Milner Part IV, when Henry asks questions about the Millennium, his mentor Mr Dalben apologises that he has erred in the past concerning this subject and has now changed his theological views. Having studied further the Book of

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Revelation, he offers a complex explanation about his eschatological perspectives on the end times.41 This is probably Sherwood’s means of explaining her own change of heart to her readers towards the end of her life. A change that cost her popularity not only with her readers but with her friends, as discussed later in this study. Eschatology, the doctrine of the four last things, that is, heaven, hell, death, and judgement, often referred to as ‘the end times’, concerned eternal punishment or eternal rewards in the afterlife. It was a fundamental doctrine discussed vehemently at the beginning of the nineteenth century and pursued vigorously as a literary theme by a number of children’s authors as denominationally diverse as the Roman Catholic priest Father John Furniss (1809–1865) and the Evangelical, Martha Sherwood. Hilton noted that for Evangelicals life was: ‘[E]ffectively an “arena of moral trial”, an ethical obstacle course on which men are tempted, tested, and ultimately sorted into saints and sinners in readiness for the Day of Judgement. Then, souls will be despatched either to Heaven or Hell, literally conceived as states of eternal felicity or everlasting torment.’42 Whatever the wider doctrinal controversies over eschatology or its theological centrality to Evangelical churchmanship, Evangelical children’s books, tracts, and periodicals consistently abounded with themes of death, dying, and anxiety concerning the afterlife, often expressed in graphic detail. For this reason, Chap. 6 critically analyses this theological theme as a significant literary subject within the genre of Evangelical children’s literature. I have also included in the Appendix an image of ‘The Spiritual Barometer’ subtitled: ‘A Scale of the Progress of Sin and Grace’, which appeared in the Evangelical Magazine in 1800 and was still available from a London publisher in 1890.43 Dominic Erdozain has highlighted this as an example of the Evangelical impulse ‘to codify and contain the individual’s spiritual worth, which gave numerical clarity to a host of Evangelical assumptions’.44 The scale measures upwards from a mid-point of 0, equalling ‘Indifference’ to plus 70 at the top, equalling ‘Glory and Dismission from the body’. Then downwards from 0 to minus 70 at the bottom, which signifies ‘Death and Perdition’. The act of reading is also illustrated on the barometer as a significant indicator of the state of the soul. Such were the myriad of creative ways in which Evangelicals communicated their beliefs. To summarise, therefore, scholarly consensus indicates that the defining theological characteristics of the nineteenth-century Evangelical Movement included an emphasis upon original sin and the necessity for

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repentance, conversion, and evidence of change or piety in a person’s attitude and lifestyle; the absolute belief in the authority of the Bible; ongoing concern for the afterlife and an active commitment to the salvation of others, all delivered with a great deal of intense enthusiasm. Scholars also recognised that a shared commitment to these beliefs and ideas were critically important to the ongoing ‘natural affinity’ amongst Evangelicals, irrespective of denomination or association.45 Based on the above definitions of Evangelicalism, I now turn to the community of authors who wrote specifically Christian literature for children, spanning 1780–1900, motivated by their own religious faith.

The Identification and Context of the Historical Community of Authors and Publishers of Children’s Christian Literature 1780–1900 This section outlines the methods used in identifying and selecting the authors and publishers of children’s Christian literature highlighting in the main Evangelical authors. As previously stated, the deluge of Evangelical writing for children produced from the late eighteenth century onwards has often been erroneously written off as simplistic, formulaic material, produced mainly by female Sunday School teachers of limited education from a Low Church tradition.46 But this study argues that the historical community of authors, who wrote theologically themed material for children throughout the long nineteenth century, represents far greater, diverse and complex networks of authors and publishers. Closer examination reveals that many authors differed in their denominational and stylistic approaches and that these differences, often rooted in their own religious and personal experiences, were invariably reflected in their literary emphases. The authors identified below wrote explicitly Christian material for children, and were in many cases highly educated, intellectually incisive women and men drawn from a wide-ranging churchmanship, and include Roman Catholic, Anglican (High Church, Broad Church, and Low Church), and Nonconformist, whether from older Dissenting traditions (Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Presbyterians) or newer Dissenting denominations such as the Methodists. Many of the authors were highly influenced by the writings and views of their wider family, clergy, theologians, intellectual mentors, publishers, and

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philanthropic sponsors, and it is fascinating to trace these networks of affiliations and the reciprocal ways in which ideas were copied, circulated, and disseminated in the resulting children’s literature produced during the period. The following discussion provides a basic introductory overview of the authors of children’s Christian literature explored throughout this study, it contextualises them within their particular denomination, associated networks, and publishers. I have included both the authors of publications associated with the Evangelical Movement and those who would be deemed non-Evangelical authors in this section. This is to differentiate between those who wrote literature both for and against the Evangelical Movement. The particular theological emphases relating to each denominational category are explained at the beginning of each section, the purpose being to identify and distinguish their denominational affiliations.

Anglican Authors of Children’s Christian Literature 1780–1900 Anglican authors of Christian material make up the most extensive and most diverse community of writers for children in general during the period, spanning High, Broad, and Low Church traditions. Female and male lay, that is, not ordained, and male clergy writers are represented throughout this group. They include some of the most well-known authors of the period, for example, Hannah More, Martha Sherwood, Hesba Stretton, Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hughes, Samuel Wilberforce, and Charlotte Yonge; this overview also includes many unknown or neglected writers. Undisputedly, the most renowned Evangelical children’s author at the beginning of the century, however, was Hannah More (1745–1833), whose contribution to the influential Clapham Sect (so-called because of the geographical location of its members) and her production of the influential series of The Cheap Repository Tracts, has led to several major studies on her life and work.47 More was befriended and supported by powerful members of the Clapham Evangelical network, including the Rector of Clapham John Venn, the M.P. abolitionist and philanthropist William Wilberforce, the economist and reformer Henry Thornton, the lawyer James Stephen, and the statistician Zachary Macaulay, many of whom became involved with the establishment and dissemination of The Cheap

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Repository Tracts. Between 1795 and 1810, over 200 religious tract titles were produced and re-issued in collected editions to meet demand, with more than two million copies sold during the first year. Another leading Evangelical writer of the earlier period, Martha Sherwood (1775–1851), was inspired to write for children from her personal experiences of child bereavement, her travels in India accompanying her military husband and her life in England. Sherwood produced over 400 titles alone; many were translated into several languages and are referred to in several chapters of this study. Sherwood’s sister Lucy Lyttleton Cameron (1781–1858) also wrote copious tracts and devotional texts for children containing explanations of biblical narratives, which again were translated into other languages. Evangelical Anglican writers from a Low Church background include the previously mentioned Favell Lee Mortimer (1802–1878), whose most popular work, The Peep of Day (1833), sold over a million copies and was translated into thirty-seven languages. Originally from a Quaker family, Mortimer converted to Anglican Evangelicalism in part under the influence of a family friend, the Rev Carus Wilson (1791–1859), who was also a devout Evangelical children’s author. Maria Louisa Charlesworth (1819–1880) was the daughter of a rural clergyman and whose own parish activities alongside her father from a young age led to the successful book, Ministering Children (1854). Like Mortimer, Maria Hack (1777–1844) was born into a Quaker family but turned to Anglican Evangelicalism in 1837; her move was instigated by controversies over the primacy of scriptural authority. I expand on this theme further in Chap. 5. Hack’s daughter Margaret Emily (1814–1886), also an author, married the publisher Thomas Gates Darton (1810–1887), whose firm was known, at that time, as Harvey and Darton, and who published several of Maria Hack’s books. Thus, in some instances, writing for children was a multi-­ generational affair within the same family, such as the famous Taylors of Ongar, discussed below, and also the Evangelical and self-taught marine botanist Mrs Margaret Gatty (1809–1873) and her daughter Mrs Juliana Ewing (1841–1885) who both wrote children’s books; their writing is surveyed in greater detail in Chap. 5. Pseudonyms were sometimes used by female writers, although surprisingly few, given the constraints on women’s writing in the nineteenth century. Moral literature, as opposed to purely fictional works, may have been regarded as a more appropriate and, therefore, a more acceptable pursuit for women to engage in, since teaching children would have been viewed

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as an extension of their maternal duties. I discuss the issue of pseudonyms further in Chap. 5. However, Mary Thurston Dodge was the pseudonym of Amy Lefeuvre (1861–1929), who published with the Religious Tract Society, titles such as Probable Sons: A Little Child Shall Lead Them (1896). Little is known of Austin Clare (1845–1932), the pseudonym of Wilhelmina Martha James, except that she wrote over forty-five titles published with another prominent religious organisation, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. Lady Ellenor Fenn (1744–1813) established a large Sunday School in Dereham in 1785 and disapproved of works of imaginative fiction, arguing that ‘there is no need for invention, the world is full of wonders’.48 She wrote titles such as The Rational Dame (1790) under the pseudonyms of Mrs Teachwell or Mrs Lovechild. The Evangelical author Agnes Giberne (1870–1910) published over 100 religious and educational works, short stories, and fiction novels under her initials A.G., publishing mainly with the Religious Tract Society. Giberne also wrote a biography of Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821–1893), known as ALOE, Tucker’s acronym for ‘A Lady of England’, possibly because both authors had experienced living in India. Mrs Georgina Castle Smith (1845–1934) wrote twenty-three books and went simply under the pseudonym of Brenda. She published between 1875 and 1914; her two most famous works were Froggy’s Little Brother (1875), tales of street children in which she wrote, ‘[t]hey may be Street Arabs, but they have immortal souls, and they are our brothers and sisters, though we may not own them’49; and Nothing to Nobody (1875)—both works were noteworthy for their social comment and sentimental pathos. Crona Temple was the pseudonym of Clara Lavinia Corfield (1846–1916), whose pen name derived from Templecrone, where she lived. Temple wrote extensively for the Religious Tract Society and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge between 1871 and 1896. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (1790–1846) was a popular children’s author and social reformer who, for financial reasons, wrote under the pseudonym of Charlotte Elizabeth; her work and domestic situation is discussed in more detail in Chap. 3. Amy Catherine Walton (1849–1939) came from an Evangelical Anglican family and published under the pseudonym of Mrs O. F. Walton. Her most renowned work was Christie’s Old Organ, or Home Sweet Home (1874), written to illustrate her mother Mary’s well-known hymn There Is a City Bright, to which Amy herself had contributed the first verse. Walton published with the Religious Tract Society.

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Children’s authors of a High Church or Tractarian, non-Evangelical churchmanship include Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1901), who was mentored by John Keble for over thirty years. Keble edited her manuscripts, and he also wrote a book about children titled: Lyra Innocentium: Thoughts in Verse on Christian Children, their Ways, and their Privileges.50 Yonge’s prolific output, including the highly popular, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), was widely read and respected by the literary elite; although not an Evangelical, she wrote overtly Christian books for children with a passionate commitment to her faith. The lesser-known High Church children’s author Harriet Elizabeth Mozley (1803–1851) was Cardinal Newman’s sister, and her most well-known works included: The Fairy Bower (1840) and The Lost Brooch (1841), wherein she expressed both anti-Catholic and anti-Evangelical sentiments. Elizabeth Missing Sewell (1815–1906) was introduced to the Oxford Movement by her brother; she taught her younger siblings at home and produced her first publication, The Cottage Monthly, Stories Illustrative of the Lord’s Prayer in 1860. Sewell also collaborated with Yonge and befriended the Rev William Adams (1814–1848), since both authors lived on the Isle of Wight, he was best known for his Sacred Allegories (1849). Adams’s brother, Rev Henry Cadwallader Adams (1817–1899), was another prolific author who completed his brother’s final and most popular work, The Cherry Stones (1852), after William died. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1805–1873), a High Church clergyman, although not known as a children’s author, wrote Agathos and other Sunday Stories (1840) for his own children before it was published as a very successful religious text for countless other young readers. Rev Francis Edward Paget (1806–1882), another disciple of the Oxford Movement, wrote about religious and social reform issues as well as devotional works for children, including Tales of the Village Children (1845) and The Hope of the Katzekopfs (1844). Little is known personally about Frederick Scarlett Potter (1834–1915), who wrote over fifty children’s titles, particularly with the cottage reader in mind and published with the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. Mrs Henry B Paull (1855–1890) translated Hans Andersen and the Grimm brothers into English, but also published her most well-known work, The Greatest Charity (1872), with the Sunday School Union. Caroline Fry (1787–1846) was born into a High Church family; although influenced by her brother John, she experienced an Evangelical conversion in 1822. She wrote poetry, devotional and biblical texts for children, and theological works. In The Table of the Lord (1837),

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she focused on debates by conflicting Anglican parties, centred on the theology of the sacrament. Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) was a pioneering educationalist and devout High Church Anglican, whose many children’s publications included An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature and Reading the Holy Scriptures (1780) and Sacred History (6 vols., 1782–85). Elizabeth Sandham (n.d.) published profusely between 1800 and 1825 and explicitly acknowledged Trimmer as a major influence in her writing; her most well-known work, The Twin Sisters, or the Advantages of Religion, had sold 12,000 copies by 1819 and reached its twentieth edition by 1839. I have included several Broad Church Anglicans because of their emphasis on salvation and activist faith, including the celebrated authors and Christian Socialists Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) and Thomas Hughes (1822–1896) in addition to the philologist and Dean of Canterbury, Frederick Farrar (1831–1903) author of the popular novel, Eric, or, Little by Little (1858). The theologian and Professor of Divinity, F.  D. Maurice, heavily influenced all three men at King’s College, as a friend and colleague of Hughes and Kingsley, and whose Universalist views on salvation and Christology proved persuasive and controversial in equal measure as will be discussed further in Chap. 4. Kingsley’s The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863) and Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) comprised two of the bestselling children’s novels in the nineteenth century with clear religious undertones and are discussed in Chap. 4. The subject of biblical history features in many publications; Mrs Annie Webb-Peploe (1805–1880), whose son was a renowned member of the clergy in Evangelical circles and the main instigator of the Keswick Conference, promoted the ‘Holiness Movement’, and published tales of biblical history, her most famous being Naomi, or, The Last Days of Jerusalem (1841). Little is known of Emma Dixon (1837–1909), who wrote under the pseudonym of Emma Leslie; her work mainly focused on historical narratives for children on church history and the Reformation, and she also published with the Religious Tract Society and the Sunday School Union. Similarly, Emily Sarah Holt (1836–1893) wrote over fifty works for children, many of which centred on the history of the Protestant Church. Annette Lyster (n.d.) published copiously with the Religious Tract Society, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and the Sunday School Union from the late 1870s onwards. Matilda Anne Mackarness (1826–1881), who was married to Rev Henry S. Mackarness,

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wrote more than forty books for children, many of which were highly successful in America as well as in Britain; her most popular tract was A Trap to Catch a Sunbeam (1849). The Rev Legh Richmond (1772–1827) was an Anglican cleric best known for The Dairyman’s Daughter (1814), which is discussed further in Chap. 6, and the Rev Charles Benjamin Tayler (1797–1875) penned numerous books and tracts which sold internationally. Many of these, such as The Child of the Church of England (1834), were heavily anti-Catholic in tenor.

Nonconformist Children’s Authors The term Nonconformist or Dissenting (the latter an older, pre-­nineteenth-­ century term) is used throughout this study to designate those Protestants who seceded due to various doctrinal controversies within the Church of England from the sixteenth century onwards and includes Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Presbyterians, and also Methodists. As with Anglican Evangelicals, Nonconformist writers comprise a third of the authors researched so far and illustrate a spread of gender, denominational affiliation, and clergy/lay distinctions, suggesting that Evangelical children’s literature was neither the preserve of the Established Church nor of a particular denominational group. Methodists are represented by both men and women lay writers as well as clergy. The Rev Silas Kitto Hocking (1850–1935) was a Methodist minister who wrote what was to become known as ‘Street Arab Tales’ (tales of the urban poor) and edited the Family Circle and The Temple magazines, which included serialised children’s tales. His most well-known children’s novel was Her Benny, published in 1879. Very little is known of Ruth Elliott (n.d.), one of three Methodist women writers who published under various pseudonyms, such as Lillie Peck, her best-known works included A Voice From The Sea: The Wreck of the Eglantine (1881) and the sentimental Margery’s Christmas Box (1875). In the latter, two orphaned but cheerful sisters living in destitute poverty reflect on the comfort that their Christian faith gives them. As the younger sister lies dying of consumption, her final words to her elder sister are, ‘Do you think it is Jesus that puts lovely thoughts into my head to keep me from being lonely?’51 Evelyn Everett-Green (1856–1932) also wrote over 350 titles under the pseudonyms of Cecil Adair and E. Ward, again depicting in various ways the purity of childhood piety inculcated by a Methodist upbringing. Hesba Stretton (1832–1911) was the pseudonym of the

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writer Sarah Smith, her authorial name deriving from the initials of her siblings’ names (Hannah, Elizabeth, Sarah, Benjamin, and Anna) and Stretton, the Shropshire village of her childhood. Born into a stalwart Methodist family, Stretton was a prolific and esteemed Evangelical writer for children who also managed significant philanthropic work for children’s charities, in particular lobbying for the establishment of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1884. Stretton is discussed further at various points throughout the study. The Rev Rowland Hill (1744–1833) was an enthusiastic Independent Methodist preacher and advocate of the smallpox vaccine; he wrote for and ministered to the Sunday School children in his parish; his work and ministry are discussed in more detail in Chap. 4. William Booth (1829–1912) was a Methodist preacher who, along with his wife Catherine née Mumford, founded the Salvation Army, he became its first ‘General’. It developed into a Christian movement with a quasi-military structure and spread from London to many parts of the world, known principally for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid. Booth was also an author and the first children’s publication of the Salvation Army was The Little Soldier in 1881 but Booth made it clear that their children’s work should not be associated with Sunday Schools because the Army did not intend to make scholars, but soldiers of Christ. In 1882, Booth began to publish in the War Cry a series of articles on childhood, which eventually became The Training of Children.52 Of the older dissenting traditions, three Baptist writers are included. The Rev Samuel Gosnell Green (1822–1905), a Baptist minister and the first Ridley lecturer at Regent’s Park College to deliver a lecture on ‘Ministry to the Young’ in 1883, wrote specifically for children and published through the Sunday School Union. Esther Copley (1786–1851), was the wife of a Baptist minister who wrote several works, including Scripture Natural History for Youth (1828), Scripture History for Youth (1829), and Scripture Biography (1835). Copley’s son-in-law George Eliel Sargent (1808–1883), also became a writer for the Religious Tract Society, as is discussed in Chap. 5. Four writers within the Quaker group include Emma Marshall (1830–1899), who converted to Anglicanism and wrote over 180 titles, mainly religious, historical novels. Mary Wright Sewell (1797–1884) was originally from a Quaker family but experienced a spiritual crisis in her late thirties that resulted in her leaving the Quakers and experimenting with various Protestant denominations. She wrote tales of rural life and

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childhood innocence such as The Children of Summerbrook: Scenes of village life, described in simple verse (1850) that proved popular amongst Sunday Schools. Sewell’s daughter was Anna Sewell, the disabled author of the famous children’s novel Black Beauty (1877). Priscilla Wakefield (1751–1832), another Quaker writer for children, conducted substantial philanthropic work and was best known for her book Juvenile Anecdotes (1795). Finally, Mary Howitt (1799–1888) is well known for her cautionary poem, The Spider and the Fly (1829), which ran into thirty-three editions. She co-authored over 180 books with her husband William and eventually converted to Roman Catholicism in her later years. She befriended such eminent authors as Dickens, Gaskell, Browning, and Wordsworth. The writers from a Congregationalist tradition include several significant children’s authors. The Rev John Campbell (1766–1840), as well as writing for children and founding an Evangelical periodical for young people titled Youth’s Magazine, which he presided over as editor for many years, also became a director of the London Missionary Society (LMS), and a founder of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The Scottish minister, Rev George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a highly popular author and poet whose fairy tales and fantasy novels such as The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and At the Back of the North Wind (1871) inspired many later literary elites including J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. MacDonald was mentor to Lewis Carroll and a friend of Tennyson, Dickens, Trollope, Whitman, and others. His remarkable use of fantasy to interpret the human condition and spirituality has been the subject of a significant study by William Gray.53 Emma Worboise (1825–1887) occasionally published under the name of Emma Guyton and produced over fifty books for children and adults on domestic and religious themes. She was highly influenced by the educational reformer Thomas Arnold. Talbot Baines Reed (1852–1893) came from a resolutely Congregational family and wrote boy’s fiction; his school stories endured into the mid-twentieth century. Reed was a regular contributor to The Boy’s Own Paper, published by the Religious Tract Society. The Rev George Burder (1752–1832) was a prolific writer of hymns and sermons for children, an Independent Minister in Lancaster, Coventry and London, and joint founder of the Religious Tract Society; the British and Foreign Bible Society; and the London Missionary Society. His biographer A. F. Munden stated: ‘During the first fifty years of his ministry, Burder preached an estimated 10,000 sermons, some of which were presented to the crowds assembled for public executions at

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Coventry.’54 Also from an Independent Church background are the sisters Ann55 (1782–1866) and Jane (1783–1824) Taylor from the renowned literary family the Taylors of Ongar. They wrote their most famous work, Hymns for Infant Minds (1810), in the style of Isaac Watts. Helen Taylor (1818–1885) was the niece of the renowned Taylor sisters, and the daughter of Martin Taylor, who worked for a publishing company in Paternoster Row. She was the author of Sabbath Bells: A Series of Simple Lays for Christian Children (1845); Missionary Hymns, for the Use of Children (1846), and The Child’s Book of Homilies, by a Member of the Church of England (1844). Helen was unmarried; her work was all but forgotten, buried beneath the deluge of Sunday School literature in the middle of the nineteenth century and completely overshadowed by her celebrated aunts. However, as Field noted, Helen’s poetic work was undoubtedly comparable, if not superior,56 to that of her renowned aunts.57 Five Unitarian writers included here highlight some of the more unusual and unexpected intellectual influences in children’s Christian writing because of course they do not agree with Trinitarian theology. Anna Barbauld (1743–1825), author of Hymns in Prose for Children (1781) and her brother John Aikin (1747–1822), who co-authored Evenings At Home (1792–1796) with her, were both inspired by the eighteenth-­ century Unitarian theologian, philosopher, and scientist Joseph Priestley.58 Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (1805–1848) was another lesser-known author identified by Field and was also a hymn-writer known particularly for her popular hymn Nearer My God to Thee, otherwise known as the Titanic hymn, rumoured to have been played as the infamous ship was sinking. Adams wrote The Flock at the Fountain: A Catechism and Collection of Hymns for Children in 1845 for factory school children. Thomas Day (1748–1789) and Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849), were also inspired by Enlightenment theories and the moral rationalism of Rousseau and Locke. The ways in which Evangelicals responded to and engaged with such philosophical rationalism is explored further in Chap. 3. Of the four Presbyterian writers, two were ministers, three of which were Scottish. Little is known about Rev James Reid Howatt (n.d.) of Camberwell, who wrote twenty-three works for children, including The children’s angel: a year’s sermons and parables for the young, published by James Nisbett and Co. (1889). Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825–1894) was an elder of the Chalmers Memorial Free Church in Scotland and is best known for his juvenile adventure tales such as The Hudson’s Bay

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Company (1848), The Young Fur Traders (1856), and The Coral Island (1858), written from his extensive experience of travelling and working in Canada but also reflects his strong Christian faith. Norman MacLeod (1780–1866) was a Scottish minister who rose to become Moderator of the Church of Scotland and a favourite preacher of Queen Victoria’s; he edited Good Works for the Young (1860), in which his allegory The Gold Thread was originally published. Catherine Sinclair’s (1800–1864) family were members of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and Evangelical Protestantism is promoted throughout her children’s fiction, particularly in her most memorable work Holiday House: A Book for the Young (1839), again discussed in greater detail later in the study.

Roman Catholic Authors and Publishers It is not the intention of this study to offer a detailed analysis of Roman Catholic children’s material, authors, and publishers. However, it is important to recognise, as Kenneth Hylson-Smith has remarked, ‘[b]oth Catholics and Evangelicals shared a seriousness about religious matters’,59 thus uniting them against the shared enemies of spiritual apathy and liberalism. In 1898, the Rt. Hon. G. W. E. Russell gave a lecture to the English Church Union, ‘with the intention of demonstrating that Catholic theology is at heart Evangelical and that Evangelical doctrine “in so far as it is constructive and affirmative” is “truly Catholic”’.60 While often manifested in differing ways doctrinally, the importance of conversion and mission were very much part of both movements, and a notable feature during a period of continued anti-Catholic sentiment within certain strands of Evangelical writing, this is discussed in later chapters. Pat Pinsent has commented that the dilemma facing the Catholic Church during the nineteenth century was how to accommodate the readership of the heirs of recusant aristocratic families at one end of the spectrum and the descendants of Irish labourers integral to the workforce of the industrial revolution at the other.61 The two principal Roman Catholic children’s publishers, Burns and Oates and the Catholic Truth Society (CTS) were established in response to the growth of extant Protestant publishing companies. Burns Oates was established in 1835 by the Presbyterian James Burns, who had gained a strong reputation as a publisher of High Church material and Tractarian texts. In 1847, Burns converted to Catholicism; his business was only saved through the intervention and support of John Henry Newman, who selected Burns Oates

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to publish many of his works, including Loss and Gain (1848).62 William Wilfrid Oates eventually joined Burns, another Catholic convert who later handed the business to his son Wilfred Oates. Oates’s sister, Mother Mary Salome Oates, became one of the firm’s most successful children’s authors.63 While Burns and Oates’s range of literature was targeted mainly at an adult readership, they also catered for families and schools. By the end of the nineteenth century, they had emerged as a significant publishing house producing numerous texts for children. The CTS was established in order to support the educational and spiritual needs of the Catholic Church and appeared to have developed in two phases. It was founded initially in 1868 by the English prelate and Archbishop of Westminster from 1892 until his death, Dr Herbert Alfred Vaughan (1832–1903). The English Roman Catholic writer, translator and philanthropist, Baroness Mary Elizabeth Herbert (1822–1911), also helped to found the CTS and became one of their most popular authors. Herbert wrote specifically for young girls to educate them in Roman Catholic doctrine. She had converted to Catholicism in 1866 under the influence of Cardinal Manning, who became her spiritual director. Herbert was forbidden by Parliament to take her children to Mass, and consequently, six of them were brought up in the Church of England; only her eldest daughter, Mary, followed her into the Catholic faith. Herbert counted many eminent Victorians amongst her friends, including Disraeli, Palmerston, Gladstone, Newman, and Nightingale. Bishop Vaughan was also a close friend, and together in 1884, they discussed reviving the CTS in order to compete with the millions of tracts being distributed by Protestant societies.64 The Roman Catholic and renowned botanist James Britten (1846–1924) and Monsignor William Cologan (n.d.) became joint secretaries of the society whose aims included, ‘[t]he dissemination of small and cheap devotional works, assisting the uneducated poor to a better knowledge of their religion, to spread “Catholic Truth” amongst Protestants and to promote the circulation of good, cheap and popular works’.65 Bishop Vaughan stated: ‘On Sundays, many of these tracts will be distributed in the streets, in parks and other places of public resort, at church doors, in the cottages of our country population, in the courts of our great towns where the poor are crowded; while on other days a certain number of respectable men and women of the poorer classes may be employed as hawkers for the purpose of sale and distribution.’66 Catholic tracts were produced mainly in the style of Protestant Evangelical ‘Street Arab Tales’ constructed around formulaic themes of

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rags to riches conversions or deathbed scenes in which a child was invariably admitted to First Communion and then set about encouraging lapsed parents back to the sacrament. While Evangelical tracts depicted conversions to Protestantism, many CTS tales were equally replete with conversions to Roman Catholicism. During its first few years, the CTS published innumerable tracts and penny books but then went into decline until it was re-launched in 1884. As noted above, this second phase began under the presidency of Dr Vaughan, Msgr. W.  H. Cologan, and Mr James Britten and claimed significant successful distribution such as that of The Simple Prayer-Book, which reached a circulation of 1,380,000 copies, or The Little Penny Books of Daily Meditation, which reached 114,000, and finally, nearly 200,000 penny copies of the Gospels were sold to children.67 One of the earliest and most renowned Roman Catholic writers for children was Father John Furniss (1809–1865), whose controversial tracts and children’s mission work is discussed in Chap. 6. Later CTS children’s authors included Monsignor William Cologan himself, who wrote the popular Molly’s Prayer (1888), Baroness Herbert of Lea (1822–1911), who authored Wayside Tales in 3 Volumes (1888) and Rosa Mullholland (1841–1921) who wrote A Book of Irish Stories (1894). Reminiscent of Protestant Evangelical formulaic fiction, the narratives speak of young people educated in their childhood by nuns or priests and who later fall by the wayside and find themselves in desperate straits or become the main protagonists of pious deathbed scenes. After a period of repentance, the ultimate happy ending of these stories is their successful restoration to the Roman Catholic faith. Such authors also produced narratives of ‘holy children’ who successfully convert their unholy parents. As previously stated, the notion of the child evangel is explored in greater detail in Chap. 4 as a significant evangelism strategy. Roman Catholic authors are discussed at greater length in Chaps. 3 and 6 to draw useful comparisons with their Protestant counterparts. Although these authors would never have considered themselves party to the Evangelical Movement, the volume of religious content and passionate tone of their narratives certainly convey the urgency for conversion to Roman Catholicism in a familiarly descriptive evangelical tenor. Having briefly outlined the differing backgrounds and contexts of the above selected children’s authors, they will be discussed in more detail individually in subsequent chapters. The following section contextualises the development of the Evangelical publishing industry throughout the

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period focusing on their principal aims and commercial successes as the century wore on.

Disseminating the Word: Evangelical Publishing Companies Evangelical Christian publishing houses were essential to the success of this particular literary genre. A central strategy for promoting Evangelical children’s texts was to capitalise on increasingly innovative uses of the printing press and thus produce and disseminate copious amounts of children’s literature in diverse formats to accommodate all classes and levels of literacy. Religious publishing houses were revolutionised during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Evangelicalism was a major driving force behind the technological change, marketing, and distribution approaches they utilised. Four leading societies dominated the publishing landscape: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), The Religious Tract Society (RTS), The British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), and The Sunday School Union (SSU). In addition, many other smaller, niche independent Christian publishers emerged during the period. These included Drummond’s Tract Society, which, it is speculated, distributed millions of tracts, and the Methodist Book Room, London, where Wesleyan tracts, at one time meticulously supervised by John Wesley himself, conducted their distribution.68 Others include the first publisher of the works of Martha Sherwood, F. Houlston and Son of Wellington, although she also published with many others.69 Sherwood’s lengthy and successful writing career usefully informs us about the various publishers a single author might use. Turning now to the four principal publishers mentioned above in chronological order, the SPCK was founded in 1698 as a denominationally specific Church of England publishing house. It also took an active part in establishing charity schools and aiding missions at home by disseminating Bibles and tracts for children and adults. By 1851, the SPCK began to focus far more on the subjects of colonisation and emigration, listing in its children’s catalogue an ancient classical atlas, missionary biographies and books about Canada and Australia. They also featured accounts of travels in the Antarctic, Africa, Russia, North and South America, and an unusual inclusion at this point given SPCK’s Christian origins, A History of Mohammedanism for Children.70 Although an emphasis on

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Evangelical themes remained central, the anticipated readership had broadened considerably, and the titles available reflected this development. In 1827, the company was producing in the region of 1,500,000 publications; by 1867, it was producing in excess of 8,000,000. 71 According to the late-Victorian historian, Samuel Green, it was the Rev George Burder, himself a prolific tract writer, who established the Religious Tract Society on 9 May 1799 by calling a committee meeting of twelve men together in St. Paul’s Coffee House, London.72 The RTS remained a leading Evangelical publishing company throughout the 1800s, not least because of its early commitment to the production of Cheap Repository Tracts. The RTS’s success was also due in part to its interdenominational structure; it was principally a joint publishing scheme overseen by clergy from various Christian denominations, including the Congregationalist minister and teacher the Rev George Collison of Hackney, the Rev Rowland Hill, founder and minister of the Independent Surrey Chapel in London, W.  Newman, President of the Baptist College at Stepney, the leading Scottish divine Dr Alexander Waugh, Matthew Wilks of the Tabernacle and Tottenham Court Road Chapel and several lay members.73 The RTS was founded on a detailed ‘Statement of Principles and Methods’ of tract writing, listed under seven headings which were, in themselves, reiterations of the fundamental Evangelical beliefs of biblical authority, salvation, a clear exposition of creeds and the need for fervent proselytisation. According to the Statement, ‘Tracts should first, always contain pure truth, flowing from the fountain of the New Testament, uncontaminated with error, undisturbed with human systems; clear as crystal, like the river of life.’74 Second, ‘There should be some account of the way of a sinner’s salvation in every Tract so that even if a reader only read one tract, they would understand the need to be “born again of the Spirit, and justified by faith” for their salvation.’ The RTS Committee continued to state that any tract without such a clear soteriological message was ‘very defective indeed’. Tracts were to be ‘so plain that it cannot possibly be misunderstood and be striking with strong, pithy expressions and lively representations of truth’. The fifth principle declared that the tract must also be entertaining if it was to be successful: ‘A plain, didactic essay on a religious subject may be read by a Christian with much pleasure; but the persons for whom these Tracts are chiefly designed will fall asleep over it. This will not do; it is throwing money and labour away. Narrative, dialogue, and other methods which ingenuity will suggest must be employed to give an agreeable relish to truth and to season it so as to whet the

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appetite of the reader.’75 Tracts were also to be full of ideas and, finally, flexible: ‘[A]dapted to various situations and conditions; for the young and for the aged, for the children of prosperity and of affliction, for careless and for awakened sinners, and for entering into the reasonings, excuses, temptations, and duties of each, and pointing out to them the way of the Lord.’76 Despite the mandate to be entertaining, in 1828 the RTS Committee declared that as a matter of public duty they had excluded from their titles, ‘those publications which, although well-meant, are calculated to injure rather than benefit the youthful mind, from the romantic and fanciful manner in which they are written’.77 By 1830, the sensible pricing of tracts meant that the RTS were claiming 300,000 additional juvenile readers added each year. Publications included a series of Short Stories for Children Under Ten, intended to compete in terms of cost and content with what the Committee regarded as, ‘[t]he vile trash of Halfpenny Books for children’.78 By 1860, the RTS, like the SPCK, were offering adventure stories from around the world, including accounts of the archaeological excavations of the Middle East, quite a shift from the more restrained, homely tone of earlier Evangelical material. This may have been due to several factors, including competition from secular publishing companies or the excitement generated by more popular, exotic tales of colonial expansion. However, the RTS insisted that each tract must contain a story of dramatic conversion as absolutely central. As Thomas Laqueur has shown, Sunday Schools were responsible for much ecumenical effort to reach and educate children.79 Therefore in July 1803, the Sunday School Union (SSU) was set up as an interdenominational body to co-ordinate and promote the work of Sunday Schools, including the production of Christian educational material. The SSU was formed by a group of young Sunday School activists who met in Surrey Chapel under the presidency of Rev Rowland Hill and was for the benefit of teachers keen to encourage and learn from each other in the establishment of new schools. It eventually developed into a multifaceted and significant, vehicle for Christian education, including the establishment of public reading rooms and libraries to house the deluge of tracts, novels, teaching and guidance manuals, biographies, devotional works and, most importantly, Bibles, all produced to support the Christian education and spiritual nurture of children. Philip Cliff notes, for example, that SSU library grants were generously donated to purchase Bibles and to sell them and other carefully selected Christian publications at subsidised prices.80

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The SSU’s aims were threefold: (i) to stimulate and encourage members in the religious instruction of children and youth; (ii) by mutual communication to aim at improving each other’s method of instruction; (iii) to promote the opening of new schools by influence and personal assistance where it might be deemed expedient.81 The publication of suitable texts were crucial to this enterprise, and the four earliest titles included: A Plan of the Establishment and Regulation of Sunday Schools (1805); A Select List of Scriptures, designed as a Guide to Teachers, for a Course of Reading in Sunday Schools (1805); A Catechism in verse, for younger children (1805); and An Introduction to Reading (1805).82 The SSU also went on to publish the Youth’s Magazine between 1805 and 1867, a children’s periodical that Martha Sherwood edited for twenty-five years.83 New SSUs sprang up around the country to support what was regarded by Evangelicals as a vital ministry to children, and there was no shortage of reading matter or authors to write its material. Finally, the fourth mainstream publishing house was the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) founded in 1804 when a group of Christians sought to address the problem of a lack of affordable Bibles in Welsh for Welsh-speaking Christians. This had been highlighted quite dramatically by a young girl, Mary Jones, who was alleged to have walked over twenty miles to obtain a Bible in Gwynedd from the Welsh Calvinist Methodist minister, Thomas Charles (1755–1814). The BFBS was another ecumenical effort sponsored by Evangelicals and Nonconformists alike such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Charles and was responsible for distributing Bibles in an immense variety of editions and translations throughout the century. Unfortunately, some of the enthusiastic methods employed by the BFBS, were not always appreciated, for example their lack of awareness of more humanitarian needs at the cost of Bible distribution, often defeated their purpose. As Altick notes, ‘During a period of deep economic depression in Paisley in 1837, Bibles were rushed to the relief of the starving, the BFBS seemingly oblivious to the bitterness which such ‘remedial’ action caused—it was bodies, not souls that required nourishment.’84

Concluding Reflections Altick has commented that whilst it would be futile even to attempt to estimate the total distribution of Evangelical literary works during the period, such is the complexity, and the impossibility of its accuracy,

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nevertheless, the records available remain staggering. Over a million copies of The Dairyman’s Daughter, written by the secretary of the RTS, Rev Legh Richmond, were circulated in less than half a century.85 Over twelve million copies of tracts were written and distributed by Rev John Charles Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, which included a vast amount for children.86 Between 1804 and 1819, the BFBS issued over two and a half million copies of Bibles and Testaments, nearly all of which were for domestic use.87 In 1897 the RTS sent out from the home depot alone over 38,720,000 pieces of literature, of which 18,320,000—less than half—were tracts, the rest being books (especially but not exclusively children’s) and periodicals such as Sunday at Home, Leisure Hour, The Boy’s Own Paper, The Girl’s Own Paper, and Cottager and Artisan.88 By the end of the century, the SPCK recorded the production of 12,500,000 pieces of literature, of which one quarter were tracts.89 This study contends that the vast scope, scale, and distribution of nineteenth-­century Evangelical children’s literature responded directly to its rapidly changing theological, ecclesiastical, social, and cultural milieu. The historical and intellectual foreground of the critical theological debates was responsible for forging many of the distinctive features of Evangelical material, and it is this broader socio-political context that the following chapter on revolutionary themes in children’s literature interrogates.

Notes 1. Spence, Catherine Helen. Mr Hogarth’s Will (London: Richard Bentley,1865). p. 38. 2. Altick, Richard. D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1880–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). p. 103. 3. Demers, Patricia. Heaven upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature, to 1850 (University of Tennessee Press, 1993). p. 29. 4. For genre theory see: Nikolajeva, Maria. Aesthetic Approaches to Children’s Literature: An Introduction (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2005). Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction (London: Longman, 1992). Devitt, Amy J. Writing Genres (Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004). 5. Kingsley, Charles (1863), The Water-Babies (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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6. Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyam, 1989). Bebbington, David W. The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005). Wolffe, John. The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, Chalmer, and Finney (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007). Larsen, Timothy. “Defining and Locating Evangelicalism” in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology. Larsen, Timothy and Treier, Daniel (eds.) 1–14. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Lovegrove, Deryck (ed.) The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism (London: Routledge, 2002). Smith, Mark (ed.) British Evangelical Identities Past and Present: Aspects of the History and Sociology of Evangelicalism in Britain and Ireland (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008). Jay, Elizabeth. The Religion of the Heart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). 7. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the British Academy, 2004–2015). www.oxforddnb. com/. Larsen, Timothy. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals (Leicester: Inter Varsity Press, 2003). Chadwick, Owen. The Victorian Church (London: SCM Press, 1987). Balleine, George Reginald. A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908). Storr, Vernon F. The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913). Bebbington, 1989. See also the section on the historicization of children’s literature in Chap. 1. 8. Although the term ‘database’ strictly refers to an organised collection of data more commonly associated with computer science systems, the term is used in this study to denote a detailed record of interconnected historical material that allows for individual or related pieces of information to be found easily. 9. Grenby, Matthew Orville. The Child Reader 1700–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). p. 150 offers evidence of specifically children’s bookshops emerging after 1810. 10. Myers, Mitzi. Missed Opportunities and Critical Malpractice: New Historicism and Children’s Literature. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 13, 1 (1988). pp. 41–43. 11. See Croce, Diane Della. and Everett, Graham. Emerging Meaning: Reading as a Process, in Robertson, Alice. and Smith, Barbara. Teaching in the 21st Century: Adapting Writing Pedagogies to the College Curriculum (London: Routledge, 1999). p. 231. 12. Devitt, Amy J. Writing Genres (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). p. 165.

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13. For a comprehensive treatment of eschatology in the Victorian era see, Wheeler, Michael. Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 14. Hilton, Andrew Boyd. The Age of Atonement (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). p. 7. 15. Bebbington (1989. p. 1). 16. See Jay (1979). 17. Sidney, Edwin. Life of Sir Richard Hill (London, R.  B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1839). p. 479. 18. Jay (1979, pp. 16–30). 19. See Altick, p. 99. 20. Bebbington (1979, p. 1). 21. See trans: Jones, John Morgan. Morgan, William. Aaron, John. The Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales (Edinburgh: Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2008). 22. Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley, Third Edition Complete and Unabridged, Vol. 1 Journals from Oct. 14, 1735–Nov. 29, 1745; Introductory Letter (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books). 23. See https://archive.org/details/fortyfoursermons00wesluoft/page/n7/ mode/2up, accessed 26/07/21 24. Hodder, Edwin. The Life and Work of The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (London: K. G. Cassell & Company Limited., 1887). Vol. III, p. 451. 25. Bebbington (1989. p. 1). 26. McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology an Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1994). p. 121. 27. Ibid. (1994). Bebbington (1979).; Carson, D.  A. The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996); Noll, Mark A. Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Marsden, George. Evangelicalism and Modern America (Grand Rapids Michigan: W.B.  Eerdmans, 1984). Hilton, Andrew. The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Jay, 1979. 28. Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness: Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. 1976). p. 16. 29. Hilton (1991, p. 8). 30. Storr, Vernon F. The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green, 1913). p. 67. 31. See Field, C. D. Methodism in Metropolitan London, 1850–1920: A Social and Sociological Study (D. Phil University of Oxford,1975).

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32. Telford, John. Wesley’s Veterans. Lives of Early Methodist Preachers (London: R. Culley, 1909). p. 74. 33. Hilton (1991, p. 8). 34. Kruppa, Patricia Stallings. Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Preacher’s Progress (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982). p. 416. 35. Bickersteth, Edward. A Scripture Help: Designed to Assist in Reading the Bible Profitably (London: R.B. Seeley & W. Burnside, 1838). p. 2. 36. Bebbington (1979, p. 11). 37. The belief in a future Millennium following the Second Coming of Christ during which he will reign on earth in peace, based on the Book of Revelation 20: 1–5. For this discussion see Jay (1979, pp. 88–97). 38. Jay (1979. p. 89). ‘Millenarianism’ is used to refer to a more cataclysmic and destructive arrival of a utopian period as compared to ‘millennialism’, which is often used to denote a more peaceful arrival and is more closely associated with a one thousand-year utopia. See in particular the work of Lord Byron, Heaven and Earth (1822); Thomas Campbell, The Last Man (1823); the apocalyptic paintings of John Martin; in poetry Robert Pollock, The Course of Time (1827); Robert Montgomery, The Messiah (1832); and Heraud, The Descent into Hell (1830). 39. Such as The Millennium: or Twelve Stories designed to explain to Young Bible Readers the Scripture and Prophecies concerning the Glory of the Latter Days (1829) and in The History of Henry Milner Part IV (1837). 40. ‘In the four gospels, we find the account of our Saviour’s abode with us, in his state of suffering and humiliation, but it is in the book of the prophets that we find the history and description of his second coming, and it is my great delight, my dear children, to turn from the account of his sufferings and his cruel death to the view of those lovely passages in Scripture, whereby I am led to the assurance of seeing him in glory, and finding myself united with him forever.’ Sherwood, Martha. The Millennium, Or, Twelve Stories Designed to Explain to Young Bible Readers the Scripture Prophecies Concerning the Glory of the Latter Days (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1829). p. 21. 41. See The History of Henry Millner Part IV, p. 250–252. 42. Hilton (1991, p. 8). 43. ‘The Spiritual Barometer’ in The Evangelical Magazine 8 vols (London: T.  Chapman, 1793–1800), 8 (1800). pp.  526. See the Haithi Trust at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah6lsd;view=1up;seq=556, accessed 16/07/21. 44. Erdozain, Dominic. The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation, and the Crisis of Victorian Religion (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2010). p. 74. 45. Bebbington (1979, pp. 70–71).

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46. See Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness: Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1976); Sangster, Paul. Pity My Simplicity: The Evangelical Revival and the Religious Education of Children 1738–1800 (Aylesbury: The Epworth Press, 1963); Hilton, Mary. Women and the Shaping of the Nation’s Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain, 1750–1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Shattock, Joanne. Women and Literature in Britain 1800–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Bebbington (1979). 47. See, for example, the work of Stott, Anne ‘Hannah More and the Blagdon Controversy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (April 2000). pp.  319–46; idem, ‘Patriotism and Providence: The Politics of Hannah More’ in Women in British Politics: The Power of the Petticoat (Eds.) Gleadle, Kathryn and Richardson, Sarah (Macmillan, 2000). pp. 39–55; idem, ‘A singular injustice towards women’. See also ‘Hannah More and Female Education’ in Morgan, Sue (Ed.) Women, Religion and Feminism in Britain 1750–1990, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). pp. 21–38. Stott, Anne Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 48. Stoker, David. Lady Fenn (1744–1813)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9279, accessed 21 January 2021] 49. Brenda, Froggy’s Little Brother (London: J. F. Shaw, 1875). p. 198. 50. Keble, John. Lyra Innocentium: Thoughts in Verse on Christian Children, their Ways, and their Privileges (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1846). 51. Jones, Nicolette. The Plimsoll Sensation: The Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea (London: Hachette, 2013). Chapter 8. 52. Hazell, George Henry. The threefold task: A record of the work of The Salvation Army with children and young people. Unpublished paper. (1996). Beard, Marie Keighley The contribution of The Salvation Army to the religious and moral education of children and young people in Great Britain 1865–1965 (London: University of London. 1968). 53. See Gray, William. Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald and Hoffmann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and also Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R.L. Stevenson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008). 54. Munden, A. F. Burder, George (1752–1832), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3958, accessed 21 April 2021].

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55. Ann, of course, is best remembered for her composition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ first published in the collection of poems, Rhymes for the Nursery (1806). 56. Taylor, Helen. Sabbath Bells: A Series of Simple Lays for Christian Children (Piccadilly; London: Edwards and Hughes; Hatchard and Son, 1845). As demonstrated in the sample below: A wise man and a holy one, God’s blessed word should preach. But if by us His will be done, Some truth may children teach. And sinner thus from sinner learns, Something that God has taught. And by a lamp that feebly burns, A holier light is brought. 57. Taylor, Ann and Jane. Hymns for Infant Minds: XV The Way to Cure Pride (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1808). Whereas the extract below by her aunts in comparison, is far more basic in style and content: Every morning must begin, With resolutions not to sin; And every evening recollect, How much you’ve failed in this respect 58. Knight, Mark. and Mason, Emma. Nineteenth Century Religion and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). p. 40. 59. Hylson-Smith, Kenneth. High Churchmanship in the Church of England: from the Sixteenth Century to the late Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993). p. 207. 60. Russell, G.W.E. The Household of Faith, Portraits and Essays (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1902. p.  314, cited in Pickering, W.S.F. Anglo-­ Catholicism: A Study in Religious Ambiguity (London: Routledge, 1989). p. 68. 61. Pinsent, Pat. ‘Representations of Catholic Identity in British Children’s Books between Vatican I and Vatican II’, unpublished paper given at the CLISS Conference, Roehampton, 2007. 62. Newman, John Henry. Loss and Gain (London: J. Burns, 1848). 63. The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly, http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/1st-­june-­1907/14/papers-­of-­a-­pariah, accessed 10 February 2021. 64. Connor, Charles Patrick. Defenders of the Faith in Word and Deed (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003). p. 151. 65. New Advent: Catholic Truth Societies, http://www.newadvent.org/ cathen/15077a.htm, accessed 16/11/21. 66. Cited in Connor, 2003. p. 151.

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67. Figures listed in the New Advent: Catholic Truth Societies, http://www. newadvent.org/cathen/15077a.htm. No time scale was made public for these figures. 68. Elliott-Binns, L. Religion in the Victorian Era (London: Lutterworth Press, 1936). p. 349. Cutt, 1979, p. 13. 69. For the specific titles published with the various publishing houses please see Cutt, Margaret. Mrs. Sherwood and Her Books for Children: A Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). She also worked with the following publishers: William Lane of the Minerva Press, Samuel Hazard of Bath, William Whittemore of Paternoster Row, Thomas Melrose of Berwick-­upon-­Tweed, John Hatchard of Piccadilly (favoured by many of the Clapham Sect Evangelicals) and the Quaker firm of William Darton and Son. She also wrote for several others in Paternoster Row, including T.  Hamilton, Thomas Nelson, Knight and Lacey, Thomas Ward (later Ward, Lock) and Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green as well as J. Taylor of High Holborn, B.  J. Holdsworth of St Paul’s Churchyard, London, the Sabbath School Union for Scotland, Dean and Munday of Threadneedle Street, R.B.  Seeley and W.  Burnside of Fleet Street, and R. Wrightson of Birmingham. 70. For a comprehensive list of the catalogue please see Bird, William Osborne; McClure, Allen and Edmund Two Hundred Years: The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 1698–1898 [microform] (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: E. & J.B. Young, 1898). http://archive.org/details/twohundredyears00mcclgoog, accessed 1 April 2021. 71. Altick (1957, p. 102). 72. Green, Samuel G. The Story of the Religious Tract Society for One Hundred Years (London: Religious Tract Society, 1899). p. 4. 73. Green, The Story of the Religious Tract Society for One Hundred Years. Collison was an educator associated with the Hackney Academy which became part of New College London, and the University of London. p. 5. 74. Ibid., p. 6. Italics are as in original statement. 75. Ibid., p. 6. 76. Ibid., p. 6. 77. Cutt (1979, p. 31). 78. The Religious Tract Society, A Brief View of the Plan and Operation of the Religious Tract Society (The Religious Tract Society, 1828). pp. 4–9. 79. Laqueur, Thomas. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). p. 34. 80. Cliff, Philip. The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England, 1780–1980 (Redhill Surrey: National Christian Education Council, 1986). p. 137.

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81. Ibid., p. 74. 82. Watson, William Henry. The History of the Sunday School Union, 1853. p.13. https://archive.org/stream/historysundaysc00watsgoog#page/ n10/mode/2up, accessed 1 April 2021. 83. Cutt (1974, p. 124). 84. Altick (1957, p. 106). 85. Quinlan, Maurice. Victorian Prelude, a History of English Manners 1700–1830 (Hamden Conn.: Archon Books, 1965). p. 124. 86. Elliott-Binns (1936, p. 348). 87. Altick (1957, p. 101). 88. Altick (1957, p. 101). 89. Altick. 1957, p. 102.

Bibliography Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1880–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). Balleine, George Reginald. A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908). Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyam, 1989). Bebbington, David W. The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005). Bickersteth, Edward. A Scripture Help: Designed to Assist in Reading the Bible Profitably (London: R.B. Seeley & W. Burnside, 1838). Bird, William Osborne; McClure, Allen and Edmund. Two Hundred Years: The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1698–1898 [microform] (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: E. & J.B. Young, 1898). Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness: Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. 1976). Brenda. Froggy’s Little Brother (London: J. F. Shaw, 1875). Carson, D. A. The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996). Chadwick, Owen. The Victorian Church (London: S. C. M. Press, 1987). Cliff, Philip. The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England, 1780–1980 (Redhill: National Christian Education Council, 1986). Coleridge, Christabel. Charlotte Mary Yonge, Her Life and Letters, (London; New York: Macmillan and Co. Limited. 1903). Connor, Charles Patrick. Defenders of the Faith in Word and Deed (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003).

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Croce, Diane Della. and Everett, Graham. Emerging Meaning: Reading as a Process, in Robertson, Alice. and Smith, Barbara. Teaching in the 21st Century: Adapting Writing Pedagogies to the College Curriculum (London: Routledge, 1999). Cutt, Margaret. Mrs. Sherwood and Her Books for Children: A Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). Demers, Patricia. Heaven upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature to 1850 (University of Tennessee Press, 1993). Devitt, Amy J. Writing Genres (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). Elliott-Binns, L. Religion in the Victorian Era (London: Lutterworth Press, 1936). Erdozain, Dominic. The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation, and the Crisis of Victorian Religion (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2010). Field, C.  D. Methodism in Metropolitan London, 1850–1920: A Social and Sociological Study (Oxford: D. Phil University of Oxford, 1975). Gleadle, Kathryn and Richardson, Sarah, (Eds.) ‘Patriotism and Providence: The Politics of Hannah More’ in Women in British Politics: The Power of the Petticoat (London: Macmillan, 2000). Gray, William. Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald and Hoffmann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Gray, William. Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R. L. Stevenson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008). Green, Samuel G. The Story of the Religious Tract Society for One Hundred Years (London: Religious Tract Society, 1899). Grenby, Matthew Orville. The Child Reader 1700–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Hack, Maria. Harry Beaufoy, Or, The Pupil of Nature (London: Harvey and Darton, 1821). Hilton, Andrew Boyd. The Age of Atonement (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Hilton, Mary. Women and the Shaping of the Nation’s Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750–1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Hodder, Edwin. The Life and Work of The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (London: K. G. Cassell & Company Limited., 1887). Hylson-Smith, Kenneth. High Churchmanship in the Church of England: from the Sixteenth Century to the late Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993). Jay, Elizabeth. The Religion of the Heart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Jones, John Morgan. Morgan, William. Aaron, John. The Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales (Edinburgh: Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2008). Jones, Nicolette. The Plimsoll Sensation: The Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea (London: Hachette, 2013).

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Knight, Mark. and Mason, Emma. Nineteenth Century Religion and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Kruppa, Patricia Stallings. Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Preacher’s Progress (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982). Laqueur, Thomas. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). Larsen, Timothy and Treier, Daniel (Eds.). “Defining and Locating Evangelicalism” in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Larsen, Timothy. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals (Leicester: Inter Varsity Press, 2003). Lovegrove, Deryck (Ed.) The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism (London: Routledge, 2002). Marsden, George. Evangelicalism and Modern America (Grand Rapids Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans, 1984). McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology an Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1994). Morgan, Sue (Ed.) ‘Hannah More and Female Education’ in Women, Religion and Feminism in Britain 1750–1990 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). Munden, A.  F. George Burder (1752–1832), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Myers, Mitzi. ‘Missed Opportunities and Critical Malpractice: New Historicism and Children’s Literature’ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 13, 1 (1988). Newman, John Henry. Loss and Gain (London: J. Burns, 1848). Noll, Mark A. Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond 1700–1990. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Oxford University Press. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the British Academy, 2004–2015). Pickering, W. S. F. Anglo-Catholicism: A Study in Religious Ambiguity (London: Routledge, 1989). Pinsent, Pat. ‘Representations of Catholic Identity in British Children’s Books between Vatican I and Vatican II’, (Roehampton: unpublished paper given at the CLISS Conference, Roehampton, 2007). Quinlan, Maurice. Victorian Prelude, a History of English Manners 1700–1830 (Hamden Conn.: Archon Books, 1965). Russell, G. W. E. The Household of Faith, Portraits and Essays (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902). Sangster, Paul. Pity My Simplicity: The Evangelical Revival and the Religious Education of Children 1738–1800 (Aylesbury: The Epworth Press, 1963).

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Shattock, Joanne Women and Literature in Britain 1800–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Sherwood, Mary Martha. The Millennium, Or, Twelve Stories Designed to Explain to Young Bible Readers the Scripture Prophecies Concerning the Glory of the Latter Days (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1829). Sidney, Edwin. Life of Sir Richard Hill (London, R.  B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1839). Smith, Mark (Ed.) British Evangelical Identities Past and Present: Aspects of the History and Sociology of Evangelicalism in Britain and Ireland (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008). Spence, Catherine Helen. Mr Hogarth’s Will (London: Richard Bentley, 1865) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4224/4224-­h/4224-­h.htm Stoker, David. Lady Fenn (1744–1813), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Storr, Vernon F. The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913). Stott, Anne ‘Hannah More and the Blagdon Controversy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (April 2000). Stott, Anne Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Telford, John. Wesley’s Veterans. Lives of Early Methodist Preachers (London: R. Culley, 1909). The Religious Tract Society. A Brief View of the Plan and Operation of the Religious Tract Society (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1828). Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley, Third Edition Complete and Unabridged, Vol. 1 Journals from Oct. 14, 1735–Nov. 29, 1745; Introductory Letter (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books 1735–1745). Wheeler, Michael. Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Wolffe, John. The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, Chalmer, and Finney (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007).

CHAPTER 3

Revolution and Counter-revolutions: Evangelical Children’s Literature Within the Socio-Political and Theological Climate of 1780–1900

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way (Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities, 1st ed. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1859). p. 1.). —Charles Dickens

Introduction The period during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century is frequently referred to as ‘The Age of Revolution’ 1 during which the epoch-­ making French Revolution of 1789 heralded the demise of the ancien régime and, as Raymond Betts noted, ‘provided this era with its first meaningful experience of socio-political ideologies through a number of competing theoretical social systems’.2 According to Betts, there is a surprising similarity between revolutionary ideology and theology in many ways, since the former could be understood as the secular equivalent of the latter. Because despite their seemingly oppositional political stances, they © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. E. Smale, Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5_3

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both promise a utopian future after the struggles and travails of the present, that is, ‘[t]he future … holds the tantamount promise for the ideologue that heaven holds for the devout’.3 Margaret Cutt has argued, however, that such a comparison would not have proved persuasive at that time,4 because early nineteenth-century Evangelical authors and their readers reflected not on the celebration of, but profound anxiety over, the heightened presence of revolutionary ideology that was infiltrating children’s literature in general. This chapter highlights and situates such anxieties in an exploration of selected Evangelical writers within their socio-political and theological milieu and critically examines their response to particular controversies, both internal and external, in relation to the established Church’s teaching. It suggests that the deluge of Christian publications for children that emerged during this period were, in part, a consequence of the Church’s knee-jerk reaction to a range of revolutionary ideologies fomented in the various philosophical, political, and social upheavals of the time. The result was the instigation and development of a new and emerging counter-revolutionary deluge of prescriptive Evangelical theologically themed literature for children, as a weapon against such secular ideologies as evidenced below.

The Impact of the French Revolution on the Deluge of Evangelical Children’s Literature In Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832, Kevin Gilmartin has argued that the French Revolution instigated profound fears of a similar revolt in England, and so the forces of literary conservatism were harnessed in the production of vast quantities of counter-revolutionary literature. Evangelical authors such as Hannah More were major contributors to this development; Gilmartin concludes that this fear of revolutionary ideology such as the extreme anti-religious radicalism of Jacobinism acted as a major impetus for British Evangelical literary productivity.5 Although Susan Pedersen has contended that it was the reformation of manners and moral improvement of popular culture, not the threat of political revolution, that was the catalyst for the mass production of propagandistic Evangelical literature, for example, the Cheap Repository Tracts.6 Nevertheless, a vast body of publications directed primarily towards a counter-revolutionary campaign of social subordination and the preservation of stability, were all written with inordinate

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intensity ‘in the name of God’. Thus, Gilmartin’s and Pedersen’s perspectives, however valid, have somewhat missed a critical point. Popular children’s authors such as Sarah Trimmer, Hannah More, and Charlotte Tonna, amongst many others, indeed used their literature as a means to counteract the violent, dogmatic, radicalism of Jacobinism. But their principal aim, as we shall see, was to promote godly social subordination and spiritual conformity within the ranks of their juvenile readers, it was their primary concern that children must learn to accept that whatever their allotted station in life, it was ‘the will of God’. Sarah Trimmer was the leading lady to challenge the threat of revolutionary ideology. Born in Suffolk, she was the daughter of artist Joshua Kirby whose family was acquainted with renowned cultural figures such as Thomas Gainsborough, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and William Hogarth. In 1762, she married James Trimmer, and they moved to Old Brentford, where they had twelve children. Trimmer was a devout High Church Anglican who tutored her children at home and devoted her life to writing Christian educational textbooks, for example, An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature and Reading the Holy Scriptures (1780) and Sacred History: Selected from the Scriptures with Annotations and Reflections, in six volumes (1782).7 In 1786, she established a Sunday School, and by 1788 over 300 pupils were in attendance. Her publications were widely disseminated and used to educate Anglican children at home. Her titles included The Sunday-School Catechist: A Comment on Dr Watts Divine Songs (1789) and A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (1791).8 Trimmer also edited two periodicals, The Family Magazine and The Guardian of Education.9 Published between 1802 and 1806 by J. Hatchard and F. C Rivington, The Guardian of Education was the first successful periodical dedicated to reviewing children’s literature; it incorporated over 400 book reviews on educational theory and child-rearing advice aimed at parents, teachers, clergy, authors and publishers. Matthew Grenby has estimated that The Guardian of Education’s circulation was between 1500 and 3500 copies per issue and that it was significantly influential not only in the promotion and marketing of children’s books but also on the form and content of future published literature for children. Books and articles that were recommended in the magazine were of course awarded credibility through Trimmer’s highly respected endorsement and in her various reputable roles as a mother figure, Sunday School teacher and pious Christian female exemplar.10

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According to Emma Major, Trimmer established The Guardian of Education specifically ‘to combat the rise in dissenting and unreligious pedagogical literature’, in the early nineteenth century. 11 Trimmer herself wrote at length about the apparent ‘conspiracy against CHRISTIANITY and all SOCIAL ORDER [sic]’, in children’s books, fearful that ‘revealed religion would be abandoned and replaced by the so-called “new philosophy”’, and that worst of all this was being achieved ‘through the medium of Books of Education and Children’s Books’.12 The threat of ‘conspiracy’ mentioned here by Trimmer illustrates her heavy indebtedness to the French Jesuit priest Abbé Barruel’s Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797), whom she quoted from at length.13 Barruel regarded Jacobinism as an anti-religious act of treachery, particularly against French Roman Catholicism. But Trimmer’s reference to the “new philosophy” was the circulation of Deist ideas first espoused by eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers and later adopted by revolutionary ideologues. Although historians largely agree that the popularity of this philosophical view was in decline by 1800, Trimmer remained highly critical of Deism which, while not rejecting the existence of God, advocated reason over revelation and natural laws over spiritual.14 In addition, its proposal of a non-interventionist Creator who set the universe in motion but then left the laws of nature to govern its direction, nullified the central Evangelical doctrine of a personal relationship with God and of his ‘special providence’ at work through his servants in the world. Trimmer claimed that all human happiness was conditional upon the individual’s obedience to the will of God, as one of her prayers for children in the Charity School Spelling Book (1799) stated: ‘Be graciously pleased O Heavenly Father, to give me strength and cheerfulness, to labour and do my duty in that state of life which Thy wisdom has seen fit to allot me.’15 Therefore, Trimmer regarded Deist thought as antithetical to Christian education because it rejected the revelatory status of Scripture. For example, in her review of The New Robinson Crusoe written for children by the French author J.H.  Campe she declared: ‘A great deal of religion and moral discourse is indeed introduced, and much is said about a particular Providence; but the Religion inculcated in this work is no other than Deism, notwithstanding poor Robinson Crusoe is here deprived of his Bible, and all the comforts of Christianity, and transformed into a Stoic philosopher!’16 In his text, Campe’s lack of reference to Christ as the ‘Redeemer’ and ‘Sanctifier’, such terms more closely associated with Evangelical revivalism, also struck a negative chord with Trimmer.17

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However, Trimmer was certainly not alone in writing against the more secular, republican ideas of citizenship at work across the Channel that threatened Christian England. Her peer, Hannah More, the celebrated children’s author, Sunday School teacher and leading member of the Evangelical Clapham Sect, was similarly concerned to promote Evangelical doctrines amongst the young and the poor and to counter the libertarian ideas of the French Revolution. More was born in Fishponds near Bristol, where her father Jacob ran a local charity school. Initially, a conservative Anglican, More’s faith was revitalised after coming into contact with the Evangelical Anglican minister, hymn-writer and abolitionist John Newton in the 1780s, after which she adopted a more enthusiastic revivalist approach and professed the necessity for deep personal faith. More knew of and admired Trimmer’s work in Brentford, and in 1789 she established nine Sunday Schools in the Mendip area of Somerset. Over the next thirty years, she devoted herself to writing books and supervising Sunday Schools, where the total attendance was said to have numbered over a thousand children.18 More’s programme for children’s spiritual education formed part of a wider reformation of manners and morals founded on temperance, Sabbatarianism, and the maintenance of social order undertaken by leading Evangelicals at the turn of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. Like Trimmer, More was politically conservative, a staunch supporter of the established social hierarchy, and deeply hostile towards texts written for children that promoted revolutionary ideas of any kind. Her self-declared aims of writing for both children and adults were: ‘[t]o improve the habits and raise the principles of the common people without prompting thoughts of sedition’.19 To this end, she devised and instituted The Cheap Repository, a series of over 200 tract titles written in the 1790s which offered an alternative form of popular literature to the more subversive chapbooks and ballads aimed at the working poor. According to David Bebbington, Cheap Repository tracts were circulated at government expense, thus underscoring the Establishment’s support of such moralising tales.20 As More herself explained: ‘It was judged expedient, at this critical period, to supply such wholesome aliment as might give a new direction to their taste and abate their relish for those corrupt and inflammatory publications which the consequences of the French Revolution have been so fatally pouring in upon us.’21 In 1793, More published Village Politics under the pseudonym of Will Chip, a carpenter. It was originally a short tract written at the request of the Bishop of London in response to the political revolutionary Thomas

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Paine’s Rights of Man (1791). Paine’s infamous radical ideas followed in the tradition of eighteenth-century Deism as expressed in his greatest attack upon organised religion in The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (1794) in which he stated: ‘I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolise power and profit.’22 More’s Village Politics sought to expose the error of such secular, republican ideologies of liberty and equality by promoting a benign paternalist social structure in order to convince the labourer to be content with his allotted station in life. Her stark and definitive message stressed that God ordained social hierarchies and thus to question the order of such things is to question Almighty God. For example, in the story Jack Anvil the blacksmith, emphatically reassures Tom Hod the mason throughout the tract that ‘God always knows what is best for his people’23 even it means a life of poverty and servitude. A consequence of the success of Village Politics combined with her own Evangelical conversion was that in certain circles More became a highly esteemed, popular author and Evangelist, thus reinforcing her association with the eminent Evangelical, William Wilberforce and the members of the Clapham Sect.24 Critical analyses of More’s work have invariably focused on her moralising didactic tone as an ideological justification for the status quo and the economic exploitation and socio-political exclusion of the poor.25 As Mona Scheuermann has affirmed, More targeted a lower-class readership whom she believed should be content with their allotted station in life as divinely appointed by God and who should work diligently to attain piety.26 More’s counter-revolutionary approach can be found in an abundance of tracts, for example, in a conversation about equality, held between Mr Johnson and the Shepherd in The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain (1795). 27 More’s numerous tracts were purposefully written and designed to be appealing and intelligible for her target audience and they have been the object of much subsequent historical analyses.28 They were also the catalyst for the formation of the Religious Tract Society in 1799, which, as noted in Chap. 2, was a leading publisher of Evangelical literature throughout the nineteenth century. In this, at least, More’s counter-revolutionary strategy, which incorporated her activist, Evangelical approach, to theology, found

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a long-term literary legacy and a huge following amongst Evangelicals especially in the education of children and their spiritual guidance.

Counter-revolutionary Literature and the Reconstruction of Childhood Not surprisingly, many other Evangelical counter-revolutionary writers were also vehement opponents of Enlightenment theories on the status and education of the child. Their Enlightenment counterparts however, many of whom had inspired the philosophies of the French Revolution, were committed to the improvement of the human condition, not through obedience to authority and an acceptance of the hierarchical order of society but rational enquiry, observation, and an affinity for democratic and egalitarian progress. Thus, new literary analytical storylines emerged during the late eighteenth century, offering revised theoretical and ideological constructs of childhood. In his classic work Émile, the influential Jacobinist philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), was according to Colin Heywood, ‘[t]he outstanding figure in the reconstruction of childhood during the eighteenth century’.29 Rousseau propounded that the mind of a child was not merely that of a miniature adult requiring conformity to adult ideals, but must instead be considered on its own terms and in its own environment.30 Whereas Rousseau’s predecessors had constructed children’s educational lessons based on what they thought children ought to know, he aimed to discover instead what the child was capable of learning. In Émile, therefore, a revolutionary approach to an Enlightenment child-centred educational project took place in which the child was trained not according to the Scriptures but by reason and experience in the development of its moral character. Rousseau’s revolutionary new ideas of child development and education met with a predictably outraged reaction from Evangelical authors, not least because of his demotion of the Bible and his total opposition to the fundamental Augustinian doctrine and Evangelical starting-point of ‘original sin’: ‘Let us lay down as an incontrovertible rule that the first impulses of nature are always right; there is no original sin in the human heart, the how and why of the entrance of every vice can be traced.’31 Outraged by Rousseau’s theory of ‘original innocence’, leading Evangelical thinkers and writers produced a plethora of Christian guidebooks on child-rearing and education to counter such ideas. John Wesley

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himself described Rousseau’s theory as, ‘The most empty, silly, injudicious thing that a self-conceited individual wrote.’ In his journal entry for Saturday 3 February 1770, he recorded: ‘I read with much expectation a celebrated book—Rousseau upon Education. But how was I disappointed! Sure, a more consummate coxcomb never saw the sun! How amazingly full of himself! Whatever he speaks, he pronounces as an oracle. But many of his oracles are as palpably false.’32 Similarly, William Wilberforce, in his highly popular and influential work which defined much Evangelical thought in the nineteenth century—A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (1834), also condemned the Rousseau school of thought with reference to his ideas on human kindness. ‘The school of Rousseau has been forced to yield to the school of Christ when the question has been concerning the best means of promoting the comfort of family life, or the temporal well-being of society.’ 33 Correspondingly, Sarah Trimmer’s damning critique of Rousseau’s educational system as ‘the greatest injury the youth of this nation ever received’ was particularly fascinating in its recognition of the internal contradictions and gendered limitations of his ideas. 34 As Donnelle Ruwe has pointed out, in Trimmer’s most popular anti-Rousseau text, An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature, and Reading the Holy Scriptures Adapted to the Capacities of Children (1780), she challenged Rousseau’s theory not on its anti-religious grounds but his erroneous views on the lack of female intellectual capabilities. In Émile, for example, the heroine Sophie is educated solely on the basis that she may become a pleasing companion for her husband rather than for her own development and self-­ fulfilment. Rousseau contended that little girls must memorise religious knowledge by rote as soon as possible because they would be incapable of mature theological reasoning as adult women.35 In Trimmer’s response, the first two-thirds of her critique are monologues in which a mother tutors her children in natural theology by marvelling at God’s creation on their daily walks. Whilst the younger brother Henry appears incapable of grasping the meaning of the Scriptures, his older sister Charlotte, the primary target of the mother’s tuition, fully comprehends the theological content of the nature lessons. According to Ruwe, Trimmer’s female-­ centred narrative counteracts Rousseau’s explicit misogyny since, unlike Henry the little boy, both females regardless of age are able to theologise perceptively about creation.36

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Although Trimmer offers her own counter-revolutionary arguments in opposition to Rousseau, his educational paradigm embodied in Émile was never entirely rejected by the Evangelical writing community. As Margaret Cutt has observed, the highly successful Evangelical children’s author Martha Sherwood may have disagreed with the ideologies promulgated by Rousseau and the French Revolution, but she owed much of her own success as an author by emulating his narrative style without explicitly acknowledging it.37 Many of her storylines, for example, resembled those found in French pedagogical literature influenced by Rousseau’s philosophy. She employed the popular motif of complex domestic situations as a sermonising tool, such as in The History of Henry Milner: A Little Boy Who Was Not Brought Up According To The Fashions Of This World (1822) and, of course, The History of the Fairchild Family, Part I (1818).38 In The History of Henry Milner, Sherwood modelled her protagonist Henry on Rousseau’s Émile but applied Christian principles to the plot instead of Enlightenment philosophy. Henry, just like Émile, is brought up in a confined and isolated learning environment explicitly constructed to encourage particular dialogues in lessons for life. Whereas Rousseau portrays Émile as a child born in original innocence who is gradually corrupted by his environment, Sherwood’s Henry is already conceived and born in original sin. Therefore, he must experience a move in the opposite direction towards greater purity through repentance and spiritual regeneration. Thus, one of Sherwood’s aims in The History of Henry Milner, in addition to its extreme Evangelical sermonising overtones, was to subvert what she regarded as the moral insidiousness inherent in French pedagogy.39 The History of Henry Milner was also written by Sherwood in response to Thomas Day’s popular three-volume novel The History of Sandford and Merton (1783, 1786, 1789).40 In contrast to Sherwood’s Evangelical theology, Day was influenced by Rousseauism through his close friendship with Richard Lovell Edgeworth. In his attempt to draw upon Rousseau’s writing and guided by Edgeworth, he presented an interesting example of the hybridity of philosophical ideals and Christian education. Day introduced such thoughts to his young readers in The History of Sandford and Merton and also in The History of Little Jack (1788). In the former work, Harry personifies Rousseau’s ideal child; he abjures the decadence of the Merton family and prefers his own uncomplicated work ethic and simple pleasures to their luxurious lifestyle. Although the novel embodies many of Rousseau’s ideals, it is also underpinned by moral and biblical principles. However, the fictional clergyman the Reverend Barlow, who acts as a

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mentor to his pupils, rarely mentions church or religion and describes Christ only as a very good man who did good to everybody. The History of Sandford and Merton is Day’s hybrid, combining in part Rousseau’s educational ideals with Christian principles creating a work of semi-­theological fiction for English children. Thus, he declared in 1769, were all the world’s books to be destroyed, he would save both the Bible and Émile.41 Archetypes like Émile and indeed many other child pupils in literature were upheld as exemplars for children to follow. Jackie Horne’s fascinating research on ‘emulation theory’ offers a helpful discussion on the contribution of such characterizations to literature not only concerning Rousseau’s paradigm child but throughout history.42 Whether emulating the virtuous behaviour of renowned historical exemplars, that is, during the periods of classical Rome, Renaissance Italy, or indeed medieval England, she contends by quoting Mark Salber Phillips, ‘A reader who is confronted with effective representations of the ideal will be moved by spontaneous desire for emulation.’43 In a similar vein Avery presents a fascinating insight into children’s heroes in children’s literature in Childhood’s Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children’s Fiction 1770–1950, she questions the influence such heroes had on children’s lives and their behaviour.44 I expand on this discussion in Chap. 4 when exploring the child as an evangel. In terms of educational works, it is possible and also necessary to distinguish Evangelical children’s literature from those moral, didactic publications produced specifically for educational instruction or moral and social improvement. Educational, moral, and didactic literature focused primarily on self-control, discipline, cleanliness, industry, and self-improvement, and covered subjects as wide-ranging as etiquette, conduct, deportment, science, geography, history, and practical domestic advice. The authors of such books were in the main, rational moralists, as Gillian Avery explains: ‘The late Georgian put far more faith in diligence than in religion, and in place of the little tract books about the Christian virtues which were published in their thousands in the middle years of the nineteenth century, we get such works as Punctuality, Sensibility and Disappointment: Pleasing stories for the Improvement of the Minds of Youth.’45 Avery observed that the ‘torrents’ of moral, didactic books focused on the importance of good manners and behaviour and were produced by writers such as Emily Ospringe, Mary Hughes, Alicia Mant, Lucy Peacock, Mrs Pinchard, the Kilner sisters, Thomas Day, and Maria Edgeworth. These authors were inspired not so much by Christian principles but by the translated works of French educational theorists such as Madame de Genlis46 and Arnaud

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Berquin who wrote practical, commonsense, informative books.47 Therefore, what sets the works of moral didacticism and Evangelicalism apart is identifiable from the texts’ title, style, content, and subject emphasis. Thus, the novel for children by the writer Emily Ospringe is entitled: Favouritism, Virtue and Contentment; Education Fearfulness and Independence: Interesting tales for the amusement and instruction of the young (1838).48 In contrast, Evangelical authors wrote about religious themes, for example natural theology as in Trimmer’s treatment of animals, birds, and nature, always as a means to a spiritual end, and propounding the Christian faith through the wonders of ‘The Creation’ and ‘The Creator God’.49 Further study on Evangelical writers and themes is addressed in more detail in Chap. 5. However, it is interesting to note here that, as an author, Anna Laetitia Barbauld appears to fall somewhere between moral didactic and Evangelical works. Born into a Presbyterian family, her father was John Aiken, the headmaster of the Dissenting academy in Kibworth. Barbauld published two popular texts for children, Lessons for Children (1780)50 and Hymns in Prose (1781)51 which provide the most tangible evidence of her theological convictions. Both works reinforce the determinative natural theology outlined by the eighteenth-century clergyman and philosopher William Paley (1743–1805) in his celebrated work Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, the argument from Nature (1802). They profess the existence of a Divine Creator God whose benevolence and love are demonstrated through the beauty of nature and the natural world. As Barbauld declared in her Hymn IX: ‘Every plant hath a single inhabitant … . Who causeth them to grow everywhere … and giveth them colours and smells, and spreadeth out their transparent leaves? Lo these are parts of His works; and a little portion of His wonders. There is little need that I should tell you of God, for everything speaks of Him.’52 Invariably, moral, didactic literature lacked the sense of urgency and enthusiasm contained in Evangelical material, intent as the latter was on converting the reader to a particular set of beliefs rather than simply educating them in new knowledge. In their attempt to make religion intelligible and palatable for children, Evangelical writers utilised a diverse range of formats, styles, and themes that revolved around a particular set of theological ideas and as shall be seen, this deliberate customisation of Evangelical children’s literature demarcates it as a significant category in its own right.

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Denominational Tensions Revealed in Evangelical Literature Evangelical writers challenged the ‘foe’ of Enlightenment and pro-­ Revolutionary writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine with equanimity, born out of a shared purpose. But as Robert Wolff’s Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England (1977) has highlighted, the internal conflicts within the Christian Church produced thousands of religious novels reflecting every aspect of the ‘public religious controversies and the private religious agonies’ from all denominations.53 The following discussion briefly illustrates how these internal tensions were presented, how they became the subject of denominational rivalry and competition, and how they were utilised as a rich resource for the proselytisation of children by particular religious churchmanships. In many instances, children’s literature was also deployed as a propagandistic tool to satirise and undermine the doctrinal beliefs of their opposite number, as the following examples illustrate.

Protestant and Catholic Tensions in Evangelical Children’s Literature Hannah More exercised an inspirational influence upon many Evangelical writers, among them Charlotte Elizabeth Browne Phelan Tonna. Charlotte Elizabeth, as she became known in publishing circles, provides a further example of Evangelical anti-revolutionary writing. In her published Personal Recollections (1841), she wrote of the haunting spectre of the French Revolution that affected her family. She recalled growing up as a child in England and the seemingly imminent prospect of a French invasion, whereupon she pledged, ‘to stand by our mother to the last and try if we could not by some means ourselves kill Bonaparte …[and that] this man seemed to embody in himself all that was terrifying in the idea of invasion’.54 And during a period when she lived in Ireland: ‘The recent horrors of the French Revolution and the kindred spirit that had burst out with sanguinary violence in Ireland, while the social frame of England herself was deeply shaken by the roll of those waves that were not permitted to break over her favoured soil, of course, formed a very prominent topic of conversation.’55 Charlotte Elizabeth, however, is in many ways more interesting for her sectarian views on the Irish situation and its associated Catholic-Protestant

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tensions. She was born in Norwich, the daughter of the Rev Michael Browne, an Anglican priest and minor Canon of Norwich Cathedral. Unfortunately, she lost her hearing at the age of ten due to medical treatment for temporary blindness. Her disability initiated an interest in the education of deaf children, and she wrote for the Juvenile Association for the Education of the Deaf and the Dumb, she also adopted a young deaf boy, John Britt. In 1813, she married Captain George Phelan of the British Army. She spent two years living with him while on service in Nova Scotia before returning to Kilkenny in Ireland, where Phelan owned a small estate. The marriage proved disastrous, Phelan abandoned her for lengthy periods during which she suffered acute bouts of depression and on his return, he became violent towards her. According to Christine Krueger, Charlotte Elizabeth underwent a dramatic conversion to Evangelicalism during this period in which she realised her vocation to tract writing.56 As Lois Rauch Gibson affirms from then on, ‘She had a mission: to convert everyone, especially Irish Catholics, to Evangelical Protestantism.’57 In 1824, Charlotte Elizabeth Browne Phelan assumed the pseudonym ‘Charlotte Elizabeth’ after separating from her abusive husband, thus, to prevent him from claiming any financial share of her earnings. She returned to England and lived with her brother in Clifton, Bristol, whose two children she later adopted after his death. It was here that she met Hannah More with whom she had previously corresponded and who she greatly admired.58 Charlotte Elizabeth’s time spent in Ireland had intensified her antipathy towards the Roman Catholic Church, which she consistently regarded as the source of Irish people’s enslavement. She believed that the Church was steeped in ignorance and superstition. Her successful 1830 novel Derry: A Tale of the Revolution expressed many such anti-Catholic sentiments and yielded several editions.59 Her theology had become passionately Evangelical, and the Calvinist doctrine of the depravity of human nature formed a recurrent theme in her literature. From 1830 onwards, Charlotte Elizabeth emerged as a significant figure in Evangelical circles, pleading for national repentance and prayer and, more controversially, advocating the expulsion of Unitarians from the British and Foreign Bible Society, attacking Tractarianism, and publicly denouncing those politicians who supported Catholic emancipation; indeed, she viewed the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 as England’s ‘national apostasy’. In conjunction with her anti-papist sentiment, she reopened an Irish Church that had been closed for several years in the St Giles district of London, but which was re-established for poor Irish Protestant immigrants. In 1841, Charlotte

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Elizabeth married Lewis Hippolytus Joseph Tonna, a religious writer twenty years her junior who shared her spiritual outlook and interests in ultra-Protestant polemical works, Biblical prophecy, and Judaism. The pervasive Protestant concept of the Roman Catholic Church as spiritually corrupt, was a persistent theme in Protestant Evangelical texts. In addition to Charlotte Elizabeth’s works, the 1863 issue of The Little Gleaner: A Monthly Magazine for the Young, a publication described by Charles Spurgeon as soundly orthodox,60 included an article in poetic form, which told of a young boy dragged to Mass against his will by his father. ‘The zealous papists helped to force him in. And begged the priests to pardon all his sin.’61 As a fairly obvious metaphor for the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone and the comparative alleged fraudulence of Catholic teaching, the author described the priest’s refusal to give absolution unless the boy pays a shilling; only the Pope, explains the priest, can confess directly to God without paying. To this, the boy immediately responds that he will also follow in the footsteps of the Pope: ‘God’s able to forgive, and through His Son He’s willing. To Him, then, I’ll confess and save my shilling.’62 Lois Gibson and Madelyn Holmes have suggested that Charlotte Elizabeth’s unrestrained anti-Catholicism may well have been fostered in her childhood when she became obsessed with Protestant martyrdom. 63 In Personal Recollections, she wrote about her childhood visit to the Lollard’s Pit where her father taught her that ‘Mary burned good people alive for refusing to worship wooden images’,64 thus prompting her fixation with female martyrology and a conviction that the Catholic Church was heretical. As well as writing for children and adults, she was also the editor of The Protestant Annual and The Protestant Magazine from 1841 and The Christian Lady’s Magazine from 1834 until 1846 when she died of breast cancer. Despite her terminal illness, she attended the inaugural meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Exeter Hall in January 1846 and continued writing and editing until her death. So renowned was she for her production of anti-Catholic literature that several of her works were placed on the ‘Index Expurgatorius’. 65 Her obituary in 1902 in The Gospel Magazine commented that Charlotte Elizabeth ‘[had] esteemed it … a high honour and rich blessing’.66 Conversely, for all of Charlotte Elizabeth’s virulent anti-Irish Catholicism, there were many ‘evangelical’ Roman Catholic authors who expressed similarly fervent levels of anti-Protestantism in their writing. Monsignor Francis Browning Bickerstaffe-Drew (1858–1928) was one such author. His father was Harry Lloyd Bickerstaffe, a Church of England

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clergyman, and his mother was Elisabeth Mona Brougham Drew. However, some of his works were published under the pseudonym of John Ayscough. Drew converted to Catholicism in 1878 while at Oxford and his best-known title was Dominus Vobiscum or the Sailor Boy (1880), published with Robert Washbourne as part of the Catholic children’s series Little Books of St. Nicholas. In the narrative, a young boy converts to Catholicism in order to pray for his dead friend.67 However, his dismayed Protestant parents disinherit him, and the protagonist sets off to sea, after which he dies a ‘Holy’ death. Fidelity to Roman Catholic teaching in the face of frequently significant cultural discrimination was a leading theme in Catholic publications, designed primarily to instruct children on how to lead ‘Holy lives’ and die ‘Holy deaths’. Pat Pinsent has observed that despite the revolution in children’s Catholic fiction that emerged from the end of the First Vatican Council in 1870, there remains a severe neglect of scholarly attention to this particular field of research. The rationale for the upsurge in Catholic children’s literature was twofold—recognition of the need to educate Roman Catholic children about their faith and the desire to counteract the vigorous current of anti-Catholicism in Protestant children’s literature.68 Many Catholic tracts followed a similar structure to the successful Protestant formulaic narratives for children. For example, Molly’s Prayer (1889) by Monsignor William Cologan emulated the style of Hesba Stretton’s hugely successful Jessica’s First Prayer69 with its popular motif of the child as an evangel. This prescriptive sensation narrative can be easily identified in Cologan’s tract as the dying girl Molly prays for her drunken father, who subsequently attends a temperance meeting and decides to reform his ways. On his way home, he sees a house on fire and rushes to rescue another girl coincidently also called Molly. The child is saved, but the father is fatally injured and begs a priest to administer the last rites. As noted in Chap. 2, the formation of the Catholic Truth Society (CTS) in 1884 was a direct counter-offensive to Protestant Evangelicalism with the deliberate intention of producing tracts comparable to those of the RTS. The CTS published a vast amount of children’s texts, fully aware that ‘[t]he position of Catholics in England is such that controversy is unavoidable’. In their statement of aims, the CTS acknowledged that, ‘A certain proportion of the society’s publications have been devoted to the consideration of the Anglican claims and to the exposure of the fictions assiduously promoted by the less intelligent and bigoted class of Protestants.’70 Thus substantial efforts were directed towards the refutation of negative

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Roman Catholic stereotypes in children’s and adult literature. The chief aim, however, was that of education and the instruction of Catholics by placing in their hands at nominal prices, educational and devotional works.

Conflict in Protestant Children’s Literature: High Church and Low Church Tensions Religious rivalry did not simply occur between the centuries-old enmities of Catholicism and Protestantism, even within the Church of England itself, divisions were rife. Controversies surrounding the ground-breaking series Tracts for the Times (1833–1845) in which members of the Oxford Movement, including Edward Bouverie Pusey and John Henry Newman, argued for the renewal and reinstatement of ‘Catholic’ practice within the Church of England, rippled out into children’s literature. Issues such as the inclusion of medieval ritual and liturgical practice, a restoration of the reverence for the ordinances of baptism and the Eucharist, of greater esteem for church architecture, decoration and vestments, and veneration of the ancient church and the Church Fathers rather than the Reformers, were central to the Tractarians. As Cutt has noted, the ninety tracts were by no means aimed at a young readership, but ‘they aroused a furore which was reflected in children’s books for the remainder of the century’.71 The Tractarians were highly influential in the production of superior children’s literature. Although Anglo-Catholic authors such as Charlotte Yonge and others would never have regarded themselves as ‘Evangelical’, they are included here, in part, to illustrate the diversity of the authors’ churchmanships. They also demonstrate that on the one hand, there were quintessentially Evangelical authors as evidenced by their church membership, affiliated networks, public and personal faith and the tone and style of their writing. While on the other hand, there were those, including Yonge, who differed significantly in their practice and ritualistic approaches to worship but who also wrote about High Church faith with as much enthusiasm and passion as their Evangelical counterparts. The Tractarian John Keble was a spiritual adviser to Yonge for over thirty years, reading each of her manuscripts and suggesting alterations before she submitted them for publication. Yonge was devout and astute; her father taught her French, Italian, Greek and mathematics while Keble instructed her in Tractarian principles. Robert Wolff has described Yonge as a creative genius, and the Tractarian message embodied in her novels

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shrewdly subliminal. For example, in her novel Abbeychurch or Self-Control and Self-Conceit (1844), Wolff comments that the subtle interweaving of themes of religious dissent, political radicalism, scientific scepticism and spiritual doubt written ‘by a twenty-year-old woman, who has never left the West Country, is an extraordinary phenomenon’.72 Abbeychurch explored the detrimental impact of Nonconformist religion on the daughter of a parish priest who attends a lecture at the Mechanics Institute with friends without permission from her father. Her thirteen-year-old sibling reveals to her the error of her ways by chastising her on the foolishness of the Mechanics Institute members who adopt wicked political views. She also mocks astronomers and geologists who dare to question the Genesis account of creation. ‘No subject can be safely treated of, except with reference to the Christian religion. Now, if you turn religion out, you see, you are sure to fall into false notions, and that is what these Mechanics Institute people do.’73 The sequel to Abbeychurch was The Castle Builders or the Deferred Confirmation (1854),74 one of Yonge’s most popular novels, which contained explicitly Tractarian views on sacramental doctrine. The title of course, refers to building castles in the air; in the narrative the young Elizabeth having learned the error of her ways by exploring Nonconformity, prepares herself for confirmation and her first Holy Communion. The novel is overtly propagandist in its approach to the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and Holy Communion. Two sisters, Emmeline and Kate, move to a village where a young curate, Mr Brent, of a High Church tradition, experiences opposition from local Evangelicals and Dissenters because he has prevented the distribution of certain of their tracts in the village. The girls attempt to undertake philanthropic work for the poor in the village, but their endeavours are unsuccessful because they have delayed their confirmation and so have not yet taken the sacrament. At one point in the narrative, the girls experience a near-death accident. They are almost drowned but are saved by a relative who exhorts them to get confirmed without delay for fear of their spiritual and physical safety.75 In The Castle Builders, Yonge’s emphasis upon the importance of the sacraments was considered by Keble and others to be one of her most discernibly apologist narratives and illustrated her critical view of the content of many Low Church tracts. And yet, her own writing was not so far removed from the plots of many Evangelical tales, which also propounded that children’s lives were in peril if they refused appropriate advice from adults on their Christian spiritual well-being.

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In her literary advice manual entitled What Books to Lend and What to Give (1887),76 Yonge reported that her recommended reading list contained no tales of a dissenting bias or false doctrine, which was of course a clear indictment of Nonconformist Evangelical literature. Froggy’s Little Brother (1875),77 written by the author ‘Brenda’ (Georgina Castle Smith), was described by Yonge as: ‘A touching tale of Street Arabs. Interest in it appears to be uncertain among children—one class has liked it, another virtually hissed it by inattention.’78 However, she continued, it is one of the better examples of such writing stating, ‘There are multitudes more of these Street Arab Tales, most of them written from fancy. It is possible to have too many of them, so only the names of these two best are given here: Froggy’s Little Brother and Little Meg’s Children.’79 The latter choice was written by the popular author Hesba Stretton and Elizabeth Thiel has noted that the term ‘Street Arab’ was introduced by Lord Shaftesbury and referred to abandoned and nomadic children who roamed the streets of cities begging for money and food. 80 Yonge disliked these tales because, as with all High Church adherents, she believed that faith should be taught with a high degree of dignity and restraint, in contrast to the Evangelical emphasis upon enthusiasm and melodrama, such characteristics she believed were crude and vulgar. And yet, in Street Arab Tales, the protagonist is invariably adopted into a middle-class family as a servant, underscoring the message that only amongst the respectable, precisely that class to which writers such as Yonge belonged, were able to create an appealing idyllic domestic environment.81 It is interesting to speculate upon the extent to which Yonge’s criticisms of her Evangelical counterparts were grounded in professional rivalry. Sensational dramatizations of the lives of the lower classes always proved far more popular and thus more profitable than the genteel tales of respectable middle-class children. In a similar vein to Yonge’s writing style, Elizabeth Missing Sewell (1815–1906) was encouraged by her brother William Sewell, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, to write novels for young people with the intent of instructing them in Tractarianism. Educated at an Evangelical boarding school, Sewell was deeply disturbed in her youth by an over-­ anxious conscience. In her autobiography, she related her daily practice of rigorous religious self-examination.82 Yonge and the Oxford Movement made a strong impression on Sewell, unlike Evangelicalism which she denied was part of the ‘true’ established church. However, she was evangelically passionate about her faith and conveyed this throughout her novels. For example, Margaret Percival (1847) is the story of a spiritually

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naive adolescent girl who is tempted to convert to Roman Catholicism and the narrative is full of anti-Catholic and anti-Dissenting propaganda.83 It takes Margaret’s uncle, a High Church Anglican, to steer her back onto the straight and narrow path. ‘As a baptised member of the English Church, you are obliged to remain in her communion’, he counsels. ‘Read your Bible and pray with your prayer-book, and keep a watchful eye over a criticising, discontented spirit, and you will never become a Romanist.’84 Sewell’s writing stressed the discipline of personal piety, high regard for church tradition, and the importance of the sacraments. By 1863, Sewell had become a well-known author whose nine volumes of tales and stories had sold over 68,000 copies in Britain and America.85 Both Yonge and Sewell were influenced by the author Harriett Newman, the sister of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who began writing for children after her marriage to the Tractarian Tom Mozley; his family were printers and published Harriet’s books. She disapproved of her brother John’s controversial conversion to Roman Catholicism and refused to speak to him afterwards. Her best-known works include The Fairy Bower (1841), which was highly recommended by Yonge and also The Lost Brooch (1841) and Family Adventures (1852).86 Mozley believed that her work brought a new innovative style to children’s books, and she hoped that she might be perceived as an author who ‘represented characters as they really are rather than moral portraitures for unreserved imitation or avoidance’.87 She attacked what she considered to be vulgar, nostalgic, and sentimental themes prevalent in Evangelical publications, such as dramatic conversions or pious protagonists portrayed as dying children abounding in faith. In The Lost Brooch, Mozley’s satirical treatment of the Evangelical Duff family, highlighted her perspectives on what she perceived as the trivial, distorted features of Evangelical educational and philanthropic theories. Her particular theological distaste for Calvinist doctrine is parodied by her in the character of Constance Duff.88 As Bratton comments: ‘Mozley’s quarrel, and that of the new Church party, was with the form taken by the Evangelical profession of the dedication of the whole of life to God: the inclination, as she saw it, to lowering the sacred by handling it familiarly in everyday life and dissipating, and eventually coming to abuse its power, by associating it with the profane, the trivial, and finally with selfish concerns.’89 The relevance of these High Church authors to this chapter demonstrates that authors belonging to the same Christian faith had very different ideas about how to communicate their faith and were highly critical

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and competitive. It also reveals that children’s authors rarely wrote in isolation but were influenced by their peers and integrated into communities of writers and publishers with both common and conflicting theological views on how and what children should be taught. Although certainly not self-proclaimed Evangelicals, as noted earlier, High Church authors are included in this study as a means of demonstrating that Evangelicalism and the message of a vital, intensely personal faith was both expressed and critiqued in highly creative and various ways and for diverse reasons. Whether in disagreement with doctrinal emphases and writing style or the enviable success of competitors. According to Julie Melnyk, women’s authorial voices were particularly prominent in the phenomenon of what she classifies as ‘response novels’ because such novels gave writers a legitimate vehicle to air their polemic theological perspectives and thus demonstrate the tensions between High, Low, and Broad Church parties.90 Emma Jane Worboise was one such writer who emerged as an excellent adversary to Yonge, Sewell, and Mozley; her children’s novels functioned as an explicitly apologetic defence of pro-Evangelical, anti-Tractarian views. As the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, it is unclear whether Worboise actually left the Established Church. As a noted tract fiction writer, she authored over fifty works with overtly Dissenting themes. She was also editor of The Christian World Magazine, published by James Clark and Co., a religious publishing house in London. Worboise wrote for a mainly Nonconformist middle-class readership and compellingly combined humour with pathos, as in her novel Lilian Grey (1858). The protagonist Lilian declares: ‘Roman Catholics were very wicked, and Dissenters very vulgar, and the State Church about right, though there was no knowing what the Establishment might come to if low men were permitted to receive ordination.’91 Wolff observed that: ‘Determined Emma Worboise got the largest possible mileage from each such effort at humour by repeating it until the reader was sure to have got the point.’92 Worboise’s children’s books are particularly fascinating because they comprise a number of quasi-plagiarist ‘responses’ to previous novels by other authors. Elisabeth Jay has argued, for example, that Worboise’s Thornycroft Hall: Its Owners and Heirs (1864) 93 is her response to Charlotte Bronte’s searing criticism of the Evangelical Lowood School in Jane Eyre, a novel set in the fictitious but similarly named Thornfield Hall.94 Worboise also contradicted Sewell’s approach to sacramental doctrines in her Tractarian novel Amy Herbert, 95 which advocated baptism

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exclusively into the Established Church. Worboise’s response was to write Amy Wilton an Evangelical tale that propounded a Dissenters’ right to Christian communion and salvation. She further responded to Yonge’s Tractarian novel Hearts Ease or the Brother’s Wife (1854)96 by writing, albeit twenty years later, Hearts Ease in the Family (1874). 97 In her novel, the main protagonist, Little Gertrude, is disliked by the irreligious Beresford family, who have taken her in. In true Evangelical fashion, Little Gertrude manages to guide various family members through dramatic conversions and the whole household is eventually saved. Jay proposed that Worboise’s quasi-plagiarist strategy was for rather dubious economic reasons, that by copying other successful book titles, she hoped her books might be mistakenly bought by confused Tractarians purchasing novels at bookstalls and circulating libraries.98 Although this theory does seem a shade implausible. Melnyk disagrees with Jay; she argues that Worboise’s intent was actually a major doctrinal counter-attack on High Church women’s literature, in particular its theological content.99 Gillian Avery bears this assessment out; while Worboise was prepared to tolerate the Established Church, she believed that ‘it nourished a serpent in Puseyism and predicted that the serpent would sting the Church to death’.100 Given the provocative nature and competitiveness of the authors, this theory would appear to be more convincing. In contrast, at the opposite end of the theological spectrum others writers decided not to be quite so prescriptive in their subject matter, leaving their readers to glean and interpret their own theologies from their phantastic fictional narratives.

Nonconformist Children’s Literature: Universalism and Fantasy Nineteenth-century Nonconformist Evangelicalism offered an alternative, enthusiastic, and highly personalised expression of spirituality beloved by the working and lower-middle classes because of its direct contrast to establishment ecclesiology. As we shall see throughout this study, Nonconformist children’s literature ranged widely in content from the stereotypical, highly sensational, often crude tales of repentance, conversion, and salvation through to the eminently celebrated Victorian allegorist, clergyman, author and poet, George MacDonald. The most notable authority of mythopoeia in children’s literature is in my view the late William Gray whose extensive research on myth and fantasy tales

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contributed greatly both in wisdom and insight to this study.101 It was of course J. J. R. Tolkien who popularised this genre originally in his poem titled Mythopoeia but antecedents of mythopoeic literature in the nineteenth century were William Blake, Rider Haggard, and MacDonald. MacDonald was a Congregationalist minister in Arundel but was forced to resign from his position because of his deep discomfort with the Calvinist tendencies of Congregationalist theology. Gray observed that ‘[MacDonald] was ejected partly on account of his willingness to entertain the possibility that animals, and worse still, Roman Catholics, might have some hope of a blessed afterlife.’102 Thus, MacDonald’s theological propensity towards Christian Universalism disconcerted many admirers of his work, but he was, in this aspect at least, a man of his time. Although Universalism, or the doctrine of universal salvation, was controversial, it became increasingly accepted as a theological position by the close of the nineteenth century. As is well-known, the Broad Churchman F. D. Maurice was dismissed from his post as Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College, London, because he refused to accept the doctrine of the eternal torment in hell, articulated in his seminal Theological Essays (1853). Instead, Maurice’s sincere belief in the infinite love of God led him to a position which, while it did not reject retributive punishment altogether, held that ultimately all men, women and children might attain salvation. There were many well-known Broad Church devotees of Maurice’s Universalism, including his great friend and Christian Socialist ally, Charles Kingsley. I explore the soteriological dimensions of Kingsley’s most famous children’s book, The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863), in more detail in Chap. 4. But what The Water Babies shares with the work of MacDonald is the introduction of highly imaginative fantasy and the greater reliance upon a fictional dimension to explain theology through the use of narrative and characterizations, something that many Evangelical authors were deeply suspicious of in terms of its potential for leading children into falsehood. In 1828, for example, the Rev Legh Richmond, an influential member of the Religious Tract Society, wrote to his daughter: ‘Fully as I can enter into the beauties of fiction, yet I exceedingly dread their tendency. The utmost caution is requisite in meddling with them. The novelist I unequivocally proscribe, and many of the poets, and their poems, which are only nets to catch young minds in the maze of Satan.’103 As will be seen in later chapters, Richmond, like many Evangelical writers, relied on first-hand accounts of real people for the success of his books and he proudly claimed as such. His narratives

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reflected memoirs from his own pastoral experience in his Isle of Wight parish. By way of contrast, MacDonald’s mythopoeic approach integrated mythological themes and archetypes that emerged from his highly creative imagination as revealed in the title of one of his essays ‘The Fantastic Imagination’, told in A Dish of Orts (1882).104 His best-known fiction novels, At the Back of the North Wind (1870), The Princess and the Goblin (1871), and The Princess and Curdie (1883), are replete with highly inventive spiritual symbolism, layered with multiple readings usually dealing in death and fantasy. Yet this is not to ignore the fact that MacDonald’s work was also grounded in his own ‘real life’ experiences, in effect his spiritual autobiography. Gray discerns for example, that MacDonald’s obsession with death and the afterlife might be explained in relation to the tragic death of his eldest and favourite daughter Lilia. She died in his arms, as he was writing one of his darkest works on salvation and death, Lillith: A Romance (1895).105 This left him totally bereft and broken-hearted. I expand on the effects of child death in children’s literature in Chap. 6. MacDonald, therefore, illustrates an exceptionally creative, controversial, and radical wing of Nonconformist children’s religious literature. He is not afraid to criticise aspects of Calvinism which he stated portrays, ‘That miserable puritanical martinet of a God … and all those who have taken all the glow, all the colour, all the worth out of life on earth and instead reduced it to a pale tearless hell’.106 MacDonald thus railed against what he perceived as repressive Calvinist criticisms of fantasy tales and argued that more, not less, imagination is needed when writing for the young.107 In addition, MacDonald is particularly important for this study for his veneration of the child. His profound ‘theology of childhood’ is encapsulated in his sermon, The Child in the Midst, based on the Gospel of Mark, chapter 9:33-7 in which he stated:108 ‘God is represented in Jesus, for that God is like Jesus: Jesus is represented in the child, for that Jesus is like the child. Therefore, God is represented in the child, for that he is like the child. God is child-like. In the true vision of this fact lies the receiving of God in the child.’109

Concluding Reflections While the controversial ‘Age of Revolution’ certainly acted as a principal catalyst for the rapid proliferation of Evangelical counter-revolutionary children’s literature, this chapter has also revealed that many authors

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engaged in responding vociferously to external intellectual pressures such as Deism and Enlightenment educational theories. They also became deeply occupied with internal controversies such as the diverse factions within churchmanships and inter and intra-denominational theological disagreements. I use the term ‘revolution’ as a relative one, of course. Although this chapter has presented Evangelical responses as a counter-­ revolutionary discourse, intent on shoring up the conservative status quo and maintaining social order, it was in its own way, an uprising of sorts with its rapid reformation of manners and morals. As Cutt has commented: ‘By 1810, the steady pressure exerted by Evangelicals at all influential levels of English society was showing results. In a little over twenty years, they brought about their quiet domestic revolution—in taste, in standards of conduct, in the intensity of religious feeling, and the outward manifestation of religion.’110 It is to that intensity of religious feeling I now turn and to the future deluge of Evangelical publications that continued to expand at great pace throughout the century. As the focus gradually shifted from themes of revolution and counter-revolution at the beginning of the century, the Evangelical strategy was to move with the times and advance doctrines from a political to a personal level. Children’s Evangelical literature began to evolve from a collective perspective to focus on the individual’s theological views and the invitation to embrace a personal faith as the doctrine of soteriology was propounded through tracts and literature on an unprecedented scale.

Notes 1. See Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Revolution : 1789–1848, 1st Vintage books ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1996); also Vidler, Alec. The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961). 2. Betts, Raymond. Europe in Retrospect: A Brief History of the Past Two Hundred Years (Lexington; MA: D.C.  Heath, 1979). See Chapter 2, ‘The Ideology of the French Revolution’ p. 21. 3. Ibid., p. 21. 4. Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children (Wormley: Five Owls Press, 1979). p. 8. 5. See Chapter 2 ‘Study to Be Quiet: Hannah More and Counterrevolutionary Moral Reform’ in Gilmartin, Kevin. Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain 1790–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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6. Pedersen, Susan. ‘Hannah More Meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January 1986). pp. 84–113. 7. Trimmer, Sarah. An easy introduction to the knowledge of nature, and reading the Holy Scriptures adapted to the capacities of children (London: Printed for the author and sold by J. Dodsley[et al.], 1780). Trimmer, Sarah. Sacred history selected from the Scriptures with annotations and reflections, suited to the comprehension of young minds (London: printed for J. Dodsley; T. Longman and G. Robinson; and J. Johnson, 1782). 8. Trimmer, Sarah. The Sunday-School Catechist; consisting of familiar lectures with questions for the use of visitors and teachers, etc. (London: T. Longman, 1788). A Comment on Dr Watts’s Divine Songs for Children, with questions, etc. (London, 1789). A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer … containing a comment on the service for Sundays, etc. (London: T. Longman and J. Robinson, 1791). 9. Trimmer, Sarah. The Guardian of Education, a Periodical Work Consisting of a Practical Essay on Christian Education, Founded Immediately on the Scriptures, and the Sacred Offices of the Church of England (London: J. Hatchard, 1802). 10. Grenby, M. ‘Politicizing the Nursery: British Children’s Literature and the French Revolution’, in Lion and the Unicorn 27, no. 1 (January 1, 2003), 1–26. 11. Major, Emma. Madam Britannia: Women, Church, and Nation 1712–1812 (Oxford University Press, 2012). p. 290. 12. See the Guardian of Education, 1:2. (1802) cited in Grenby, M. ‘Politicizing the Nursery 1990. Also Immel, Andrea. and Grenby, M. On the Guardian of Education 2002. Immel, Andrea. and Myers, Mitzi. Revolutionary Reviewing: Sarah Trimmer’s Guardian of Education and the Cultural Politics of Juvenile Literature: An Index to the Guardian ([Los Angeles]: Dept. of Special Collections, University Research Library, University of California Los Angeles, 1990). 13. Barruel, Abbé and Clifford, Robert. Memoirs, illustrating the History of Jacobinism. A translation from the French [by the Hon. Robert Clifford] (London: The Author, 1797). 14. Deism, of course, lived on during the nineteenth century in the writings of natural theologians, liberal theologians, the rise of Unitarians and other, more heterodox religious groups. Charles Darwin even considered himself a Deist at one point. 15. Trimmer, Sarah. The Charity School Spelling Book Part I: Containing the Alphabet, Spelling Lessons, and Short Stories of Good and Bad Boys, In Words of One Syllable Only. By Sarah Trimmer (London: F. and C. Rivington, No 62, St. Paul’s Church Yard, 1799).

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16. Campe, Joachim Heinrich and Bewick, John. The New Robinson Crusoe. Translated from the French with illustrations. (London: John Stockdale, 1789). Trimmer, Sarah. The Guardian of Education, Review of The New Robinson Crusoe. Vol 3 (1804): pp. 356–60. 17. Ibid., Robinson Crusoe’s prayer as she observed: ‘Full as it is of expressions of fervent devotion, it is not the Prayer of a Christian, for though it speaks of inward heavenly consolations, not a word is said of the Redeemer and Sanctifier, through whom, and by whom alone their consolations can come.’ 18. Stott, Anne. Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford; New  York: Oxford University Press, 2003). p. 101. 19. More, Hannah. The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain and Other Tales (New York; Cincinnati: Derby & Jackson; H. W. Derby & Co. 1857). p. 6. 20. Bebbington (1989, p. 70). 21. More, ibid., p. 6. 22. Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason Being an Investigation of True and of Fabulous Theology. By Thomas Paine, Citizen and Cultivator of the United States of America; Secretary for Foreign Affairs to Congress in the American War; and Author of the Works Entitled, ‘Common Sense, and Rights of Man’ (Paris: Printed for Barrois, Senior, Bookseller, Quai des Augustins, No. 19 second year of the French Republic I and indivisible, 1794). p. 70. 23. See Hopkins, Mary Alden. Hannah More and Her Circle (New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co. 1947). p.  208. And also More, Hannah. Village Politics. (London: Printed for and sold by F. and C. Rivington, 1792). Paine, Thomas. Rights of Man (London: Printed for D. Jordan, 1791). 24. Skedd, S. J. ‘More, Hannah (1745–1833)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 25. See, for example, Demers, Patricia. The World of Hannah More (University Press of Kentucky, 1996). p. 109.; J. L. and B. B. Hammond. The Town Labourer 1760–1832: the New Civilisation, New ed. (London ; New York: Longmans Green, 1928). Vol 2. Chapter 9 and Ford K. Brown. Fathers of the Victorians  : the Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge: University Press, 1961). 26. Scheuermann, Mona. In Praise of Poverty  : Hannah More Counters Thomas Paine and the Radical Threat (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002). p. 138. 27. More (1795, p. 11). 28. See Stott (2003). Ford, Charles Howard. Hannah More: A Critical Biography (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc, 1996). Demers, Patricia. The World of Hannah More (Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1996).

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29. Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). p. 24. 30. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile or, Education (London; New  York: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. E.P. Dutton & Co., 1911). 31. Ibid., p. 56. 32. Wesley, John. The Works of the Reverend John Wesley., 1st American complete and standard ed. (New York: T.  Mason and G.  Lane for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1831). ‘A Thought on the Manner of Educating Children’, Volume Seven, p. 458. 33. Wilberforce, William, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: H.  Fisher R.  Fisher and P. Jackson, 1834). 34. Darton, F. J. H. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932). p. 163. 35. Ruwe, Donnelle. ‘Guarding the British Bible from Rousseau: Sarah Trimmer, William Godwin, and the Pedagogical Periodical’, Children’s Literature, Volume 29 (2001). p. 10. 36. Ibid., p. 10 37. Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Mrs. Sherwood and Her Books for Children: a Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). p. 43. 38. Sherwood, Mary Martha., The history of Henry Milner: a little boy who was not brought up according to the fashions of this world (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1822). Sherwood et al. The history of the Fairchild family, or, The child’s manual: being a collection of stories calculated to shew the importance and effects of a religious education (London: Printed for J. Hatchard and sold by F. Houlston and Son, Wellington, 1818). 39. Sherwood, Mary Martha. A General Outline of Profane History, from the Beginning of the World unto the Present Period: Intended as an Introduction to the Study of History in a More Diffuse Form (Wellington, Salop; London: Printed by and for F.  Houlston and Son  ; And sold by Scatcherd and Letterman, Ave-Maria Lane and all other Booksellers, 1819). pp. 213–215. 40. Day, Thomas. The History of Sandford and Merton (London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1786). 41. Rowland, Peter ‘Day, Thomas (1748–1789)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edition, 2021, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7372, accessed 12/08/21] 42. Horne, Jackie. History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature (Abingdon: Ashgate Publishing, 2011) p. 12.

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43. For this fascinating discussion on ‘emulation theory’ see Horne, Jackie. And also, Phillips, Mark Salber. Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740–1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000). p. 126. 44. See Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965). Chapter 10, The Child’s Heroes, pp. 219–243. 45. Ibid., p. 11. 46. Stéphanie Félicité du Crest de Saint-Aubin, Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830), known as Madame de Genlis, was a French writer and educator. She wrote several works on the theory of education, the best known is The Théâtre d’éducation (4 vols., 1779–1780). 47. Berquin, Arnaud (1747–1791) was a French children’s author. His most famous work was L’Ami des Enfants (1782–1783). The work remained popular until the middle of the nineteenth century. Berquin’s stories consisted of events that might happen to children in their everyday lives and did not contain fairy tales or fantasy. 48. Ospringe, Emily et al., Favouritism, Virtue, and Contentment: Instructive and Entertaining Stories for Young People: With Fine Engravings (London: 76, St. Paul’s Church-Yard; Liverpool, 64, Bold Street: Edward Lacey & Henry Lacey, 1838). 49. Trimmer, Sarah. Fabulous Histories New Edition. (pp. iv. 164. J.G. & F. Rivington: London, 1838). 50. Barbauld, Anna. Lessons for Children (London; Liverpool: Henry Lacey, 1780). 51. Barbauld, Anna. and Johnson, Joseph Hymns in Prose for Children (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1781). 52. Ibid. 53. Wolff, Robert Lee. Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England (New York: Garland Publications, 1977). p. 2. 54. Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth. Life of Charlotte Elizabeth: Personal Recollections (New York: M.W. Dodd, 1848). p. 50. 55. Ibid., 1848, p. 44. 56. Krueger, Christine L. The Reader’s Repentance: Women Preachers, Women Writers, and Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). p. 128. 57. Khorana, Meena. (Ed.) Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale, 1996). p. 311. 58. See Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth. Conformity: a Tale (London: W.  H. Dalton, 1841). And Falsehood and Truth (Liverpool: Henry Perris, 1841).

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59. Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth. Derry: A Tale of the Revolution (London: Nisbet, 1830). 60. Spurgeon, Charles. The Sword and the Trowel (1865–1892). p. 556 61. The Little Gleaner: A Monthly Magazine for the Young, October Issue (Houlston & Wright, 1863). p. 265. 62. Ibid., p. 265. 63. Khorana (1996, p. 310). 64. See Tonna (1848, p. 13). 65. In 1571, the Sacred Congregation of the Index was created, which had the specific task to investigate those writings that were denounced in Rome as being not exempt of errors, to update the list of Pope Pius IV regularly, and also to make lists of required corrections in case a writing was not to be condemned absolutely but only in need of correction; it was then listed with a mitigating clause (e.g., donec corrigatur (forbidden until corrected) or donec expurgetur (forbidden until purged)).This sometimes resulted in very long lists of corrections, published in the Index Expurgatorius. 66. See The Editor’s article ‘The Portrait—Charlotte Elizabeth’. In The Gospel Magazine (April 1902). p. 221. 67. See De Maeyer, Jan. Religion, Children’s Literature and Modernity in Western Europe 1750–2000 (Leuven University Press, 2005). See also, Bickerstaff-Drew. Msgr. (Ayscough, John.)The Sailor Boy: Dominus Vobiscum (R.  Washbourne, 1880). https://archive.org/details/ DominusVobiscumOrTheSailorBoy accessed 06/12/21. 68. Pinsent, Pat. Representations of Catholic Identity in British Children’s Books between Vatican I and Vatican II, Paper Presented at the IBBY Summer School, University of Roehampton, July 2007. 69. Stretton, Hesba. Jessica’s First Prayer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1860). 70. See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15077a.htm accessed 06/12/21. 71. Cutt (1979, p. 45). See also Wolff (1977, pp. 20–21). 72. Wolff (1977, p. 121). 73. Yonge, Charlotte M. Abbeychurch, or Self-Control and Self Conceit (London: J. Burns, 1844). 74. Yonge, Charlotte M. The Castle Builders or the Deferred Confirmation (London: J & C Mozley, 1854). 75. Wolff (1977, pp. 121–126). 76. Yonge, Charlotte M. What Books to Lend and What to Give (London: National Society’s Depository, 1887). 77. Brenda (Georgina Castle Smith) Froggy’s Little Brother (London: J. F. Shaw, 1875).

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78. Yonge, Charlotte. ‘What Books to Lend and What to Give’ (London: National Society’s Depository, 1887). see The Internet Archive. http:// www.archive.org/stream/whatbookstolendw00yong/whatbookstolendw00yong_djvu.txt (1886), p. 21. 79. Ibid., p. 21. 80. Thiel, Elizabeth. The Fantasy of Family: Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2008). p. 180. 81. Ibid., p. 44. 82. Sewell, Elizabeth Missing and Sewell. Eleanor L. The Autobiography of Elizabeth M. Sewell. See the Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/ details/autobiographyel00unkngoog. (1907), p. 27. Accessed 06/12/21 83. Sewell. Elizabeth Missing & Edited by Sewell. W. Margaret Percival. By the author of ‘Amy Herbert’ (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1847). 84. Ibid., p. 271. 85. Altick (1957, p. 389). 86. Mozley, Harriet Elizabeth (Newman) The Fairy Bower, or the History of a Month. A Tale for Young People (London; Derby: James Burns, Portman Street; and Henry Mozley and Sons, Derby, 1841). Mozley, Harriett. The Lost Brooch; or, the History of another month. A tale for young people (James Burns: London. 1841). Mozley, Harriett. Family Adventures (London; Derby Press, 1852). 87. Avery (1965, p. 74). 88. Jay (1979, pp. 67–68). 89. Bratton, Josephine. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble, 1981). p. 161. 90. Melnyk, Julie. Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers (New York: Garland, 1998). p. 108. 91. Wolff (1977, p. 238). 92. Ibid., p. 239. 93. See Chapter V Thornycroft Hall: An Evangelical Answer to Jane Eyre in Jay, 1979, pp.  244–260. And also Worboise, Emma Jane. Thornycroft Hall: its owners and its heirs (London: Clarke 1864). 94. Ibid. 95. Sewell, Elizabeth Missing. Edited by Sewell,W. Amy Herbert by a Lady (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1844). 96. Yonge, Charlotte M. Heart’s Ease (London: Macmillan, 1854). 97. Worboise, Emma Jane. Heart’s Ease in the Family (London: J. Clarke, 1874). 98. Jay (1979, p. 245). 99. Melnyk (1998, p. 109).

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100. Worboise cited in Avery (1965, p. 99). 101. See Gray, William. Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Gray, William. Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R.  L. Stevenson (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). 102. Gray (2009, p. 48). 103. Letter of 6 June 1822, quoted in Grimshawe, T. S. A Memoir of the Revd. Legh Richmond, 9th edn (1828). p. 335. 104. MacDonald, George. ‘A Dish of Orts’, 1867. See Project Gutenberg at: h t t p : / / w w w. g u t e n b e r g . o r g / f i l e s / 9 3 9 3 / 9 3 9 3 -­h / 9 3 9 3 -­h . htm#link2H_4_0015. Accessed 06/12/21. 105. Gray (2009, p. 58). 106. See Ibid., p. 30. And see also MacDonald, George. The Heart of George MacDonald: A One-Volume Collection of His Most Important Fiction, Essays, Sermons, Drama, and Biographical Information (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004). p. 359. 107. Gray (2009, p. 31). 108. Gray (2009, p. 46). 109. George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Series n.d. See Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9057 110. Cutt (1979, p. 16).

Bibliography Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1880–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965). Barbauld, Anna. Lessons for Children (London; Liverpool: Henry Lacey, 1780). Barbauld, Anna. and Johnson, Joseph. Hymns in Prose for Children (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1781). Barruel, Abbé and Clifford, Robert. Memoirs, illustrating the History of Jacobinism. A translation from the French [by the Hon. Robert Clifford]. (London: The Author, 1797). Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyam, 1989). Betts, Raymond. Europe in Retrospect: A Brief History of the Past Two Hundred Years (Lexington Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1979). Bickerstaffe-Drew, Msgr. Francis Browning. (Aka: Ayscough, John.) The Sailor Boy: Dominus Vobiscum (London: R. Washbourne, 1880).

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Bratton, Josephine. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble, 1981). Brenda. (Smith, Georgina Castle.) Froggy’s Little Brother (London: J. F. Shaw, 1875). Brown, Ford K. Fathers of the Victorians: the Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge: University Press, 1961). Campe, Joachim Heinrich and Bewick, John. The New Robinson Crusoe. Translated from the French with illustrations (London: John Stockdale, 1789). Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Mrs. Sherwood and Her Books for Children: A Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children (Wormley: Five Owls Press, 1979). Darton, F. J. H. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932). Day, Thomas. The History of Sandford and Merton (London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1786). De Maeyer, Jan. Religion, Children’s Literature and Modernity in Western Europe 1750–2000 (Leuven University Press, 2005). Demers, Patricia. The World of Hannah More (University Press of Kentucky, 1996). Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities, 1st ed. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1859). Ford, Charles Howard. Hannah More: A Critical Biography (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc, 1996). Gilmartin, Kevin. Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain 1790–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Gray, William. Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). ———. Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C.  S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R. L. Stevenson (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). Grenby, M. ‘Politicizing the Nursery: British Children’s Literature and the French Revolution’, Lion and the Unicorn 27, no. 1 (January 1, 2003), 1–26. Grimshawe, Thomas. Shuttleworth. A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond (London: R B Seeley and W Burnside, 1828). Hammond, J. L. and B. B. The Town Labourer 1760–1832: the New Civilisation, New ed. (London; New York: Longmans, Green, 1928). Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). Hobsbawm, Eric. J.  The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). Hopkins, Mary Alden. Hannah More and Her Circle (New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947). Horne, Jackie. History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature (Abingdon: Ashgate Publishing, 2011).

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Immel, Andrea. and Myers, Mitzi. Revolutionary Reviewing: Sarah Trimmer’s Guardian of Education and the Cultural Politics of Juvenile Literature: An Index to the Guardian (Los Angeles: Dept. of Special Collections, University Research Library, University of California Los Angeles, 1990). Jay, Elizabeth. The Religion of the Heart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Khorana, Meena. (Ed.) Dictionary of Literary Biography. (Detroit: Gale, 1996). Krueger, Christine L. The Reader’s Repentance: Women Preachers, Women Writers, and Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). MacDonald, George. Unspoken Sermons Series 3 (London & New York: Longmans, Green, 1889). ———. A dish of orts chiefly papers on the imagination, and on Shakespeare (London: Marston & Co., 1893). MacDonald, George. & Hein, Rolland. The Heart of George MacDonald: A One-­ Volume Collection of His Most Important Fiction, Essays, Sermons, Drama, and Biographical Information (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004). Major, Emma. Madam Britannia: Women, Church, and Nation 1712–1812 (Oxford University Press, 2012). Melnyk, Julie. Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers (New York: Garland, 1998). More, Hannah. The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain and Other Tales (New York, Cincinnati: Derby & Jackson; H. W. Derby & Co., 1857). ———. Village Politics (London: Printed for and sold by F. and C. Rivington, 1792). Mozley, Harriet Elizabeth (née Newman) The Fairy Bower, or the History of a Month. A Tale for Young People (London: James Burns, Portman Street; and Henry Mozley and Sons, 1841a). ———. The Lost Brooch; or the History of another month. A tale for young people (London: James Burns, 1841b). ———. Family Adventures (London: Derby Press, 1852). Paine, Thomas. Rights of Man (London: Printed for D. Jordan, 1791). Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason Being an Investigation of True and of Fabulous Theology. By Thomas Paine, Citizen, and Cultivator of the United States of America; Secretary for Foreign Affairs to Congress in the American War; and Author of the Works Entitled, ‘Common Sense, and Rights of Man.’ (Paris: Printed for Barrois, Senior, Bookseller, Quai des Augustins, No. 19 second year of the French republic one and indivisible, 1794). Pedersen, Susan. ‘Hannah More Meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 25, No.1 (Jan., 1986). Phillips, Mark Salber. Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740–1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000).

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Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile or Education (London; New  York: J.M.  Dent & Sons Ltd. E.P. Dutton & Co. 1911). Rowland, Peter. ‘Day, Thomas (1748–1789)’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online edition, 2021). Ruwe, Donnelle. ‘Guarding the British Bible from Rousseau: Sarah Trimmer, William Godwin, and the Pedagogical Periodical’, Children’s Literature, Volume 29 (2001). Scheuermann, Mona. In Praise of Poverty: Hannah More Counters Thomas Paine and the Radical Threat (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002). Sewell, Elizabeth Missing. Amy Herbert by a Lady [Miss E.M. Sewell]. Edited by W. Sewell. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1844). ———. Margaret Percival. By the author of ‘Amy Herbert’ [Miss E.M.  Sewell]. Edited by W. Sewell. (2 vol. London, 1847). Sewell, Elizabeth Missing and Sewell. Eleanor L. The Autobiography of Elizabeth M. Sewell (London: Longmans, Green, 1907). Sherwood et al. The history of the Fairchild family, or, The child’s manual: being a collection of stories calculated to shew the importance and effects of a religious education (London: Printed for J. Hatchard and sold by F. Houlston and Son, Wellington, 1818). Sherwood, Mary Martha. A General Outline of Profane History, from the Beginning of the World unto the Present Period: Intended as an Introduction to the Study of History in a More Diffuse Form (London: Printed by and for F. Houlston and Son, 1819). ———. The history of Henry Milner: a little boy who was not brought up according to the fashions of this world (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1822). Skedd, S.  J. ‘More, Hannah (1745–1833)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Spurgeon, Charles. The Sword and the Trowel Journal (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1865). Stott, Anne. Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford; New  York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Stretton, Hesba. Jessica’s First Prayer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1860). Thiel, Elizabeth. The Fantasy of Family: Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2008). Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth. Derry: a tale of the Revolution (London: Nisbet, 1830). ———. Personal Recollections (London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1841a). ———. Conformity: a Tale (London: W. H. Dalton, 1841b). ———. Falsehood and Truth. (Liverpool: Henry Perris, 1841c). Trimmer, Sarah. An easy introduction to the knowledge of nature, and reading the Holy Scriptures adapted to the capacities of children (London: Printed for the author and sold by J. Dodsley et al., 1780).

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———. Sacred history selected from the Scriptures with annotations and reflections, suited to the comprehension of young minds (London: printed for J.  Dodsley; T. Longman and G. Robinson; and J. Johnson, 1782). ———. The Sunday-School Catechist: consisting of familiar lectures with questions for the use of visitors and teachers, etc. (London: T. Longman, 1788). ———. A Comment on Dr Watts’s Divine Songs for Children, with questions, etc. (London: printed for J. Buckland; J. F. and C. Rivington; T. Longman; T. Field; and C. Dilly 1789). ———. A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer … containing a comment on the service for Sundays, etc. (London: printed for T. Longman, and G.G.J. and J.  Robinson, in Pater-Noster-Row; and J.  Johnson, in St. Paul’s Church-­ Yard, 1791). ———. The Charity School Spelling Book. Part I Containing the Alphabet, Spelling Lessons, and Short Stories of Good and Bad Boys, In Words of One Syllable Only. By Sarah Trimmer (London: printed for F. and C. Rivington, No 62, St. Paul’s Church Yard, 1799). ———. The Guardian of Education, a Periodical Work Consisting of a Practical Essay on Christian Education, Founded Immediately on the Scriptures, and the Sacred Offices of the Church of England (London: J. Hatchard, 1802). ———. The Guardian of Education, Review of The New Robinson Crusoe. Vol 3 (London: J. Hatchard, 1804). ———. Fabulous Histories. (London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1838). Vidler, Alec. The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961). Wesley, John. The Works of the Reverend John Wesley., 1st American complete and standard ed. (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1831). Wilberforce, William. A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: H. Fisher. R. Fisher and P. Jackson, 1834). Wolff, Robert Lee. Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England (New York: Garland Publications, 1977). Worboise, Emma Jane. Thornycroft Hall: its owners and its heirs (London: Clarke 1864). ———. Heart’s Ease in the Family (London: J. Clarke, 1874). Yonge, Charlotte M. Abbeychurch, or Self-Control and Self Conceit (London: J. Burns, 1844). ———. The Castle Builders or the Deferred Confirmation (London: J & C Mozley, 1854a). ———. Heart’s Ease (London: Macmillan, 1854b). ———. What Books to Lend and What to Give (London: National Society’s Depository, 1887).

CHAPTER 4

Soteriological Themes in Nineteenth-­Century Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. To the Jews, I became like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I became like one not having the law, so to win those not having the law. To the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means, I might save some (1 Corinthians Chapter 9 verses 19–22). —St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians

Introduction Vernon Storr, the Examining Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury and Research Fellow of University College Oxford observed in 1913, that early nineteenth-century Evangelical teaching was ‘essentially and almost exclusively soteriological’.1 Evangelicals were often derided and treated unfavourably by High Anglican clergy who disapproved of ‘enthusiasm’ in any form.2 As discussed previously, scholarly definitions of Evangelicalism have underscored its predominant stress on the doctrine of salvation, or soteriology. This has been defined as that central branch of Christian theology that deals with the fall of humanity, often referred to as original sin, God’s redemptive acts by means of revelation and the atonement, and the soul’s final destiny.3 Those Christians who associated themselves with the Evangelical movement in the nineteenth century placed a great deal of emphasis on the importance of the atonement, that is, the redemptive © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. E. Smale, Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5_4

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sacrificial death of Christ as the resolve for the innate sinfulness of humanity. This chapter explores such soteriological themes and ideas in nineteenth-­ century Evangelical publications for children; the findings offer evidence of the authors’ extensive support of these doctrinal themes within the vast body of Evangelical literature produced during the period. It studies, for example, the form and content of teaching materials on the doctrine of salvation including texts for children on subjects such as: original sin, repentance and conversion, children as both recipients and evangels of the Gospel message, infant baptismal regeneration, confirmation, children as missionary exemplars and child emigration as a response to physical and spiritual salvation. These themes in children’s literature have rarely been critically analysed in any great measure and thus confirms my argument that the subject of soteriology in children’s literature is a hugely neglected area of research within the bounds of both theology and children’s literature criticism. We should also bear in mind that the doctrine of salvation concerning the atonement created considerable controversy in the nineteenth century, for example, the work of F.  D. Maurice’s Doctrine of Sacrifice (1854).4 Unlike his Evangelical counterparts, Maurice downplayed the notion of penal substitution in his sermons, that is, the belief that God imputed the guilt of the sins of humanity onto his son Jesus Christ and, through his death on the cross, became the substitute for mankind. As Jan-Melissa Schramm has explained, Maurice argued instead that Christ’s sacrifice was: ‘[a] moral action in which the nature of Christ’s relationship to man was seen as sympathy, fellow-feeling and identification’.5 Therefore, the doctrine of soteriology was at the core of many such theological disputes throughout the nineteenth century, notably from educated agnostics such as the scientist T. H. Huxley (1825–1895) and the author George Eliot (1819–1890), who regarded substitutionary atonement theory offensive to human morality and responsibility.6 Despite such intellectual qualms concerning the nature of and route to eternal salvation, the primary aim of Evangelical authors and publishers remained that of ‘convert[ing] the nation’.7 They sincerely believed that the nation’s future was predicated upon the spiritual reformation and conversion of her children and that it was their personal mission in life to accomplish it.8 Evidence for the urgency to disseminate the Evangelical message to as wide an audience as possible and thus, as quoted in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians above, ‘to become all things to all men’, in

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order to save them, can be found in the main principles and methods of the Religious Tract Society which declared: ‘There should be some account of the way of a sinner’s salvation in every Tract; so that, if a person were to see but one, and never had the opportunity of seeing another book, he might plainly perceive that, in order for his salvation, he must be born again of the Spirit, and justified by faith in the obedience unto death. A Tract without this is very defective indeed. Finally, Tracts should be adapted to various situations and conditions: for the young and for the aged, for the children of prosperity and of affliction, for careless and for awakened sinners, and for entering into the reasonings, excuses, temptations, and duties of each, and pointing out to them the way of the Lord.’9

Childhood, Original Sin, Repentance, and Conversion As demonstrated in Chap. 2, Evangelical writers differed significantly in the style and emphases of their moral, didactic, Enlightenment counterparts in order to accomplish their mission. Indeed, their literature provides evidence of the authors’ deep conviction of original sin deemed as a universal human condition10 which could only be resolved through the uniquely redemptive work of Christ. As William Wilberforce declared in 1797, ‘Man is degraded in his nature, and depraved in his faculties, indisposed to good, and disposed to evil … tainted with sin, not slightly and superficially, but tragically and to the very core.’11 Therefore, much of the Evangelical children’s literature published during the period conveyed the sinful state of humanity and highlighted copious examples of children who outwardly manifested the ‘sinful nature’ and were thus constrained to recognise and repent of their state. In 1857, George Eliel Sargent (1808–1883), a Baptist author, published Roland Leigh, the Story of a City Arab with the Religious Tract Society. It began with a stirring preface and graphic description that detailed his religious views on the poverty, depravity, and pathos of London city street life: ‘It has been said that “great cities are great evils, seminaries of vice and schools for profligacy; that they are Satan’s universities, where his first-rate scholars in all branches of ungodly learning are trained up for his service, and to fill the most important offices in his kingdom of darkness”.’12 This notion of the city as a metaphor for sin became a common analogy in Evangelical writing. Sargent was the son-in-law of the Baptist

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children’s author, Esther Hewlett Copley. He became a well-­ known preacher in Oxfordshire, where he lived with his wife Emma and their children before relocating to Eythorne and then to London in 1868 to take up the post of editor of the Tract Magazine with the RTS.13 Sargent’s theology was deeply embedded in Evangelical doctrine combined with weighty Calvinist tendencies. He enjoyed a forty-year literary career and The Story of a City Arab (1850) remained one of his most successful works, with ten editions published between 1850 and 1879.14 It is a tale of social and moral deprivation narrated by the protagonist Roland Leigh who journeys for 400 pages through the cholera and typhus-infested riverside slums of London. Leigh is rejected by both respectable society and the Church because he is too dirty and unkempt to cross their thresholds. The story’s provocative fundamental message is that no child can sink so deep into sin that they cannot be saved. In a similar vein is Martha Sherwood’s bestselling three-volume work, The History of the Fairchild Family: Or the Child’s Manual: Being a Collection of Stories Calculated to Shew the Importance and Effects of a Religious Education (1818). According to Harvey Darton, Sherwood’s was the quintessential reading experience for every nineteenth-century middle-class child. Her books overflow with elegiac reminders to children about their sinful state and the need for repentance: ‘Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin, and born unholy and unclean; sprung from the man whose guilty fall, corrupts his race and taints us all.’15 Therefore, the first step towards a child’s conversion and ultimate salvation was repentance, and countless publications were produced to encourage children on their journey of faith. Although the popular Evangelical preacher Rowland Hill and his wife Mary were childless, he too was nonetheless deeply concerned about the spiritual and physical well-being of children and expressed this in many of his sermons, hymns, and prayers. For example, in his Sermons for Children (1823): ‘O most holy God here is a family of poor young children, before thy holy presence, to hear thy most holy word. How awfully true it is, that we are born in sin and conceived in iniquity. … Lord have mercy upon these children … they were born sinners Lord, [so] thou canst give them repentance, and in early days save them from sin.’16 A notable characteristic of Evangelicalism was the visible evidence of an individual’s salvation manifested through a dramatic conversion experience frequently referred to in the nineteenth century as ‘the great change’.17 This intensely personal, spiritual transformation produced by

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‘the great change’ was often publicly acknowledged and pinpointed to a particular date, time, and place. John Wesley was of course, the exemplar of this dramatic transformation in the preceding century, and recorded his Aldersgate experience on 24 May 1738, when he penned the now-famous lines, ‘I felt my heart strangely warmed.’ As David Bebbington confirmed, ‘Conversions were the goal of personal effort, the collective aim of churches and the theme of Evangelical literature.’18 In many instances, such was the desire to enable children to attain salvation, in cases where mothers or fathers were deemed ungodly or unsuitable, Evangelical authors such as Hill nominated themselves as surrogate parents, seeking to lead children to salvation and bypassing parental consent. Patricia Demers has noted that Hill’s fear of the parents’ spiritual neglect of their children prompted him to write Instructions for Children or A Token of Love for the Rising Generation (1794), which consisted of prayers, simplified Bible stories, and obituaries of dead children who had lived holy lives.19 Conversely, the renowned social reformer and father figure of Evangelicalism, William Wilberforce, is frequently held up as an exemplary parent by his contemporaries. Wilberforce, who revered the scriptures and regularly quoted the biblical text ‘for a tree is recognised by its fruit’,20 regarded public confession of belief alone as insufficient to assure salvation. Rather than a ‘Damascus Road’ conversion experience, many Anglican Evangelicals preferred a more gradual process of the confirmation of spiritual regeneration, often demonstrated with evidence of how a child conducted themselves in daily life.21 Therefore, Evangelical parents such as Wilberforce would wait with patient expectation for signs of ‘fruit’ or evidence of spiritual regeneration or ‘second birth’ in their children, keeping vigilance for ‘the great change’ and an assurance of their child’s eternal salvation. When Samuel Wilberforce was nine years old, his father William wrote to him: ‘You must take pains to prove to me that you are nine not in years only but in head and heart and mind. Above all, my dear Samuel, I am anxious to see decisive marks of your having begun to undergo the great change. I come again and again to look to see if it really be begun, just as a gardener walks up, again and again, to examine his fruit trees and see if his peaches are set; if they are swelling and becoming larger, finally if they are becoming ripe and rosy. I would willingly walk barefoot from this place to Sandgate to see a clear proof of the great change begun in my dear Samuel at the end of my journey.’22 When he grew up, Samuel Wilberforce was ordained into the Anglican ministry, although contrary to his father’s

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Evangelical, Low Church predilections, he favoured the High Church tradition. He was appointed Bishop of Oxford and then of Winchester and was renowned as one of the most articulate speakers of his time.23 Just like his father William, he too was keen to instruct his own children in the Christian faith, although not an Evangelical. Nevertheless, Samuel wrote stories for his children’s Sunday reading and published them under the title of Agathos, and Other Sunday Stories (1840), a text which is discussed further in Chap. 5 of this study.24

Salvation for Children Body and Soul As Bebbington has highlighted, a leading characteristic of Evangelicalism was ‘activism’, and throughout the nineteenth century, the words ‘Evangelical’ and ‘philanthropy’ became virtually synonymous. A plethora of societies, prayer meetings, Bible study groups, Sunday Schools, and domestic missions to the poor appeared at the beginning of the century organised by Evangelical ordained clergy and enthusiastic lay volunteers with the dual purpose of spiritual redemption and moral reform. In Ford K. Brown’s classic work, Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (1961), chapter nine is aptly titled ‘Ten Thousand Compassions’, in which he offers an extensive list of the numerous munificent benefactors, charities and societies operating throughout the period, as do the more recent analyses of Victorian philanthropists by the social historian Frank Prochaska.25 It is noted that William Wilberforce regularly gave away a quarter of his income and subscribed to over seventy charitable organisations. The city banker and Evangelical Henry Thornton gave away six-­ sevenths of his income.26 Thus ‘salvation’ within the practical and theological contexts of Victorian Evangelicalism also reflected the Evangelical dual impulse to ‘save the child’ both body and soul. As with many other Evangelical authors, Rowland Hill was driven to save souls and bodies. This interconnectedness between writing and activism, the spiritual and the temporal, is best illustrated, in Hill’s case, through his involvement with Doctor Edward Jenner, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine and known as the ‘father of immunisation’.27 Jenner was Hill’s neighbour in his Gloucestershire residence, whereby a close friendship developed between the two men. In his 1845 Memoir of Rev Rowland Hill, the biographer William Jones described the way in which Hill stepped forward as Jenner’s spokesman and advocate of the vaccine when members of the medical profession refused to sanction it, ‘In 1806 Mr Hill

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published a small pamphlet entitled, ‘Cow-pock Inoculation Vindicated and Recommended from Matters of Fact’. Dr Jenner then contended against the powerful opposition of the medical profession and established the Royal Jennerian Society. He received a grant of £10,000 from parliament for the great benefit he had imparted to his country and the world.’28 Not only did Hill preach sermons and write a tract on the importance of vaccination in 1806, but he also took the radical action of opening a clinic attached to his influential and well-attended Surrey Chapel and was himself personally responsible for vaccinating thousands of children. As his memoirist Jones explained: ‘At Chatham, Hill appointed three different people to meet him at three different places of worship and inoculated 320 subjects in two days. He vaccinated 200 at Shepton Mallet. During a summer excursion, he inoculated 996 people in Pembrokeshire. In 1805 Hill noted, “I have now solemnly to assert, that having inoculated in different places not less than 4840 subjects, besides 3720 and upwards, which have been inoculated in the Surrey Chapel school-room, I have not as yet met with one single failure.”’29 In 1805 the Quaker, physician and Sunday School advocate, John Lettsome wrote to Hill, ‘You have done more good than you imagine; and for everyone you may have saved by your actual operation, you have saved ten by your example; and perhaps, next to Jenner, have been the means of saving more lives than any other individual.’30 Hill’s work is a remarkable example of faith and activism combined. Many other Evangelical authors followed suit and donated their earnings to save the bodies and souls of sick, hungry, poor, and needy children. Methodist writer Hesba Stretton used the profits from her publications to support several children’s philanthropic societies and went on to become one of the co-founders of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1894.31 Her literary output became the means of turning her religious convictions into a practical reality for hundreds of children. As Patricia Demers has argued, Stretton’s writing displayed a ‘consciously double vision, glimpsing the eternal in the natural, the sublime in the quotidian’.32 The proceeds from Charlotte Maria Tucker’s publications also went to support various missionary enterprises, including an endowment to the school at Batala where she taught.33 In 1868, the children’s author and editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, Mrs Gatty, appealed to her young readers through the magazine to donate to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. Magazine subscriptions were donated towards the endowment and permanent maintenance of a cot or

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bed for a sick child, and the ‘Cot List’ became a significant regular feature in the magazine. By 1872, £1,000 had been collected, and ‘Aunt Judy’s Cot’ for Girls was permanently endowed, the first of its kind in any English hospital. With further donations, in 1876, an ‘Aunt Judy’s Cot’ for Boys was also established. Subsequent donations were allocated to rebuilding the hospital and, in 1881, to endow a Cot at the Convalescent Hospital, Cromwell House in Highgate, in memory of Mrs Gatty.34 Other charities adopted this idea, and by 1885, ten cots had been permanently endowed at Great Ormond Street hospital with a further twenty-nine supported through endowments and thirteen through annual subscriptions. These included the ‘Simla’ cot, initiated through sponsors of Aunt Judy’s Magazine in India, and ‘Aunt Judy’s St. Petersburg Cot,’ supported by Russian readers of the magazine.35 These selected examples illustrate the seriousness with which Evangelical authors implemented their ideas of salvation and put their faith into practice for both body and soul—deeds and words; it appears, were two sides of the same coin.

The Child as Evangel Despite the protests of theologians like Maurice and others who were convinced that eternal damnation was a fundamentally immoral notion, conservative Evangelicals held firmly to their conviction that such was the fate of all those who were not converted. Several early nineteenth-century children’s authors took this doctrine to the extreme in their publications, but there was a noticeable decline of this excessive style in children’s literature as the Victorian era progressed. The decline reflected the shift from a harsh Calvinist approach to children’s publications at the beginning of the century to a softer, more child-oriented attitude towards the end. This was the result of Romanticist views that elevated children and childhood and helped usher in the popular and striking Evangelical literary feature of children themselves acting as messengers or evangels of the good news of the Gospel. Not only did writers construct stories about children as the vulnerable, needy objects of salvation necessitating adult guidance and religious teaching, on the contrary, they were also frequently presented as the very conduits of salvation themselves for other children and adults. In his forty-four hymns written for Sunday School children, Hill declared that the children of ungodly parents frequently pitied and prayed for them, pleading for their parents’ conversion: ‘I know that scripture tells me true,

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there is a place of woe. My parents! I am pain’d for you, to which the careless go.’36 Despite the Evangelical belief that all humanity was born in original sin, as the century progressed, children were perceived as having sinned less than adults because of their lack of years, vulnerability, and humility. They were considered, therefore, more receptive to spiritual guidance and instruction. As Kimberley Reynolds has commented, ‘This new image of childhood both empowered and sentimentalised the child—or at least the child in fiction and art, whose clarity of vision was understood to be capable of exposing adult hypocrisy and wrongdoing. Accordingly, the children at the centre of juvenile fiction were no longer impotent and insignificant. Rather, each was invested with the capacity to set the world to rights and lead fallen adults back to the path of righteousness and salvation.’37 There are also theological resonances here that reflect the Gospel narrative in Matthew wherein Jesus set a child in the midst of the disciples as a paradigm in response to their debate about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.38 The following discussion explores this fascinating and striking feature of child evangels in Evangelical children’s literature through the work of several authors. Fictitious and non-fictitious characterisations of the exemplary pious child who acted as the repository, disciple, and evangel of the salvation message was consciously crafted and constructed by writers to best influence their juvenile readership. Thus, the aim was to bring the child reader to an understanding of the significance of repentance, the need for conversion and the inestimable benefits of continually living a virtuously Christian life. As Hamida Bosmajian’s psychoanalytical critique of children’s literature has made clear, the relationship between the author, text, and reader is fundamental to the successful promotion of the desired message. Bosmajian propounds the theory that, ‘The child in the story is always a linguistic construct, a trope for the unresolved problems of the author.’39 Kevin Gilmartin has also argued that although often somewhat crude, Evangelical ‘propagandistic’ reading material did, in fact, develop increasingly sophisticated and reflexive strategies of self-representation, forging direct connections or associations between the fictitious child of the narrative and the actual child reader. Again, Hannah More’s impoverished Sunday School child readers for example, met and identified with other poor children, albeit fictional characters in her narratives, and in an artificially created community of equals child readers were encouraged to

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ponder on their own spiritual state as a result of reading the narratives and to follow their exemplars.40 However, without strictly adopting Bosmajian’s or Gilmartin’s psychoanalytical or Marxist models, this study illustrates similarly that Evangelical authors sought to construct not only a specifically theological or spiritual subtext with which the child readers could identify but also a fictitious exemplary child or ideal personification of childhood to emulate. As Jackie Horne has argued, Evangelical authors invariably sought to evoke a sense of pathos utilising sentiment and emotion in their writing in the hope that readers would relate to the fictional characters and ideally, emulate their piety.41 The particular context and the content of the narrative, therefore, was theologically orchestrated in such a way as to prompt child readers to identify themselves within the story resulting in the author’s desired spiritual response from the child. Principal examples of this theological literary construct can be identified in the missiological themes prevalent in the previously mentioned popular nineteenth-century ‘Street Arab Tales’ that were written specifically for the lower classes. Many depict the rescue of destitute children from their impoverished conditions and dysfunctional families. The fictitious ‘Street Arab’ child is inevitably rescued and subsequently adopted into middle-class domesticity, invariably encountering a conversion experience before proceeding to evangelise others.42 Interestingly, it is in this realm that we discover popular paradigms of the female child exemplar as the main protagonists of such narratives.

Redeeming Eve: Hesba Stretton and the Female Child Exemplar In their study, Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children’s Literature, John Stephens and Robyn McCallum note the ideological function of traditional Judaeo-Christian interpretations of ‘The Fall’ in encoding normative gender constructions of masculinity and femininity.43 Given the historic Christian denigration of the female sex through the formidable Genesis narrative concerning women’s greater susceptibility to fall into temptation, it is remarkably surprising that both male and female children’s authors deployed the literary device of the female child evangel. In particular, female authors such as Martha Sherwood and Hesba Stretton drew upon the fictional female child who, after being converted, leads adult sinners, both male and

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female, to the way of salvation. This literary device not only subverted the Church’s patriarchal ideology but proffered a type of reparation for the sin of Eve, who allegedly led Adam astray, subsequently it also elevated the female child protagonist to the status of ‘evangelist’. Thus, in a community of equals, this suggests that adults may learn theological lessons from children, even female children! A noteworthy example of the nineteenth-­ century female child evangel is Stretton’s highly successful narrative Jessica’s First Prayer (1867). At the age of thirty, Stretton remained unmarried and with mixed financial prospects; however, she proceeded to author over sixty titles under her literary pseudonym. But, it was Jessica’s First Prayer, first published in the Evangelical Magazine, Sunday at Home in July 1866, that sealed her lengthy and successful career with the RTS. Jessica’s First Prayer was highly commended by Lord Shaftesbury, who observed that it would ‘hardly find a rival for nature, simplicity, pathos and depth of Christian feeling’.44 Adroitly written, it is a sensationalist graphic depiction of London street-life taken from first-hand observations, it exposes the grim realities of poverty, neglect, and deprivation in a style worthy of Stretton’s literary role model, Charles Dickens. The plot narrates the demise and rescue of the child protagonist, Jessica, a London street waif, who is neglected by an alcoholic mother and who experiences a dramatic spiritual conversion, after which she becomes a devoted disciple and evangel of the Christian faith. In the process, she inspires, influences and disciples the two leading male characters by employing exemplary spiritual wisdom and piety.45 Although explicit enough for the child reader to grasp, the narrative is shrewdly layered with allusions to biblical accounts interwoven throughout the text. The room where Jessica resides in a back-street slum for example, is a hayloft located above the stable of an old inn that also houses donkeys. With only straw for bedding and bricks and wooden boards for furniture, Stretton alludes to the manger imagery of the nativity of Christ. Thus, relating Jessica’s lowly circumstances to Christ’s messianic birthplace. Is Stretton implying here that Jessica also has the potential to change the social order? Is she elevating Jessica to messianic status? Furthermore, there are similar biblical comparisons, for example, the parable of the Good Samaritan. The starving and neglected Jessica, who has been rejected by her mother, is offered sustenance and physical nourishment by Daniel, a coffee-stall holder and church caretaker. At Daniel’s invitation, Jessica’s regular visits to the coffee stall as the church clock strikes eight provides

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her with the nourishment required to sustain her physically throughout the week. Kindness and charity reap their own rewards, and Jessica eventually follows Daniel into the church, as the warm, enticing glow of the lighted candles irresistibly beckon her. Once inside, she is befriended by the Methodist minister and his two daughters. They eventually welcome her into the family of the church and teach her the simple tenets of the Christian faith and the power of personal extemporary prayer (as a Dissenter, Stretton disapproved of excessive liturgical ritual). Jessica’s initial status from catechumen swiftly progresses, and by way of her exemplary piety, she is rapidly metamorphosed by Stretton into a spiritual guide and practical theologian to both Daniel her new Guardian, and the local Methodist minister. Jessica’s insightful questions and conversations with the sagacious, learned men again invokes biblical similarities with the account of the twelve-year-old boy Jesus in the Temple, where he astounded the rabbis with his spiritual wisdom.46 In the concluding chapter of the book, ‘The Shadow of Death’, Jessica’s near-death experience exemplifies both a bodily and spiritual resurrection and regenerative work of conversion, which, in turn, manifests itself as a transformative and powerful device for child readers. The salvific virtues of Jessica as a child evangel are fully revealed in her dramatic testimony of conversion and subsequent dedication to discipleship. From then on, Jessica’s singular focus is God. Her concentration is averted to spiritual affairs, Church attendance, prayer, piety, and pastoral care for others, all serve as the perfect paradigm of a child convert.47 Stretton’s writing was consistently focused, concise and confrontational. In true Dickensian form, she tackled a number of uncomfortable socio-political issues relating to childhood, including young offenders, streetwalkers, prostitution, alcoholism, parental neglect, the abuse of domestic servants, orphans and homeless children. Through Jessica’s First Prayer and other titles, as well as in her personal diaries, Stretton championed the cause of millions of so-called Street Arabs48 in what amounted to an embryonic public and political theology. As Suzanne Rickard observes, ‘[s]he wrote with the specific intention of bringing social and moral problems before the reading public’. Not only was Stretton a ‘vociferous social critic she also challenged established Christian values’,49 most notably, the parsimonious attitude of the Church towards slum children whom she regarded as a grim indictment upon the moral complacency of Christian England. Her active support for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, including serving on its executive committee for ten years,

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was another dimension of this political theology. Meanwhile, Jessica’s First Prayer sold over two million copies in Stretton’s lifetime. It was adapted into coloured slides for magic lantern presentations by the Band of Hope (a temperance organisation for working-class children). It was translated into fifteen European and Asiatic languages, published in Braille, and placed in all Russian schools on the order of Tsar Alexander II.50

Colonial Perspectives on the Child Evangel: The Writings of Martha Sherwood Martha Sherwood also wrote highly popular tales drawing on the motif of the child evangel as an agent of salvation. However, many of her narratives were located within the context of overseas missionary tales in India as well as a typically English domestic environment. Publishing a remarkable 420 titles over fifty years, Sherwood was, without doubt, the most prolific of nineteenth-century Evangelical children’s writers. As Margaret Cutt has commented, ‘Mrs. Sherwood’s writings dominated education for half a century; and governed missionary activity abroad.’51 Although not a particularly original thinker, the ways in which she conveyed Evangelical doctrine was, according to Cutt, extremely appealing to children, and her fascinating images of India were detailed and dramatic. In the following discussion, I focus on several of Sherwood’s lesser-known titles, which highlight the powerful imagery of childhood used to communicate the message of salvation, alongside material gleaned from her extensive personal journals of over twenty volumes. These present a compelling, although not unproblematic, account of her personal and spiritual journeys between England and India’s contrasting religious, colonial, and socio-cultural contexts. Sherwood’s writing was greatly influenced by her personal experiences of, and unavoidable complicity with, an ascendant British imperialist agenda shored up by Evangelical Christian missionary activity. At the time, Parliamentary debates on the status of British missionaries in India exposed many of the racial and cultural prejudices inherent in the colonialist enterprise.52 Claudius Buchanan, a Low Church Anglican chaplain attached to the East India Company (EIC), writing simultaneously, was convinced that God had given the EIC dominion over India for the specific purpose of its Christianisation and civilisation of a ‘heathen’ [sic], polytheistic Hindu race. Of course, the nineteenth-century language used by Buchanan

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is totally unacceptable in today’s contemporary society, but it is reflective of the period and its predisposition and ignorance of non-British society and culture. He wrote in his 1811 memoirs, ‘Neither truth, nor honesty, honour, gratitude, nor charity, is to be found pure in the breast of a Hindoo [sic]. Hindoo children have no moral instruction [and] no moral books.’53 Expressing his common anxiety shared with Sherwood over the exposure of children to immorality and religious rituals, Buchanan claimed that such heathen practices were corrupt and depraved. 54 Sherwood certainly believed, along with many other Evangelical writers, that the Indian subcontinent provided Britain with its most extensive mission opportunity for the propagation of the message of Christian salvation. In 1805, she travelled with her husband, Captain Henry Sherwood, to Madras, reluctantly leaving her eleven-month-old baby, Maria Henrietta, behind to be cared for by her mother and sister in England. 55 The trauma of this event was exacerbated by a hazardous five-month voyage on an overcrowded EIC ship. Making the best use of her time, Sherwood kept a detailed journal and studied her Bible throughout the journey, despite storms at sea, attacks from French warships and pregnancy.56 During their ten year stay in India, the Sherwood family moved from Calcutta to Dinapore, Berhampore, Cawnpore, and Meerut. Appalled by the spiritual and physical neglect of English and Anglo-Indian children confined in army barracks (a frequently used physical metaphor in Sherwood’s stories for the spiritual state of original sin), she established makeshift schools, teaching between twelve and sixty children of varying ages and abilities alongside illiterate soldiers on the veranda of her house.57 While in India, Sherwood gave birth to six children, watched two of them die, and wrote at length about the harrowing challenges of family life in an estranged environment. Her first son, Henry, died of whooping cough at the age of eighteen months in Berhampore in 1807; her second daughter, Lucy, died in infancy of dysentery. Their names lived on in two of her most famous novels, The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1815) and Little Lucy and her Dhaye (1825); both narratives were centred on child evangels. Arguably these tales were an attempt to assuage her own maternal grief in recreating fictional versions of her children, both of whom were not only converted to Christianity but adopted the role of child evangelists and converted others. According to Sherwood’s personal journal, The History of Little Henry and his Bearer had been inspired by an encounter soon after she arrived in Calcutta when she was greeted at one house by a delicate four-year-old boy who could speak no English but

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boldly took her by the hand. The vulnerability of this child became symbolically reconfigured by Sherwood as the archetypal child missionary bringing the message of salvation to a non-Christian culture.58 For example, The History of Little Henry tells of an angelic, eight-year-old English orphan who, in his abandonment, finds comfort and kindness from his Hindu bearer (servant) Boosy and who, before a premature death, manages to convert Boosy to Christianity. The death of Sherwood’s son Henry had a momentous impact upon her own faith, prompting her conversion to a more transformative vital Evangelical religion than that of her previously more reserved Anglican tradition. In both The History of Little Henry and Little Lucy, children’s ayahs or ‘dhayes’ (nurses) are the key recipients of the Christian message. In fact, during her own experiences in India, Sherwood’s relationship with her children’s ayahs was actually highly problematic. She was convinced, for example, that Henry had been poisoned by one of his Indian nurses. In her journal, she recounts an occasion when she heard Henry suddenly cry out. ‘In a moment, I was near him and felt certain that his nurse had crammed something into his mouth.’ The ayah denied it, but Sherwood remained unconvinced. ‘I watched my boy carefully; and in a very little while he fell into a deep sleep. I still watched. I had fearful suspicions. The sleep became heavier and heavier. His extremities became cold. I sent for the medical man, and he soon discovered that the baby had been drugged with opium. It is my firm belief that half the European children who die in infancy in India, die from the habit which their nurses have, of giving them opium.’59 In the weeks leading up to Henry’s death, Sherwood records in her diary that she confided in the Anglican chaplain, the Reverend Parson, about her distress in finding out that her son’s dhaye, Ameena, had also taken Henry to a ‘heathen service’. Sherwood was insistent that only the subsequent re-baptism of Henry could remove this potentially fatal stain upon his spiritual state: ‘The dhaye took my boy … to some poojah, [heathen service] and brought him home marked with some idolatrous daub [sic] or spot on his forehead. … I was dreadfully terrified. In perfect consistency with the opinion which I still held, that a drop of water laid on the brow by a clergyman of the Church of England was in some degree useful in advancing the salvation of a child, so I apprehended that this spot, set on his brow by a minister of Satan, might endanger his precious soul. How bitterly did I cry and sob! Our chaplain came in at the time and saw me thus distressed. I explained to him what had happened, and we proposed to him that the

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baby should be baptised again; it was with some difficulty he succeeded in removing my terrors.’60 Again the use of nineteenth-century British colonial language and prejudice is prevalent in the text, underscoring the superior nature of colonialist attitudes to the indigenous religion and culture. In Little Lucy and her Dhaye (1825), the ‘heathen’ nurse is once again the main object of salvation, and the protagonist Lucy, the agent of conversion. Lucy’s mother had died in childbirth, and she was brought up in India by an indigenous nurse. She was so acculturated that she could only speak Hindustani until the age of seven. A traumatic farewell scene ensues when her father decides to return to England with Lucy, but without the nurse. Fortunately for Lucy, a kindly widow, Mrs Courtney, who is fluent in both Hindustani and English and is a devout Christian, takes her under her wing on board the ship as Sherwood narrates: ‘And it was in that language that she [Mrs Courtney] first gave Lucy an insight into the leading truths of Christianity. The points on which she chiefly insisted were, first, the Unity of the Deity, and the Trinity in Unity—the fall of man and his consequent depravity—the great scheme of man’s salvation as prepared before the foundation of the world—and the various parts of which the several persons of the Trinity have appropriated to themselves in this mighty work.’61 Thus, on the voyage home and with one sweep of Sherwood’s pen, Lucy is thoroughly catechised in the doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, and soteriology. ‘[I]s it proper to speak of such things to a child of eight years?’ she asks of her readers. Sherwood continues by justifying the theological teaching imparted to Lucy by quoting a verse from the Bible: ‘Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, line upon line; here a little, and there a little. For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.’62Sherwood infers from the above biblical text that children are never too young to be taught the Scriptures, using biblical authority to underpin her belief in the early catechisation of children. Doubtless, the Christian theology taught to Lucy with its emphasis on the importance of Trinitarian doctrine and the unity of God was a means through which Sherwood could convey to her young readers the creed of Christian monotheism over and against the polytheistic teachings of Hinduism. Lucy subsequently adopts a fervent preoccupation with evangelisation motivated by the fear that her beloved Indian nurse, whom she has left behind, is destined for eternal damnation unless she hears the

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message of salvation. Lucy writes a letter to her dhaye urging her to convert, and a missionary friend promises to ensure its safe delivery. Lucy falls sick, however, and dies before knowing if the letter has reached her nurse. The missionary tracks down the dhaye some years later and hands over the letter. She is devastated to learn of Lucy’s death and is offered refuge in the missionary’s compound, where she is subsequently baptised and converts to Christianity before she also dies. The fusion of Christian theology with the cultural and moral pre-­ eminence of British imperialism is attested to at length by Sherwood in many of her novels. In addition, much of the appeal of her narratives for British children was precisely the ‘otherness’ of the Indian landscape, for example, the fascinating vivid descriptions of exotic colours, architecture, food, language, and rituals in which her child protagonists, and of course the readers, find themselves immersed. As Dara Rossman Regaignon has shown, ‘Sherwood cleverly exhorts generations of British children to exploit their affectionate relationships with Indians in order to spread the Gospel. Sherwood’s stories explicitly teach British and Anglo-Indian children that their duty is to expand the empire through a ruthless insistence on English, Christian missionary dominance.’63 Regaignon also observes that this alien context renders the child evangel paradoxically more vulnerable and yet increasingly empowered as a conduit of evangelisation to India. ‘In these writings of and about Anglo-India, we see the narrative creation of an English identity that converts vulnerability into strength and ingeniously uses its identification and intimacy with Indians to make them willingly subject to British rule.’64 Sherwood’s sensationalist, often inflammatory, analyses of indigenous Indian religious culture, ritual, and spirituality doubtless provided fascinating reading for middle-class Victorian children and their families. In her diary, she wrote startling accounts of the horrors that haunted her travel experiences and her personal thoughts about the cultural depravity and pagan idolatry she found in non-Christian religions. 65 Sherwood’s religious xenophobia is similarly evident in her book The Indian Pilgrim, published in 1818 although written in 1811 at the suggestion of her Evangelical chaplains in India, the missionary Henry Martyn and Daniel Corrie. The latter was eventually promoted to become the Bishop of Madras. The book was intended for Indian converts to Christianity and was originally proposed as a translation of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress into Hindustani. The story’s protagonist, Goonah Purist or the ‘Slave of Sin’, dreams he has embarked on a pilgrimage from the

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City of the Wrath of God to the City of Mount Zion. On his travels, he encounters a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Roman Catholic priest who each try to persuade him of the superior merits of their faith until eventually, a ‘Christian messenger’ (one assumes an Evangelist) leads him to ‘the Gate which is at the Head of the Way of Salvation’.66 This narrative plotline allows Sherwood to outline for her English readers the inferiority of other faiths in graphic detail. Jews and Muslims are treated a little less disdainfully than Hindus, presumably because of their monotheism, but Sherwood’s virulent anti-Catholicism is particularly prevalent throughout the book. The Roman Catholic priest is parodied as much as the Hindu in his promotion of saintly images and idols, and he denies Goonah the right to read the Bible for himself. When Goonah eventually arrives in the Land of Beulah, his sins are washed away in the River of Death, and he emerges clean and purified. Once he is converted he decides to forsake his father’s house.67 Pilgrimage and dream sequences also feature in Sherwood’s The Infant’s Progress from the Valley of Destruction to Everlasting Glory (1821), which is again replete with intertextual allusions not only to the Bible, especially the Book of Revelation but also Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It has an imaginative, fantasy storyline in which the mischievous antics of the character Inbred-Sin try to dissuade the three leading child characters, Humble Mind, Playful and Peace, from their pilgrimage of faith. In this instance, Sherwood’s focus on the various escapades they encounter rather overshadows the underpinning theological lessons.68 Although Sherwood and her family arrived back in Liverpool in 1816, her experiences abroad meant India remained a rich textual and contextual source for her long-term Evangelical literary agenda. This was evidenced in various tracts and novels, including George Desmond (1821)69 and its sequel John Marten (1844), both warning tales for young men on the dangers of living in India and also The Indian Orphans (1839), tales of British colonialism, an account of Sherwood’s ten years of working with the regimental orphans in the army barracks. 70 Her views on the immorality of cantonment life is depicted in her early text Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (1817),71 where she deploys an Evangelical catechetical narrative traversing no less than 500 pages and describing the spiritual life of the protagonist, the six-year-old Mary Mills. The depravity of human nature is starkly portrayed in the author’s description of the dark side of army life, including child neglect, domestic violence, the use and abuse of opium, and alcohol which is freely administered to children. Life in the cantonment represents the sin and hell from which little Mary is saved

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through Sherwood’s serialised teachings of the Ten Commandments and the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion. The far-reaching impact of Sherwood’s literary reading of salvation for children, filtered as it was through a problematic Anglo-centric lens, is succinctly summarised by Margaret Cutt: ‘Children of literate middle-class families in particular, usually given a strict and thorough Sunday School training, must have carried through life ingrained impressions of Mrs Sherwood’s and ALOE’s India, and an emotional bias to match. They acquired a strong conviction of the rightness of missions, which, while it inculcated sincere concern for, and a genuine kindness towards an alien people for whom Britain was responsible, quite destroyed any latent respect for Indian tradition. The paternalism, so marked in British policy towards India, must have been partly the result of Victorian attitudes formed in the nursery.’72

Child Salvation and Debates on Baptismal Regeneration The emphasis placed on personal conversion by late eighteenth-century Evangelicals had significant implications for infant and adult baptism during the succeeding century.73 John Wesley’s views on baptism had left a legacy of some confusion. On the one hand, he taught that adults who had been baptised as infants still needed to experience conversion, ‘Lean no more on the staff of that broken reed, that ye were born again in baptism.’74 And yet, in his Treatise on Baptism (1756), he did not deny that regeneration through infant baptism might demarcate a new spiritual beginning. However, he advised that all people, whether baptised or not, needed a new reassurance of salvation, or regeneration in adulthood. David Thompson has argued that the Evangelical Revival ‘highlighted the tension between individual and social religion, placing the debate between infant and believer’s baptism in a new light’.75 Biblical evidence for infant baptism was re-examined at length in the light of the centrality of conversion within Evangelical doctrine. As Thompson queries, ‘If conversion was necessary to the Christian life, what was the significance and meaning of baptism? Did baptism, particularly the baptism of infants, effect anything?’76 Such debates concerning infant baptism continued unabated during the nineteenth century, with clergymen of various doctrinal and denominational persuasions defending and attacking the sacrament concerning infants.77 The mid-Victorian period, in particular, witnessed

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differences over the doctrine of baptismal regeneration that were becoming increasingly political and divisive. As Elisabeth Jay has noted, although some High Churchmen accused Evangelicals of denying the language of the Prayer Book which implied that infants were regenerated in baptism, in fact, Evangelicals themselves were divided upon this issue.78 Debates reached their zenith in 1847 with the renowned Gorham case in which the anti-Evangelical Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter refused to institute Rev George Gorham to a new living in his diocese on the basis that Gorham did not support the doctrine of baptismal regeneration as required by the Church of England. In 1850, however, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled in favour of Gorham, declaring his doctrine as neither ‘contrary nor repugnant to the declared doctrine of the Church of England’.79 Many Evangelicals hailed this decision as a great victory for those in favour of adult baptism because it was also testimony to their increasing influence within the ecclesiastical establishment. Indeed, the arguments marshalled in favour of adult baptism as essential to true salvation was so convincing for one member of the Oxford Movement, J.B. Mozley, that he tempered his original position in his 1862 definitive text, Review of the Baptismal Controversy. 80 In the same year that Mozley’s work on baptism was published, Charles Kingsley’s classic tale, The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, was serialised in Macmillan’s Magazine and finally published in book form in 1863.81 Many other celebrated authors, including Charlotte Bronte, Frances Trollope, Samuel Butler, Thomas Hardy, and Charles Dickens, also alluded to the controversies surrounding baptismal regeneration in some of their narratives.82 But Kingsley’s immensely popular story remained a classic children’s text for generations, and its outstanding allegorical application has been interpreted at a number of different levels of social and spiritual meaning. It has, most frequently, been read as a didactic moral fable about sanitation; a vehicle for satirical comment on social and political injustices; a fictional underwater world of fantasy for children, or as a means to field criticisms against Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), a theory that fascinated Kingsley. Kingsley’s plot centred on young Tom, a child chimney sweep, who, having been discovered by the affluent Ellie in her splendid bedroom, runs away, falls into a river, and drowns. From this juncture, Tom is metamorphosed into a water-baby and embarks on a series of adventures, not dissimilar to an underwater adaptation of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The outcome of Tom’s river pilgrimage is his conversion from a poor, dirty

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chimney sweep to a clean water baby through which Kingsley, the Chartist sympathiser and Christian Socialist, reveals how theology and science might be yoked together as a societal solution through which to expurgate the nation and improve the health and working lives of the poor. After the cholera epidemics of 1849 and 1854, Kingsley had worked ceaselessly with the hygiene reformer Edwin Chadwick and was said to be obsessed with sanitation.83 Yet, as Brendan Rapple has argued, that despite the obvious health reform argument for his central water motif, Kingsley also aligned the narrative with the theological aspects of spiritual and baptismal cleansing and regeneration. ‘Only after Tom’s baptismal washing and consequent Christian rebirth does his deeply felt wish “I must be clean; I must be clean”’ begin to be truly satisfied. Only after an analogous allegorical cleansing can any genuine regeneration of England occur.’84 In this view, therefore, the drowning of Tom as with the ritual of baptism, symbolises his death to the old life and resurrection in the new, thus accomplishing his baptismal cleansing and subsequent spiritual regeneration. At the commencement of the book, Kingsley states that Tom knew very little about religion and had never heard of God or Christ. He did not know, for example, what the image of Christ’s crucifixion was when he found himself in little Ellie’s bedroom in Harthover House. Tom assumed it was the image of a family member murdered by savages in a foreign place, not unreflective, perhaps, of Kingsley’s problematic views on non-­ Protestant, non-Christian races, the need for missionary enterprise and his support for colonialism.85 Tom hears the church bells toll just prior to his fall into the river. But as Rapple notes, he had never been inside a church and, according to Kingsley, ‘What was worse he had never been baptised, and so he languished in the state of Original Sin … in fact, the black sooty dirt of his body mirrored the filth of his unredeemed soul.’86 As with many of the Evangelical writers previously discussed in this chapter, Kingsley also portrayed Tom in the principal role of child evangel. At the very end of his arduous water pilgrimage, Tom successfully leads his old taskmaster; the vicious chimney sweep Mr Grimes to salvation. Thus, a male child in this particular case, is the evangel who leads an adult to faith. It could be assumed from this narrative that Kingsley’s view of children’s basic nature is aligned with the Evangelical notion of original sin and that he also believed in the significance of a conversion experience for individual salvation and the need for baptism. However, Peter Coveney, who has examined Kingsley’s depiction of the child in both Alton Locke (1850) and The Water Babies, notes, ‘The concept of the romantic child

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merges with Christianity into a theology of childhood Innocence. Alton Locke is an interesting fusion of Wordsworthian naturalism with Christian humanitarianism, a fusion of the secular romantic tradition about the child with Anglican compassion for human nature; a fusion which Kingsley perhaps best expressed in his Water Babies.’87 In continuing this theme of the salvific effects of water we find it is recurrent in nineteenth-­century boys adventure stories that take place not only in England but also overseas. William Henry Giles Kingston’s (1814–1880) first book for boys, Peter the Whaler: His Early Life and Adventure in the Arctic Region (1851), also preaches the message of salvation through a tale of watery adventures. The protagonist Peter is a clergyman’s son but is dispatched to sea as his punishment for poaching. Kingston was a keen sailor himself and describes Peter’s seafaring escapades with skilful detail. When he eventually returns home, having learned many hard lessons in life through his baptism of fire and water, his father reprimands him for having returned poor. Still, Peter replies with humble piety, ‘No father, I have come back infinitely richer. I have learned to fear God, to worship Him in His Works, and to trust to His infinite mercy. I have also learned to know myself and to take advice and counsel from my superiors in goodness.’88 Peter’s father responds, ‘I am indeed content, and I trust others may take a needful lesson from the adventures of Peter the Whaler.’89 Kingston has been hailed as the most popular and highly respected English writer for boys in the latter half of the Victorian period, he wrote over 150 sea stories and other adventure narratives promoting Evangelical Christianity fused with British colonial expansion.90

Evangelical Children’s Literature and Child Emigration In a final consideration of the prevalent themes of water and water-­crossing in Evangelical children’s literature, it has been noteworthy that the doctrines of baptism and soteriology served a dual purpose for children as both the recipients and agents of salvation. However, the theme of water is also drawn upon to justify the numerous child emigration schemes in operation during the late nineteenth century. The biblical typology of crossing water invariably signified new birth, a new start and a new life in the ‘promised land’. The theological underpinning for such concepts may be found in Old Testament narratives such as the story of Creation, the

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Flood, and the crossing of the Red Sea. In the New Testament, the practice of baptism signified new beginnings with reference to water as the symbolic source of cleansing, resurrection, new life, and growth. The crossing of the Red Sea is deemed a foretaste of baptism in which the liberation of Israel from the slavery of Egypt prefigures the liberation of humanity from sin through baptism. Yet another Old Testament typological antecedent of baptism is found in the crossing of the River Jordan wherein Joshua leads the Israelites into ‘the promised land’, thus prefiguring Christ who was baptised in the Jordan.91 Further explorations of biblical typology featured in Evangelical children’s literature are expanded in Chap. 5 in the work of Charlotte Maria Tucker. As previously mentioned, many nineteenth-century Evangelical narratives employed the theme of water-crossing in children’s literature to promote child emigration programmes and to support colonial rule and missionary expansion.92 Child emigration became a convenient and attractive welfare option for philanthropic enterprise. It is estimated that as many as 90,000 children were dispatched overseas via emigration programmes between 1869 and the 1924.93 Most child emigrants were between the ages of eight and fourteen, although some were younger if accompanied by an older sibling. The emigration programme in Britain focused on poor children and in the main took place between the 1860s and the 1950s, with the majority dispatched to Canada. However, some went as indentured servants to the American colonies and others, less fortunate, as convicted criminals transported to the penal colonies in Australia. The first Quarrier’s Home opened in Glasgow in 1871 and had dispatched over 7,300 children to Canada by 1938.94 The Church of England Waifs and Strays Society, founded in 1881, sent over 3,000 children overseas. The National Children’s Home, a Methodist organisation established in 1869, also dispatched over 3000 children. The operation which Maria Rye began in 1869 had by 1896 taken about 5,000 children to Canada.95 Similar organisations set up by Annie Macpherson in London in 1870 and her sister Louisa Birt in Liverpool in 1873 resettled over 14,500 children in Canada by 1928.96 However, the largest operator was the Dr Barnardo charity, which sent over 27,000 children to Canada between 1882 and 1928.97 While religious charities raised vast amounts of voluntary private funds to finance child emigration and other resettlement programmes, a partnership with public authorities was also secured through the Poor Law Act of 1850, allowing guardians in England and Wales to finance the

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emigration of suitable children in their care. Child resettlement to the colonies was thus consistently presented by both the state and the charities themselves as having a dual purpose. It was an appropriate means of coping with large numbers of undisciplined, neglected, or orphaned children and an opportunity for children of the poor to begin a new moral and material existence. The rescue of children from the grim prospects of life in urban, industrial Britain and their relocation to Canada and Australia’s rural, open-air spaces as farm workers or domestic servants was intended for their health and moral well-being. Therefore, passing through water by crossing the ocean was a means by which their ‘salvation’ might be secured physically, materially, and spiritually. Evangelical authors such as William Henry Giles Kingston, Robert Michael Ballantyne, and Hesba Stretton published tales in books and periodicals of child emigrants who had successfully set sail for the ‘new world’ and begun exciting new lives as a result.98 Kingston became honorary secretary of the Colonization Society and was editor of The Colonial Magazine (1849–1852), The Colonist and the East Indian Review. He wrote numerous adventure stories for children about the excitement of emigration, including Peter Biddulph: the Rise and Progress of an Australian Settler, published by the Sunday School Union (1881); The Gilpins and Their Fortunes, published with SPCK (1865); Australian Adventures (1885); and The Emigrants Home or How to Settle (1856). He also contributed copious articles about emigration to The Boy’s Own Paper, which was published by the RTS and wrote emigration manuals and promotional ephemera with an overtly Evangelical tone. Kingston resigned from his various editorships in 1880 having been diagnosed with cancer. He wrote a farewell letter to the half a million readers of The Boy’s Own Paper, ‘I want you to know that I am leaving this life in unspeakable happiness, because I rest my soul on my Saviour, trusting only and entirely to the merits of the Great Atonement, by which my sins have been put away forever. Dear boys, I ask you to give your hearts to Jesus Christ and earnestly pray that all of you may meet me in heaven.’99 According to Alena Buis, ‘The best example of the ways in which the convoluted realities and mythologies surrounding child emigration entered the Victorian cultural consciousness appeared in R. M. Ballantyne’s novel Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City-Arab Life and Adventure’.100 The departure from the filth and poverty of London, the voyage and the arrival in Canada were all presented as a completely fresh exciting new start, a regenerative baptism of hope into a purer, cleaner,

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new land, flowing with milk and honey! ‘The voyage … was on the whole propitious, and, what with school lessons, and Bible lessons and hymn singing, and romping and games of various kinds instituted and engaged in by the Guardian, the time passed profitably as well as pleasantly … there were perhaps some feelings of regret when the voyage came to an end, and they came in sight of that Great Land [Canada] … . And now, a new era began for those rescued waifs and strays—those east-end diamonds from the great London fields. Canada with its mighty lakes and splendid rivers, its great forests and rich lands, its interesting past, prosperous present and hopeful future—opened up to view … . [T]he party landed at the far-­ famed city of Quebec, each boy with his bag containing a change of linen, and garments and a rug, etc.; and there under a shed, thanks were rendered to God for a happy voyage, and prayer offered for future guidance.’101 In Dusty Diamonds, Ballantyne commends the work of Annie MacPherson, previously mentioned, along with several other Evangelical women who launched child emigration programmes. These activities were also sponsored by many of the principal Christian denominations who supported the belief in emigration. The spiritual well-being of deprived children, it was claimed, was paramount. The primary intention was to house the children with Christian families in Canada or denominational schools in Australia to become ‘Empire Builders’ and spread the Gospel. As Bratton notes, ‘The aim was to see Evangelical Christianity and the efficacy of hard work link all settlers, from all social levels, into an extended England which was not to conquer, but to convert and make fruitful, the rest of the world.’102 Take them away! Away! Away! The bountiful earth is wide and free, The New shall repair the wrongs of the Old— God be with them over the sea!103

Sadly, the salvific results, both spiritual and physical, were far from victorious for hundreds of children. Many died in the sea-crossings, and many were abused in their supposedly new and prosperous life in ‘the promised land’.104

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Concluding Reflections The close identification of spiritual redemption with social welfare and the numerous Evangelical philanthropic projects underpinned by the doctrine of soteriology were not always successful; often well-intentioned, they were poorly conceived and disastrously executed. As has been illustrated in this chapter, however, the literary representation of child salvation frequently contained within it the quite radical notion of the child as both giver and receiver of salvation. Indeed, the soteriological message of many Evangelical authors came close to the Romanticist notion of the child as a potentially purer and innately more spiritual being than the adult. Whether as an exemplar of vulnerability and obedience, or a crusader for British imperial and religious superiority, salvation was just the first step towards a life of spiritual growth and discipleship. Central to this was an absolute adherence to biblical authority and principles—and it is to this subject I now turn.

Notes 1. Storr, Vernon F. The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1913). pp. 74–75. The etymology of soteriology is found in the Greek so ̄te ̄ria meaning salvation or deliverance from sōte ̄r meaning a Saviour. 2. Storr (1913. p. 63). Evangelicals were renowned for their persuasive and enthusiastic preaching methods. 3. Richardson, Alan. A Dictionary of Christian Theology. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969). p. 316. 4. Maurice, Frederick Denison. The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures: A Series of Sermons (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1854). 5. Schramm, Jan-Melissa. Atonement and Self-Sacrifice in NineteenthCentury Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). p. 58. 6. By the end of the century, ‘agnosticism’, a word coined by T. H. Huxley in 1869, had become an acceptable and plausible religious option alongside variations of Christian belief (Agnosticism: ‘a’—without; ‘gnosis’— knowledge: a philosophical view that the truth or falsity of theological claims for the existence of God are unknowable or incoherent). 7. Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1976). p. 30.

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8. Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). p. 20. Bradley (1976, p. 34). 9. Green, Samuel Gosnell. The Story of the Religious Tract Society: A Souvenir of the Meeting Held at the Mansion House on Tuesday, March 22nd, 1898 (London: Religious Tract Society, 1898). pp. 6–7. 10. See The Book of Genesis, Chapter 3. 11. Wilberforce, William. A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: H.  Fisher R.  Fisher and P. Jackson, 1834). p. 16. 12. See the Preface of George E. Sargent and Religious Tract Society (Great Britain), The Story of a City Arab (London: Religious Tract Society, 1850). 13. See http://www.angelfire.com/ms/mysargentfamily/eliel.html. accessed 4 July 2021. George and Emma had six children and they moved from Oxford to Eythorne in Kent where Emma’s mother resided. However, the family struggled financially and two of their children died and were buried along with their grandmother Esther Copley in the Baptist Churchyard at Eythorne. 14. See Sargent, George E. in World Catalogue Identities. http://www. worldcat.org/identities/lccn-­n85322228/, accessed 4 July 2021. 15. Sherwood, Mary Martha. The History of the Fairchild Family, Or The Child’s Manual: Being a Collection of Stories Calculated to Shew the Importance and Effects of a Religious Education (London: Printed for J. Hatchard and sold by F. Houlston and Son, Wellington, 1818). p. 47. 16. Hill, Rowland. Sermons, by the Late Rowland Hill, Delivered to Children at Surrey Chapel in the Easter Season of … 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826: With His Prayers and Hymns Annexed. Also, Five Addresses (London: Surrey Chapel, 1833). p. 8. 17. Bradley (1976, p. 17). 18. Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to 1980s (London: Routledge, 1989). p. 5. 19. Demers, Patricia. From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children’s Literature to 1850 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982). p. 232. 20. The Gospel of Matthew 12 v 33 21. Mathers, Helen. ‘The Evangelical Spirituality of a Victorian Feminist: Josephine Butler, 1828–1906’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 2 (2001). p. 293. 22. Wilberforce, Robert Isaac. The Life of William Wilberforce by His Sons, Vol 4: And Samuel Wilberforce in Five Volumes (London: John Murray [John Childs], 1838). p. 310.

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23. He is probably most (inaccurately and unfairly) known for his opposition to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. His son Ernest Roland was appointed Bishop of Chichester 1895–1907. 24. Wilberforce, Samuel. Agathos, and Other Sunday Stories, Second Edition (London: Thames Ditton [printed], 1840). 25. Brown, Ford K. Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961). Prochaska, Frank. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980) and Prochaska, Frank. The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in Modern Britain (London: Faber and Faber, 1998). 26. Owen, David. English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1964). p. 93. 27. See http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-­and-­events/the-­life-­and-­ legacy-­of-­dr-­edward-­jenner-­frs-­pioneer-­of-­vaccination accessed 22 March 2021. 28. Jones, William. Memoir of the Rev. Rowland Hill, M.A. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1845). p. 355. 29. Ibid., p. 353. 30. Rhodes, John. The End of Plagues: The Global Battle Against Infectious Disease (London: Macmillan, 2013), p. 50. And see also The Memoirs of Rowland Hill: https://archive.org/stream/revrowla00jone#page/354/ mode/2up. 31. Khorana, Meena. (Ed). Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Children’s Writers 1800–1880, (Detroit: Gale Research, 1996). p. 290. 32. See Demers, Patricia. ‘Mrs. Sherwood and Hesba Stretton: The Letter and Spirit of Evangelical Writing for Children’, in McGavran, James Holt. Romanticism and Children’s Literature in Nineteenth-Century England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). p. 131. 33. Reynolds, Kimberley. ‘Charlotte Maria Tucker, (1821–1893)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). aka: ALOE—A Lady of England. 34. See ‘A Celebration of Women Writers’ at http://digital.library.upenn. edu/women/ewing/parables/memorial.html 35. Ibid. 36. Demers, Patricia. From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children’s Literature to 1850 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982). p. 236. 37. Reynolds, Kimberley. Children’s Literature: In the 1890s and the 1990s (Plymouth: Northcote House in association with the British Council, 1994). p. 13. 38. See the Gospel of Matthew 18 v 1–5.

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39. Bosmajian, Hamida. Reading the Unconscious: Psychoanalytical Criticism in Peter Hunt, Understanding Children’s Literature: Key Essays from the International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature (London: Taylor & Francis, 1999). p. 104. 40. Gilmartin, Kevin. Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain 1790–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). p. 72. 41. Horne, Jackie C. History, and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature (Farnham Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2011). p. 65. 42. See Thiel, Elizabeth. The Fantasy of Family: Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal. (New York: Routledge, 2008). 43. Stephens, John. and McCallum, Robyn. ‘Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children’s Literature’ Garland Reference Library of the Humanities: Children’s Literature and Culture; vol. 5 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). 44. Briggs, Julia. Butts, Dennis. Grenby, Matthew Orville. Popular Children’s Literature in Britain (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008). p. 133. 45. Stretton, Hesba. Jessica’s First Prayer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1867). 46. The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 3, verse 46. 47. See Chapter X ‘The Shadow of Death’, Hesba Stretton, Jessica’s First Prayer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1860). pp. 84–95. 48. In the nineteenth century it referred to children who were destitute and left to wander the streets as nomads in towns and cities. 49. Rickard, Suzanne L. G. ‘Living by the Pen’: Hesba Stretton’s Moral earnings’, Women’s History Review 5, no. 2 (1996). pp. 219–38. 50. See Leslie Howsam on ‘Hesba Stretton (Sarah Smith)’, in Khorana, Dictionary of Literary Biography, British Children’s Writers 1800–1880, (Detroit: Gale Research, 1996). p. 289. 51. Cutt (1974, p. ix). 52. See Hansards XXVI 22 June 1813. In this parliamentary debate, Wilberforce gave one of the most moving speeches of his career concerning the urgent necessity for the conversion of India. He claimed it was ‘a fight against light and darkness between the kingdom of God against the kingdom of Satan. India was in the depths of moral and social degradation and Britain had a responsibility before God to bring Christian and moral instruction to its subjects in India. 53. Buchanan, Rev. Claudius. Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India, 2nd Cambridge Edition (Cambridge: Billiard and Metcalf, 1811). p. 204.

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54. Ibid. 55. Sherwood, Mary Martha. and Sherwood, Henry. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851): From the Diaries of Captain and Mrs. Sherwood (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., 1910). p. 211. 56. See Sherwood, Martha. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851). Chapter IX Round the Cape to India (1805). 57. Cutt (1974. p. 14). 58. Sherwood’s husband sent the manuscript of Little Henry and his Bearer (1815), to her sister, who sold it to Hazards of Wellington for £5. 59. Sherwood (1910, p. 296). 60. Ibid., p. 300. 61. Sherwood, Mary Martha. The Works of Mrs. Sherwood: Being the Only Uniform Edition Ever Published in the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1834). p. 51. 62. The Book of Isaiah 28 v 9–11. 63. Regaignon, Dara Rossman. ‘Intimacy’s Empire: Children, Servants and Missionaries in Martha Sherwood’s “Little Henry and His Bearer”’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2001). p. 85. 64. Ibid., p. 90. 65. Sherwood (1910, p.  317). ‘On the summit of the ghaut [wharves or landing places from a river usually built of stone] on each side of the steps small stone lodges generally occur, which are often occupied by some holy man, yogi or religious mendicant. These Hindu saints are usually the most depraved and filthy specimens of the human race, being often daubed from head to foot in mud and mire, their hair long, unkempt, and matted with grease and filth. In many instances these wretches are entirely without clothes and as utterly disgusting in speech and manner as in appearance.’ 66. See Chapter XIII in Martha Sherwood, The Indian Pilgrim, Or The Progress of the Pilgrim Nazareenee (London: Printed by and for F.  Houlston and Son and sold by Scatcherd and Letterman, 1818). pp. 206–211. 67. Ibid., p. 211. 68. Sherwood, Mary Martha. The Infant’s Progress from the Valley of Destruction to Everlasting Glory (Wellington, Salop: Printed by and for F. Houlston and Son, 1821). 69. Sherwood, Mary Martha. The History of George Desmond: Founded on Facts Which Occurred in the East Indies, and Now Published as a Useful Caution to Young Men Going out to That Country. (Wellington, Salop: Houlston, 1821).

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70. Sherwood, Mary Martha. The History of Henry Milner. See also: The History of John Marten, a Sequel to the Life of Henry Milner. (London: J.  Hatchard & Son, 1844). Indian Orphans: A Narrative of Facts; Including Many Notices of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. and of the Right Rev. Daniel Corrie, Lord Bishop of Madras (Berwick: Published by Thomas Melrose, 1839). 71. Sherwood, Mary Martha. Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (London: Printed for Houlston and Co., 1817). 72. Cutt (1974, p. 21). 73. Thompson, David Michael. Baptism, Church and Society in Modern Britain: From the Evangelical Revival to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005). 74. Wesley, John. and Outler, Albert C. The Works of John Wesley 1: Sermons, (Nashville: Abingdon Press., 1984). p. 430. 75. Thompson, David Michael. Baptism, Church and Society in Modern Britain, (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005). p. 26. 76. Ibid. 77. In 1815, for example, the SPCK published Bishop Richard Mant’s Two Tracts intended to convey correct notions of Regeneration and Conversion according to the sense of Holy Scripture and of the Church of England. (London: F. C. & J. Rivington 1815). See Thomson (2005, p. 34). In the 1830s and 1840s, Pusey’s Tracts for the Times was to raise the debate over baptismal regeneration once more. Pusey asserted that baptismal regeneration was not only a normative doctrine, it was the only acceptable understanding of the sacrament of baptism taken from scripture and tradition See Pusey, Edward Bouverie. Tracts for the Times, Vol. II (New York: Charles Henry, 1840). p. 16. 78. Jay (1979, p. 108). 79. See The Open University and Gerald Parsons, Religion in Victorian Britain. (Manchester: Manchester University Press in association with the Open University, 1988). p. 17. 80. Balleine, G. R. A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (London: Church Book Room Press, 1951). p. 227. 81. Macmillan’s Magazine published by Alexander Macmillan was a monthly British magazine from 1859 to 1907. A literary periodical that published fiction and non-fiction works from primarily British authors including Frederick Denison Maurice. 82. Muller, Charles H. ‘The Water Babies: Moral Lessons for Children’ UNISA English Studies 24, no. 1 (1986). pp. 12–17. Worboise, Emma Jane. The House of Bondage (London: J. Clarke, 1873); Bronte, Charlotte. Shirley (London: Smith, Elder, 1849); Trollope, Frances. Uncle Walter (London: Colburn & Co., 1852). Volume 2.; Butler, Samuel. The Way of all Flesh

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(London: Jonathan Cape 1903); Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d’Urbervilles (London: Osgood, McIlvaine & Co. 1891). Dickens disliked public professions of personal faith, he wrote about the nineteenth-century religious context in particular the doctrinal debates on spiritual regeneration, conversion, and baptism. His interest in the debates is indicated in his fictional creation of complex typological patterns of baptismal immersion in Our Mutual Friend and also in Great Expectations. 83. Vance, Norman. The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). p. 92. 84. Rapple, Brendan. ‘Kingsley’s The Water Babies: The Spiritual and Physical Cleansing Properties of Water’, Children’s Literature Charles Association Quarterly, 1989. pp. 42–46. 85. See Hall, Catherine. ‘Competing masculinities: Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill and the case of Governor Eyre’ in, Male and Middle-Class: explorations in feminism and history (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992) and Deane, Bradley. Masculinity and the New Imperialism: Rewriting Manhood in British Popular Literature, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) for insightful analyses of Kingsley’s often aggressively imperialist views. 86. Rapple, Brendan. ‘Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies: The Spiritual and Physical Cleansing Properties of Water’, 1989. p. 45. 87. Peter Coveney, Poor Monkey: The Child in Literature (London: Rockliff, 1957). p. 63. 88. William Henry Giles Kingston (1814–1880), Peter the Whaler (London: Athelstane E-Books, 1873). p. 332. 89. Ibid., p. 332. 90. See Thompson, Nicola D. ‘William Henry Giles Kingston’, in Khorana, Dictionary of Literary Biography, British Children’s Writers 1800–1880, (Detroit: Gale Research, 1996). p. 148. 91. See the Gospels of Matthew 4; Mark 1; Luke 3; John 1. 92. See periodicals such as: The Quiver (1861–1926); Aunt Judy’s Magazine (1866–1885); Our Waifs and Strays (1882–1920). Also, Bean, Philip. and Melville, Joy. Lost Children of the Empire (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). p. 1. 93. Parker, R.  A. Uprooted: The Shipment of Poor Children to Canada 1867–1917 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008). Parr, Joy. Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869–1924 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). Wagner, Gillian. Children of the Empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982). 94. See http://www.quarriers.org.uk/who-­we-­are/history/. William Quarrier, the Glasgow shoe retailer, set up homes for orphaned and des-

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titute children in Glasgow in the early 1870s. ‘He, himself, had experienced a very impoverished childhood, a situation which he overcame through hard work, determination and Christian faith.’ See also Kohli, Marjorie. The Golden Bridge: Young Immigrants to Canada, 1833–1939 (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2003). 95. Collingwood, Judy. ‘Rye, Maria Susan (1829–1903)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). In June 1869, Rye took her first party of three children to Canada. The emigration of children began in earnest when, on 28 October 1869, she embarked from Liverpool with a party of seventy-five girls aged between four and twelve, including fifty from the Kirkdale Industrial School. In the following year, Annie Macpherson, a colleague, took out a party of 100 boys to Canada. These two women dominated the field for almost a decade until Dr Barnardo, William Quarrier, and other agencies became involved. 96. See Constantine, Stephen. Child Migration, Philanthropy, the State and the Empire. In: History in Focus, Vol. 14 (Lancaster: Lancaster University, 2008). 97. For child emigration and statistics and the work of Dr Barnardo, see Constantine, S. ‘Empire migration and social reform 1880–1950’ in Pooley, C.  G. and Whyte, I.  D. (Eds.) Migrants, Emigrants and Immigrants: a Social History of Migration, (London: Routledge, 1991). pp. 62–83.; Parr, J. Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869–1924 (Toronto University Press, 1980); Wagner, G. Children of the Empire (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1982); Kershaw, R. and Sacks, J. New Lives for Old: the Story of Britain’s Child Migrants (Kew: National Archives, 2008); Parker, R. Uprooted: The Shipment of Poor Children to Canada, 1867–1917 (Vancouver: UBC Pres, 2008). 98. For a bibliographic list of children’s books published to encourage their interest in emigration see Lees, Stella. A Track to Unknown Water: Proceedings of the Second Pacific Rim Conference on Children’s Literature (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1980). p. 17. 99. Khorana (1996, p. 157). 100. See Buis, Alena M. chapter titled ‘The Raw Materials of Empire Building’ in Loren Lerner, Depicting Canada’s Children (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009). p. 147. 101. Ballantyne, Michael Robert. Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished, a Tale (London: James Nisbet & Co, 1884). p. 256. 102. Bratton, J. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble 1981). p. 116.

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103. See the periodical, Our Waifs and Strays: The Monthly Paper of the Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays, Issue No. 40 August 1887, p. 3. 104. See Child Migrant Trust at http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/our-­ work/child-­migration-­history. Accessed 12.12.21.

Bibliography Ballantyne, Michael Robert. Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished, a Tale (London: James Nisbet & Co, 1884). Balleine, G.  R. A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England (London: Church Book Room Press, 1951). Bean, Philip. and Melville, Joy. Lost Children of the Empire (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to 1980s (London: Routledge, 1989). Bosmajian, Hamida. Reading the Unconscious: Psychoanalytical Criticism in Peter Hunt, Understanding Children’s Literature: Key Essays from the International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature (London: Taylor & Francis, 1999). Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness, (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1976). Bratton, J. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble 1981). Briggs, Julia. Butts, Dennis. Grenby, Matthew Orville. Popular Children’s Literature in Britain (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008). Bronte, Charlotte. Shirley (London: Smith, Elder, 1849). Brown, Ford K. Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961). Buchanan, Rev. Claudius. Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India, 2nd Cambridge Edition (Cambridge: Billiard and Metcalf, 1811). Buis, Alena M. chapter titled ‘The Raw Materials of Empire Building’ in Loren Lerner, Depicting Canada’s Children (Waterloo; Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009). Butler, Samuel. The Way of all Flesh (London: Jonathan Cape 1903). Church of England, Our Waifs and Strays: The Monthly Paper of the Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays, Issue No. 40 August 1887. Collingwood, Judy. ‘Rye, Maria Susan (1829–1903)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Constantine, Stephen. Child Migration, Philanthropy, the State and the Empire. In: History in Focus, Vol. 14 (Lancaster: Lancaster University, 2008).

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———. ‘Empire migration and social reform 1880–1950’, in Pooley, C.  G. and Whyte, I. D. (Eds.) Migrants, Emigrants and Immigrants: A Social History of Migration (London: Routledge, 1991). Coveney, Peter. Poor Monkey the Child in Literature (London: Rockliff, 1957). Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). Deane, Bradley. Masculinity and the New Imperialism: Rewriting Manhood in British Popular Literature, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Demers, Patricia. ‘Mrs. Sherwood and Hesba Stretton: The Letter and Spirit of Evangelical Writing for Children’, in McGavran, James Holt. Romanticism and Children’s Literature in Nineteenth-Century England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). ———. From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children’s Literature to 1850 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982). Gilmartin, Kevin. Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain 1790–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Green, Samuel Gosnell. The Story of the Religious Tract Society: A Souvenir of the Meeting Held at the Mansion House on Tuesday, March 22nd, 1898 (London: Religious Tract Society, 1898). Hall, Catherine. ‘Competing masculinities: Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill and the case of Governor Eyre’ in, Male and Middle-Class: explorations in feminism and history (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992). Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d’Urbervilles (London: Osgood, McIlvaine & Co. 1891). Hill, Rowland. Sermons, by the Late Rowland Hill, Delivered to Children at Surrey Chapel in the Easter Season of … 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826: With His Prayers and Hymns Annexed. Also, Five Addresses (London: Surrey Chapel, 1833). Horne, Jackie C. History, and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2011). Jones, William. Memoir of the Rev. Rowland Hill, M.A. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1845). Kershaw, R. and Sacks, J. New Lives for Old: The Story of Britain’s Child Migrants (Kew: National Archives, 2008). Khorana, Meena. (Ed). Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Children’s Writers 1800–1880 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1996). Kingston, William Henry Giles. Peter the Whaler (London: Athelstane E-Books, 1873). Kohli, Marjorie. The Golden Bridge: Young Immigrants to Canada 1833–1939 (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2003). Lees, Stella. A Track to Unknown Water: Proceedings of the Second Pacific Rim Conference on Children’s Literature (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1980).

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Macmillan, Alexander. Macmillan’s Magazine (London: Macmillan, 1859 to 1907). Mant, Richard. Two Tracts intended to convey correct notions of Regeneration and Conversion according to the sense of Holy Scripture and of the Church of England (London: F. C. & J. Rivington 1815). Mathers, Helen. ‘The Evangelical Spirituality of a Victorian Feminist: Josephine Butler, 1828–1906’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 2 (2001). Maurice, Frederick Denison. The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures: A Series of Sermons (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1854). Muller, Charles H. ‘The Water Babies: Moral Lessons For Children’, UNISA English Studies 24, no. 1 (1986). Owen, David. English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1964). Parker, R.  A. Uprooted: The Shipment of Poor Children to Canada 1867–1917 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008). Parr, J. Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada 1869–1924 (Toronto University Press, 1980). Parsons, Gerald. Religion in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press in association with the Open University, 1988). Prochaska, Frank. The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in Modern Britain (London: Faber and Faber, 1998). ———. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). Pusey, Edward Bouverie. Tracts for the Times, Vol. II (New York: Charles Henry, 1840). Rapple, Brendan. ‘Kingsley’s The Water Babies: The Spiritual and Physical Cleansing Properties of Water’, Children’s Literature Charles Association Quarterly, 1989. Regaignon, Dara Rossman. ‘Intimacy’s Empire: Children, Servants and Missionaries in Martha Sherwood’s “Little Henry and His Bearer”’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 26, No. 2 (2001). Reynolds, Kimberley. ‘Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821–1893)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ———. Children’s Literature: In the 1890s and the 1990s (Plymouth: Northcote House in association with the British Council, 1994). Rhodes, John. The End of Plagues: The Global Battle Against Infectious Disease (London: Macmillan, 2013). Richardson, Alan. A Dictionary of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969). Rickard, Suzanne L.  G. ‘Living by the Pen’: Hesba Stretton’s Moral earnings’, Women’s History Review 5, no. 2 (1996). Sargent, George E. & The Religious Tract Society (Great Britain), The Story of a City Arab (London: Religious Tract Society, 1850).

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Schramm, Jan-Melissa. Atonement and Self-Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Sherwood, Mary Martha. Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism (London: Printed for Houlston and Co., 1817). ———. The History of the Fairchild Family, Or The Child’s Manual: Being a Collection of Stories Calculated to Shew the Importance and Effects of a Religious Education (London: Printed for J. Hatchard and sold by F. Houlston and Son, Wellington, 1818a). ———. The Indian Pilgrim, Or The Progress of the Pilgrim Nazareenee (London: Printed by and for F.  Houlston and Son and sold by Scatcherd and Letterman, 1818b). ———. The History of George Desmond: Founded on Facts Which Occurred in the East Indies, and Now Published as a Useful Caution to Young Men Going out to That Country (Wellington, Salop: Houlston, 1821a). ———. The Infant’s Progress from the Valley of Destruction to Everlasting Glory (Wellington, Salop: Printed by and for F. Houlston and Son, 1821b). ———. The History of Henry Milner: A Little Boy Who Was Not Brought Up According To The Fashions Of This World (London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1822). ———. The Works of Mrs. Sherwood: Being the Only Uniform Edition Ever Published in the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1834). ———. Indian Orphans: A Narrative of Facts; Including Many Notices of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. and of the Right Rev. Daniel Corrie, Lord Bishop of Madras (Berwick: Published by Thomas Melrose, 1839). ———. . The History of John Marten, a Sequel to the Life of Henry Milner (London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1844). Sherwood, Mary Martha. and Sherwood, Henry. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851): From the Diaries of Captain and Mrs. Sherwood (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., Ltd., 1910). Stephens, John. and McCallum, Robyn. ‘Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children’s Literature’ Garland Reference Library of the Humanities: Children’s Literature and Culture; vol. 5 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). Storr, Vernon F. The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1913). Stretton, Hesba. Jessica’s First Prayer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1867). Thiel, Elizabeth. The Fantasy of Family: Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and the Myth of the Domestic Ideal (New York: Routledge, 2008). Thompson, David Michael. Baptism, Church and Society in Modern Britain: From the Evangelical Revival to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005). Trollope, Frances. Uncle Walter (London: Colburn & Co., 1852).

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Vance, Norman. The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Wagner, Gillian. Children of the Empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982). Wesley, John. and Outler, Albert C. The Works of John Wesley 1: Sermons (Nashville: Abingdon Press., 1984). Wilberforce, Robert Isaac. The Life of William Wilberforce by His Sons, Vol 4: And Samuel Wilberforce in Five Volumes (London: John Murray [John Childs], 1838). Wilberforce, Samuel. Agathos, and Other Sunday Stories, Second Edition (London: Thames Ditton [printed], 1840). Wilberforce, William. A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: H. Fisher R. Fisher and P. Jackson, 1834). Worboise, Emma Jane. The House of Bondage (London: J. Clarke, 1873).

CHAPTER 5

Biblical Authority in Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900

For religious instruction, we read portions of the Old Testament, and the Gospels, and Acts of the Apostles in class every day, using Mrs Trimmer’s Selections, and on Sundays, we repeated the Collect and learned Watts’s hymns, besides going through the Church Catechism … . At home, we were only expected to repeat the Catechism as we learned it, by very slow degrees; and with a Noah’s Ark to amuse us, and the pleasure of dining in the parlour, and looking at the pictures in a large Bible, Sunday was a happy, bright day though the church services were very dreary (See Sewell, Elizabeth Missing. & Sewell, Eleanor L. (ed.), The Autobiography of Elizabeth Missing Sewell, (London: Longmans, Green, 1908), p. 10. And also, Sanders, Valerie. Records of Girlhood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Childhoods (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). p. 174.). —Elizabeth Missing Sewell

Introduction John Wesley stated that the Bible alone was the source of his salvation. ‘Let me be homo unius libri [a man of one book]’, he declared in the preface to his collected sermons of 1746.1 Timothy Larsen has explored this remarkable emphasis on the Bible, which was a dominant presence in nineteenth-century Britain. ‘Although the Victorians were awash in texts, they were a “people of one book”, and the Bible loomed uniquely large in Victorian culture in fascinating and under-explored ways.’2 Throughout the century, those who adhered to the underlying principles of the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. E. Smale, Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5_5

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Evangelical Movement stood firmly on its belief in the Bible as the absolute authoritative Word of God and its unquestioning acceptance of the truth of biblical narratives. The Bible was not simply a record of divine revelation; it was, as Henry Venn had phrased it in 1763, ‘the infallible word of God’. 3 The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion had similarly confessed its belief in the ‘infallible truth’ of the scriptures in 1783.4 The Bible was used by Evangelicals not only as the means to preach the gospel message to unbelievers but as a moral code to live by that provided the sustenance for their faith and piety, a guidance manual for everyday life, a moral blueprint, and the principal pedagogical text for their children. For many, it was the sole reading matter on a Sunday and the means by which people learned to read and write. As noted in Chap. 2, biblicism was one of the fundamentally defining aspects of Victorian Evangelicalism. As Larsen argued, the extent and reach of the Bible’s influence in the lives of the Victorians can only be fully appreciated by assessing the detailed accounts of its inspirational force across a range of individuals.5 This chapter explores the nature and influence of biblical authority by analysing the various ways the Bible was used to convert, teach, and sustain children in ‘the ways of the Lord’, and to train them to become followers and evangels of the Gospel message.

Educating Children in the Bible Through the Sunday School Movement The Bible featured in so many aspects of Victorian children’s lives including from birth, as noted by Frank Prochaska, it was the main inspiration for naming a new baby, culminating in a resurgence of nineteenth-century children named after biblical heroes and heroines.6 However, as Vernon Storr declared, ‘Evangelical doctrine often showed a tendency to wrest the meaning of isolated texts or passages in the Bible to make them fit in with their doctrinal scheme,’7 and regrettably, more often to the child’s disadvantage. For example, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’8 was a verse frequently used by fathers to underpin their severe disciplinary measures used to punish disobedient children, at times with tragic results.9 It was this literal, sombre, pedagogical role of the Bible that dominated the Evangelicals’ appropriation of it at the beginning of the century. But the most successful agent for accomplishing educational tasks was the Sunday School Movement, which originated in the late eighteenth century and

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developed rapidly into one of the most powerful Evangelical educational institutions of the nineteenth century. Robert Raikes, of course, was hailed as a founder of Sunday Schools in Gloucester c. 1780. Raikes’ aim had a duality of purpose, first that children should be taught to read the Bible and learn the catechism for their spiritual edification and second to be taught the basic principles of reading and writing in order to civilise them. Raikes used the method of rewards and punishments to accomplish his mission. But it should also be noted that although financially benevolent, Raikes was at times a strict disciplinarian using various means of corporal punishment if children misbehaved or did not learn their catechism. The title of his 1790 work, The Sunday Scholar’s Companion; consisting of Scripture sentences, disposed in such order, as will quickly ground Young Learners in the Fundamental Doctrines of our Most Holy Religion, and at the same time lead them pleasantly on, from Simple and easy to Compound and Difficult Words, is clear evidence of his aim.10 As discussed in Chap. 3, the residual anti-revolutionary climate of the early nineteenth century meant that Sunday Schools initially came under criticism from certain quarters of the social elite because they were perceived as subversive agents for empowering children and the adult illiterate poor by teaching them literacy skills. They were therefore perceived as a threat that could destabilise social control. Nevertheless, countless children and adults were indeed taught to read through this system. Records reveal that between the years 1780 and 1830 the population of England doubled in size, whereas the number of literate individuals increased by a staggering five hundred per cent.11 The Sunday School Movement’s rapid growth was in no small measure due to the impassioned commitment and devotion to duty of innumerable Evangelical Sunday School volunteer teachers, many of whom were also children’s authors. In 1856, the Baptist minister Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) preached a sermon based on Psalm 34: ‘Come Ye Children, hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord’. His message was aimed explicitly at parents and teachers on the importance of teaching the scriptures to children, while advocating the important role of the Sunday School teacher at national level: ‘You who are teaching children are not dishonoured by that occupation; some may say, “You are only a Sunday School teacher,” but you are a noble personage, holding an honourable office, and having illustrious predecessors … . He who teaches a class in a Sabbath school has earned a good degree. I had rather receive the title of

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S.S.T. than M.A., B.A., or any other honour that ever was conferred by men.’12 But not only were the teachers dedicated to this cause but also the scholars, statistics for Sunday School attendance grew at a remarkable pace, revealing an increase from just under half a million in 1831 to three and a half million by 1870.13 As Philip Cliff has shown, their success is due in part to their courageous and admirable strategy—in 1855, the Birmingham Sunday School Union persuaded 730 people to systematically visit every house in the city, covering 28,694 homes in which were found 39,068 children between the ages of four and eighteen. Of these, 21,948 were already attending Sunday School, to which were added another 4000 after this renewed canvassing. London followed suit, sending out 6000 canvassers who introduced another 20,000 new scholars to Sunday School. This scheme was developed into the ‘New Canvass Movement’, which spread quickly to other towns with extraordinary results.14 Doubtless these door-to-door visits also provided a valuable insight and revelation into the lives of ordinary people, inspiring much imaginative food for thought for potential storylines. As previously mentioned, the majority of Evangelical authors cut their teeth on Sunday School teaching. Therefore, how was the Bible used, presented, and applied by these individuals in their writing? The following discussion reveals selected ways in which the authority of Scripture was promoted through children’s literature.

Women Exegeting, Adapting, and Theologising Biblical Narratology for Children Rebecca Styler has argued that ‘literary theology’ became a means of highly effective religious teaching in the nineteenth century, especially via Evangelical female authors since Evangelicalism validated the middle-class role of domesticity and piety. ‘Women and home became identified as redemptive forces in a society which needed reform, and the female character was interpreted in essentialist terms as innately more akin to Christian values than was the male.’15 She affirms this view vis-à-vis Jane Rendall’s feminist study on female Evangelical spirituality: ‘[T]he qualities of the reborn Christian, as opposed to the merely nominal Christian, were qualities that have been described as quintessentially female. Such a Christian was humble and submissive, self-denying, obedient, and passive, for

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evangelical discipline and upbringing was based on the breaking of the will and the denial of self.’16 A term that also became coterminous and that elevated this domestic goddess ideal was The Angel in the House after the publication of the poem about his wife Emily, by Coventry Patmore.17 However, many female authors were not always met with such admiration. Whether writing religious or secular texts, women writers often felt denigrated in a male-dominated society. For example, ten years before the publication of Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë sent a selection of her poems to the poet laureate Robert Southey for comment; as Greg Buzwell has noted, she must have found his misogynist response extremely discouraging. ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation.’18 Little wonder then that many nineteenth-century female authors wrote under a pseudonym as previously discussed in Chap. 2. The Brontë sisters published a collection of their poetry in May 1846 under the male aliases of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, and in the preface to their combined 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey Charlotte explained that their reasons for this were due to male prejudice.19 The celebrated Evangelical writer Hannah More assumed various guises as an author, not only did she publish under her own name, but also anonymously, and under two different pseudonyms: Will Chip and Z. She was often the subject of derision from male critics, the most renowned being William Cobbett who dubbed her the ‘old Bishop in petticoats’. 20 However, Mitzi Myers has contended that many men of influence fully appreciated women as authors, teachers, and spiritual guides and in particular elevated the vital role of mothers,21 as Dr William Buchan commented: ‘The more I reflect on the situation of a mother, the more I am struck with the extent of her powers, which approach our ideas of the Deity, her instructions and example will have a lasting influence, and of course, will go farther to form the morals, than all the eloquence of the pulpit, the efforts of school-masters, or the corrective power of the civil magistrate.’22 Myers also notes that as female authors eventually swamped the market of Georgian juvenilia during the period, they discovered that they not only had a voice but a vocation, often deemed as surrogate mothers who yielded highly influential maternal, mentorial, and pedagogical power through their writing.23 She identifies a whole body of female authority figures whose influence should not be underestimated: ‘The Mrs. Lovechilds, Teachums, and Teachwells, the Mentorias and Arabella

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Arguses, the Rational Dames, the Moral Mothers, the Female Guardians, Preceptors, and Instructors, as women writers of juvenilia like to imagine themselves. These paradigms of benign and powerful maternal governance and good girlhood reflect both female fantasies and real cultural change.’24 Nevertheless, in order to avoid male prejudice, several female authors preferred simply to be introduced at the beginning of a book as ‘the author of…’ followed by a book title. One such writer was Favell Lee Mortimer (1802–1878), who believed that the earlier in life children were taught the Scriptures the better, and so she stressed the importance of imparting biblical knowledge from a young age. She reworked biblical stories for infants in her highly successful book, The Peep of Day or A Series of The Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind Is Capable of Receiving (1833). It sold over a million copies in the original edition and was translated into thirty-seven languages.25 The text in catechistic format was intended to prepare even the very youngest child for learning the Scriptures and was interspersed with a series of questions that reinforced the message. Mortimer was confident in the infant’s ability to absorb and understand religious lessons, ‘Upon trial, it will be found that children can understand religious truths at a very early age … . The child easily perceives that there must be a God and acknowledges His power to be great … [and] he finds no difficulty in believing that God’s understanding is infinitely superior to his own.’26 Mortimer’s father, David Bevan, was a Quaker and the co-founder of Barclay, Bevan, and Company (eventually to become Barclays Bank), but under the influence of her mother Mortimer turned to Evangelicalism at the age of twenty-five. She married Thomas Mortimer, a minister of the Episcopal Chapel, Gray’s Inn Lane, London, in 1841; her biographer states that Thomas was a popular preacher but allegedly a cruel husband. He died in 1850 and she spent her remaining years alone rewriting Bible stories mainly for infants.27 Despite the immature years of her audience, she did not spare them the more graphic biblical stories describing scenes of violence and eventually it was decided by the Bishop of Durham that The Peep of Day should be expurgated and republished in 1893. He selectively censored some of the more gruesome images that Mortimer painted, especially her version of the Day of Judgement. He provided a justification for his amendments by suggesting that its usefulness might be sustained more productively by modifying the text. Mortimer’s grandniece Rosalind Constable stated that her mother was horrified by the original version, ‘Hers was not the only night nursery in England where the sleeping child’s

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dreams were turned to nightmares by the descriptions of hell that awaited the child who did what God forbid.’28 However, Mortimer’s sales figures appear to denote that however explicit and sensational the text it did not seem to deter parents from purchasing it for their children. In Here a Little and There a Little; or Scripture Facts (1861), Mortimer recounts in explicit detail the murder of Abel by Cain in the Genesis narrative again drawing on cathectic style. ‘Have you ever heard an account of a murder? I know you have. Almost every week, we hear of some horrible murder, and soon afterwards, we hear of the murderer being caught and hanged… Cain rose up and killed him [Abel]. I do not know how he killed him, whether with a great stone or a great stick, but that is no matter—poor Abel lay bleeding on the earth, the blood ran into the ground. Oh! It must have been a dreadful sight! How did Cain feel when he saw his brother’s blood, and that good brother cold, and still, and pale, like a stone? What becomes of liars when they die, and what becomes of murderers? They go to hell! That is a horrible, dark, and burning place, far off from God.’29 Mortimer also left little to the imagination when relating New Testament narratives; she describes for her young readers Jesus sweating great drops of blood while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane with similar graphic depictions.30 The suicide of Judas Iscariot is given similar explicit treatment with little left to the young child’s imagination. 31 To be fair, not all of Mortimer’s texts are quite so morbid or sadistic and her popularity grew along with her sales figures as Percy Muir observed, although Mortimer’s works are strictly instructional, ‘their multitudinous reprintings justify their inclusion’.32 Other writers, thankfully, were not quite so literal in their exegesis of Biblical episodes, instead preferring to rework them into an allegorical format. By the 1850s, new critical historical theories were challenging orthodox Evangelical claims to the Bible’s infallibility. For such scholars, the text was not to be taken literally but instead read as figurative of a deeper implicit meaning about faith and the Christian message. As the century wore on, some Evangelical children’s authors also made surprisingly substantial use of allegorical teaching methods, and in many instances, they explained scriptural texts as emblematic of more profound truths. Unlike biblical history scholars, they did not undertake exposition in order to reveal the internal inconsistencies of the Gospel accounts of the life and teaching of Christ or to reduce the sacred status of biblical texts. Instead, they used allegories, parables, and historical narratives to present the Bible in more interesting and appealing ways for young readers.

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The Bible was, of course, used first and foremost to highlight the reader’s need for repentance and salvation, and the importance of the Scriptures as the foundation stone for the conversion process was regularly emphasised. Out in the Storm (1883), for example, was written by Catharine Shaw, who offered another fascinating example of a child evangel, Maggie, who longs to convert her dying father before it is too late by reading portions of the Bible to him. Unfortunately, she is forbidden by her mother to even touch or open the large family Bible because it is too costly an item to be handled or read. ‘It is not for reading! I can’t have that used … it wasn’t bought for use’, exclaims the mother who functions in the narrative as Maggie’s antagonist. Shaw describes how Maggie’s friend Phoebe and her grandmother Mrs Benson teach the Scriptures to Maggie by rote so that she can recite the Gospel message of St. Luke the physician, by memory to her father. Eventually, after the dying man pleads to read the Bible himself, the mother concedes, and Maggie’s father dies converted, and ‘safe in the harbour’, as he whispers before his last breath.33 The centrality of the Bible as the means of conversion is taken up again by Sherwood through the agency of a child evangel in The Flowers of the Forest (1830). This novel, typical of Sherwood’s melodramatic style, tells of a dying orphan Aimée, who converts a rather different type of father figure, a Roman Catholic priest, to Protestantism by quoting biblical passages and explaining their meaning at length. In response to young Aimée’s remarkable knowledge of the Scriptures, the priest hastily returns home to read his Bible and in so doing experiences an epiphany. Thus, he acknowledges the error of his current ordained status in the Church of Rome. ‘I retired to my study to examine the Holy Bible respecting those passages to which my little companion had alluded. And in that long quiet day, a day never to be forgotten by me, such convictions flashed upon my mind respecting the errors of my church, that before the evening hour I was almost, if not entirely, as much what my people would have called a heretic … . I solemnly resolved to renounce the vanities in which I had been educated, and with the divine help, to quit all earthly considerations to follow the truth as it is stated in the Holy Scriptures, unto all extremities to which my abandonment of the church of Rome might reduce me.’34 In this instance, Sherwood’s tale manages to merge the primacy of biblical authority with Protestant monopoly, reinforcing her anti-Catholic predisposition. The narrative is also familiarly reminiscent again of the Gospel account of the boy Jesus in the Temple, a popular trope for Evangelical children’s authors, wherein the child confounds the learned teachers of

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the law with his ability and courage to confront deep theological issues. The protagonist Aimée communicates informative, biblical, revelatory knowledge in such a way that her endearing humility and exemplary character seeks to influence not only the characters in the story but the actual child reader. As Sherwood herself exclaimed, ‘Jesus called a little child and had him stand among them … whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’35 As an author, Sherwood habitually borrowed from biblical paradigms, an intertextual method that served her storytelling purposes perfectly. Knowledge of the Bible was vital to authors when writing about repentance and conversion as evidenced by the pen of Sherwood’s sister, Lucy Lyttelton Cameron, in her allegorical tale, The Two Lambs (1827). Known to her large and loyal community of readers as Mrs Cameron, Lucy was married to the Rev Charles Richard Cameron, and they had twelve children. Thanks to her husband, she became fully engaged with a close network of Evangelical associates and their rectory became the hub of much influential London society that included Gerrard Andrewes, the Dean of Canterbury. She was also introduced to the English Romantic poet Anna Seward through a friend of her father, met with Hannah More and her contemporaries while in Bristol and also the Moravian author Mary Anne Galton.36 Cameron published several popular devotional titles, including her first, The History of Margaret Whyte (1798), but her most widely read story was The Two Lambs, a children’s tale of temptation, redemption, and finally, conversion based on the parable of the Good Shepherd. In The Two Lambs, the central characters are lambs named ‘Peace’ and ‘Inexperience’ who are attacked by a roaring lion and rescued by the ‘Good Shepherd’. The Shepherd sustains an injury to his side, cleanses the lambs with the blood flowing from his wound, and leads them to green pastures where they live in peace and security as long as they are obedient and do not stray. However, Inexperience wanders off to the mountains, tempted by the greater freedom of the goats who roam there, but a further encounter with the ferocious lion convinces him that true freedom lies back in the sheepfold beside the Good Shepherd. After an exhausting night’s journey back to the fold, Inexperience collapses beside the narrow gate. He reflects and repents as he watches the Good Shepherd carry Peace to a pleasant pasture through a golden gate. The Good Shepherd then appears to Inexperience and declares, ‘Fear not, little lamb, I am able to save unto the uttermost all that come to me.’ The story concludes with Cameron’s theologically orchestrated explanation for those who are

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tempted to stray: ‘This happy lamb was always afterwards convinced that in His fold there is only rest and that in keeping of His commandments there is quietness and assurance forever.’37 The Two Lambs is replete with intertextual biblical references to the parable of the Good Shepherd combined with descriptive imagery doubtless borrowed from the Book of Psalms. Particular reference is made to the Twenty-Third Psalm, portraying the peace and rest to be found in pastures green. The roaring lion symbolises the Devil; the sheep represent Christ’s followers, and the goats represent rebellious individuals who are disobedient and stray from the fold. Biblical references to the narrow gate, the path to eternal life, and Christ’s sacrificial shedding of his blood to purify the lambs are figurative examples used by Cameron to convey the message to her young readers. The book ran into multiple editions in England and America and was translated into several languages, including French, Italian, Bulgarian, and Hindi.38 In stereotypical Evangelical activist mode, Cameron wrote at a relentless pace and she calculated to the minute exactly how long it would take her to write each page or tract.39 One of her books, The Raven and the Dove (1817), was completed in just four hours, and her extensive list of publications is indeed admirable considering she had twelve children of her own. Unfortunately, she apparently never received any royalties from her bestseller, The Two Lambs, which was perhaps an oversight on her part, although she piously remarked: ‘Had I received what I ought to have done in common honesty, I should have been rich: but it is sweeter far to depend on God for everything.’40 There are of course countless examples of how women went about exegeting, adapting, and theologising Biblical narratives for children not only for repentance and conversion but to nurture and sustain children’s spirituality using the Bible as their moral code for living a righteous and godly life.

The Bible as the Moral Code for Children’s Righteous Living In addition to the role of the Bible as a source of spiritual revelation leading to conversion, authors drew heavily upon Scriptural authority as a source of moral guidance for righteous living. Moral codes were reinforced by biblical parables that expressed the specifically germane virtues being taught. In her children’s book, The Simple Flower and Other Tales (1842),41 Charlotte Elizabeth’s protagonist, the clergyman’s daughter

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Mary Selby, contemplated on the Scriptural parable of the Ten Virgins as a means of promoting the Christian work ethic and activism. Death lay in wait for those who did not fulfil their Evangelical mission, as Mary explained: ‘There are younger girls than me buried in the churchyard, and if I am called away also, I must not be found like the foolish virgins, sleeping in idleness, without oil in my lamp. There is much for such as me to do; many poor children are ignorant of what I am made happy by knowing that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all who believe and that they who name his name are required to depart from iniquity.’42 Young Mary is driven by her Evangelical conscience to teach other children about the Scriptures but not only to teach them but to go the proverbial extra mile, to work hard to earn money, to save and to donate her savings to buy and send Bibles to assist missionaries in their work of evangelising the ‘heathen’. Charlotte Elizabeth’s activist work ethic is also manifest in Charlesworth’s Ministering Children, which in reality is one long thesis stretching for over 345 pages on the spiritual rewards of benevolent hard-working children set within a community of equals, who are not the recipients but the benefactors of charity. In the conclusion she declares that the purpose of her book was to offer a paradigm of ministering children and to demonstrate the Christian life in action. I expand further on Charlesworth’s work in the final chapter of this study. As mentioned in Chap. 4, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, son of the leading Evangelical William Wilberforce, did not follow in his father’s Low Church footsteps but became a proponent of the Oxford Movement. However, he used biblical precepts to teach his own children how to follow Christian principles for living a godly life. A copy of his famous text for children, Agathos: The Rocky Island and Other Sunday Stories (1840), is held in the Royal Collection Trust and was presented to Victoria, Duchess of Kent, the mother of Queen Victoria, by the author on 27 Feb 1842. It ran through eight editions in three years with a twenty-third edition published in 1861. In the preface, Wilberforce stated that his stories began as Sunday evening tales invented for his own children. He viewed the Bible as critical to the distinctiveness of Sundays: ‘If the conversations and employments of Sunday are not early marked as different from those of other days, how is it possible that our children can grow up with a deeply rooted reverence for its holiness?’43 Wilberforce who was not in favour of the sombre rigidity of Sabbatarianism44 exhorted parents that to demonstrate love for their children meant making time for them, relaxing with them, teaching and leading them. The stories in Agathos are

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interspersed with questions and answers in a catechetical format, with some of the responses supplied by his own children. He made it clear in the preface that his selected Bible stories had been ‘interwoven’ with questions of faith in such a way so as not to diminish the Holiness of the Scriptures or ‘mak[e] the mysteries of faith common and cheap to childish imaginations’.45 Agathos or The Whole Armour of God is the first tale in the book and is based on St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter Six, wherein first, he urges children to obey their parents and then continues to advise all believers to put on the whole armour of God to protect themselves from the dark forces of evil. Wilberforce’s narrative takes up the imagery of armour and is an allegorical tale about a King whose country is invaded by a dragon. The King orders his soldiers to fight the dragon using the specific armour he has provided for them which will keep them safe against the enemy’s attacks. But in the heat of the sun, one by one, the soldiers gradually remove their armour, except for Agathos. The dragon kills each unprotected soldier one at a time until it meets Agathos, who, because he is wearing the armour given to him by the King, kills the dragon. The story concludes by stating: ‘and he [Agathos] dwelled forever in the presence of his Prince’.46 There then follows a set of catechetical questions and responses between the father and his children: FATHER: My dear children, can you tell what passage of God’s word this is meant to explain to you? CHILD: Yes. I think it must be those verses which I learned the other day from the sixth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. F: Yes, it is meant to explain this, and can you tell me who the prince is? Who had fought himself with the enemy and now sends out his soldiers to fight? C: Jesus Christ, our Saviour who once fought with Satan for us and now sends out his people to resist him. F: Who are his soldiers? C: All those who are members of his church. F: Can you remember what the Baptismal Service says about this? C: When the minister makes the sign of the cross upon the child’s forehead, he says that he does it ‘in token that he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, but manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and

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the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end.’ What does the Catechism call Satan against whom you are to strive? My ghostly enemy. If we watch, are we safe? Yes, for Christ, our master will keep us. What has he promised us about this in his word? ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,’ James iv. 7.47

Christopher Tolley has observed that Samuel Wilberforce stressed the importance of the joy, relaxation, and pleasurable companionship of families spending time together on Sundays. In his preface, Wilberforce advised that if children grew up only remembering ‘The Lord’s Day’ (Sunday) for being dull and dreary with all amusements banished it would be detrimental to their future spiritual growth. He wrote Agathos in order to provide suitable material that combined both amusement and spiritual teaching for his family and to create an environment in the home of harmony, peace, and love.48 Continuing on the theme of biblical accounts adapted for children’s literary theology, Hesba Stretton’s first children’s narrative, is based on her own childhood experiences of village life located near her uncle’s colliery at Church Stretton, and titled Fern’s Hollow (1864). In a similar vein to Wilberforce’s Agathos, she also depicts the theme of the importance of obedience to God, steadfast courage in the face of adversity and the importance of forgiveness, through the story of a young boy called Stephen Fern. He works in a coal mine in the Shropshire Hills to support his family of two sisters, a dying father, and an elderly grandfather who is a former convict. Miss Anne, the pious local teacher, establishes a Sunday School for Stephen and his friends in the house of her cruel guardian and uncle. As a result, Stephen suffers brutally for his faith but forgives those who persecute him; as Bratton noted, Stephens’s story of suffering is an updated domesticated version of his biblical namesake who was martyred for his faith.49 Her sequel Enoch Roden’s Training (1865) draws again on her family background and local knowledge of the printing and bookselling trade which was her Evangelical father’s occupation as well as being a Postmaster and Methodist lay preacher. She repeats a similar pattern drawing upon biblical names Enoch, the protagonist with a missionary vocation, and Titus his wayward brother. Through severe trials, Enoch learns much about sound business principles, a life of sacrifice, and trusting God. As with all biblical precepts there is a salutary lesson in life to learn.

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The advancement of Christian moral codes via the reimagining and retelling of various Bible stories often prompted more controversial, progressive ideas such as challenging the gender discriminatory norms of the day. The Baptist children’s author Esther Hewlett Copley (1786–1851) published many religious books and tracts for children, including introductions to certain aspects of the Bible. In Scripture Natural History for Youth (1828), Scripture History for Youth (1829), and Scripture Biography (1835), she wrote about the lives of biblical characters and used them as examples to illustrate how to manage various moral dilemmas that children might encounter in everyday life. Copley was born into a wealthy London family of French Huguenot descent. Her first husband, Rev James Hewlett, was curate of the Evangelical parish of St Aldates, Oxford and chaplain at Magdalen and New College; they had three sons and two daughters. After Hewlett’s early death, she married William Copley in 1827, a Baptist minister who was ten years her junior. Meanwhile, Esther had become a keen evangelist, teaching in Sunday and day schools, visiting the poor and preaching in the surrounding Oxford villages, which became her mission field. Her most well-known work, titled A History of Slavery and its Abolition (1836), exceeded 500 pages and traced the history of slavery from the biblical period to the current day. Copley had no qualms in declaring that the origins of slavery were derived from ‘human depravity’, locating herself within the emergent discourse of the British abolitionist movement, which, as Clare Midgley has shown, was heavily populated with Evangelical and Quaker women.50 However, Copley’s personal life turned to tragedy when her husband resorted to alcoholism. In her courageous attempt to support him both financially and practically in his ordained ministry, she wrote his sermons, assisted him at Sunday services, and gave pastoral assistance to the congregation, yet despite her highly commendable loyalty, he eventually abandoned her. Although women were associated with a domestic, private, familial role and men with the public world of work, economics, and politics,51 Copley viewed men and women very much as equals. For example, in Scripture History for Youth, in the Genesis narrative, she did not treat Eve as inferior to Adam but very much as his intelligent co-worker and companion. Indeed, she takes up almost all of the second chapter in defending her position expounding her theology of women.52 ‘She [Eve] was taken (observes Mr. Henry) not from the head, to rule; neither was she taken from the feet, to be trodden upon; she was taken from the side, to be equal with man, from under his arm, to be protected; and from near his heart, to be loved by him.’53 Having dedicated a chapter to the

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creation of man and woman and their coequality, Copley moves onto the subject of the Sabbath as a Holy day of rest, which was another controversial Evangelical theme discussed vigorously throughout the nineteenth century.

The Bible and Sabbatarianism in Children’s Literature Copley’s references to the Sabbath echoed the intensification of debates over maintaining the sanctity of Sunday observance during the mid-­ Victorian decades; many Evangelicals led the attacks on Sunday work and amusements such as train travel, museums, brass bands, drinking, and reading newspapers. The formation of the Lord’s Day Observance Society in 1831 gave organisational strength to a diverse series of campaigns against Sunday excursions.54 Sabbatarianism meant that only those activities directed towards the greater glory of God should be conducted on Sundays, that is, attending Church for prayer and worship, acts of charity and Bible reading. Many Evangelical children’s authors encouraged their readers to adhere to the fourth commandment,55 ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’ Terrifying tales and numerous warnings of dire or even fatal consequences awaited those who profaned the Sabbath by engaging in work or enjoying leisure pursuits. In Hannah More’s Black Giles the Poacher (1800), two young boys drown as a result of taking out a pleasure boat on the Lord’s Day.56 Thus the warnings not only of authors but of parents and guardians to keep the Sabbath established what was for many children and adults the dreariest day of the week. In Sherwood’s novel, The Fairchild Family, Sunday is portrayed as a wholesome, tranquil, family-based day of rest, in sharp contrast with the frantic activity of Saturday, which was spent washing, cooking, and cleaning in preparation for Sunday observance. On the Sabbath, the Fairchild children walk, never run to church, and after receiving Sunday School instruction, walk silently and sedately back home contemplating the lesson, before sitting down in silence to a cold lunch that had been prepared the previous day. Their afternoons were spent either returning to church for more services or in prayers at home, followed by hymn-singing and special Sunday Bible readings. As a devout Evangelical, Sherwood regarded such a day spent under the biblical injunction of the fourth commandment as one well spent, and so she exhorted her young readers: ‘Now of all the days in the week Sunday was the day the children loved best; for on this

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day there was no worldly business no care about money, or clothes, or cooking dinner; no work to be done but God’s work, the sweetest of all works, the work which angels delight to do.’57 Rowland Hill was also noted for his authoritarian views on the importance of keeping the Sabbath as a means to salvation for body and soul: ‘Why is it that poor children do not look upon it as a great mercy, that they are relieved from hard labour on a Sabbath day, that they may learn to read their Bibles, and be taught thereby the Lord’s great compassion in saving vile sinners, through Jesus Christ.’58 Sabbatarianism also formed the central theme of Charlotte Maria Tucker’s lengthy 260-page novel, The Children’s Tabernacle or Hand-­ Work and Heart-Work (1871). Tucker published under the pseudonym of ALOE (an acronym of A Lady of England). Although unmarried and childless, she taught her brother’s three children and so she honed her storytelling skills to become a highly imaginative children’s author. Tucker was born into a very wealthy family; her father was chairman of the East India Company, thus enabling her to donate much of her earnings to charity. As she explained to her publisher in 1851: ‘I ask for no earthly remuneration; my position in life renders me independent of any exertions of my own; I pray but for God’s blessing upon my attempts to instruct His lambs in the things which concern their everlasting welfare.’59 Much of ALOE’s writing took the form of volumes of reworked and simplified Bible stories; for example, Precepts in Practice (1858), which contained over 200 pages of stories illustrating the Book of Proverbs and the lessons to be gleaned from them. In addition, she wrote Tales Illustrative of the Parables (1861), which explained Christ’s teachings in easy language for children and in titles such as Exiles in Babylon (1864), The Triumph Over Midian (1866), and Rescued from Egypt (1871), she also rewrote well-­ known Old Testament stories. In The Children’s Tabernacle or Hand-Work and Heart-Work,60 her detailed description of Solomon’s Temple was presented through the exploits of the appropriately named Temple family. Mrs Temple suggests to her children, who are bored while convalescing from whooping cough, that they put their time to more creative use by constructing a Hebrew Tabernacle as a Christmas present for the local children at a Ragged School run by their aunt. Although an unusual choice of Christmas activity compared with the customary New Testament nativity scene, ALOE’s suggestion revealed her preoccupation with Old Testament typology and the life of Christ, which was an important feature of nineteenth-century Christian

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writing.61 As she wrote in the preface, ‘[t]he importance of reading Old Testament types in the light thrown on them by the Gospel, cannot, indeed, be overrated, especially in these perilous times.’62 The perilous times of course referred to the current controversies concerning biblical criticism which developed into highly complex theological debates. Elizabeth Jay has suggested that novelists found it easier to focus on ‘the way in which Evangelicals “used” the Bible rather than dealing with the thorny topic of Biblical inspiration’,63 a subject best left to the men of letters and the ordained. As well as encouraging the children to explore types of Christ throughout the Old Testament, The Children’s Tabernacle had at its core the holiness of the Sabbath. This is told through the activities of the protagonist, Dora, who, along with her brother and sisters, must wait until Monday to begin the exciting project of building the Tabernacle model. She sits impatiently through her mother’s Sunday Bible exposition of types while at the forefront of her mind was her desire to begin embroidering the curtains for the Tabernacle, except that it was Sunday and work was forbidden. ALOE describes Dora’s psychological and spiritual turmoil as she assesses what exactly might constitute ‘work’ compared to the more acceptable ‘charitable deeds’. After all, Dora’s mother had dressed the scalded arm of their cook and sewed the bandage into place on a Sunday. That was an act of mercy that involved sewing. Thus, Dora rationalises, surely sewing the curtains for the Ragged School Tabernacle was not so different? After all, the Tabernacle was a holy thing and a right and proper subject to engage with on a Sunday. After a day of mental torment, Dora succumbs, threads her needle, and begins to sew. Later, she is further compelled to lie to her mother by hiding her work and feigning prayer when her mother returned from Church that evening. ALOE structured the narrative such that her young readers were in absolutely no doubt as to the self-deception and sinful course of action into which Dora had embroiled herself. ‘Dora was very unhappy she had broken the holy rest of the Lord’s Day… she had disobeyed what she knew to be the wishes of her mother, and then to hide such disobedience had uttered a lie to deceive her! She had displeased a holy God, whose eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good.’64 Several weeks later, at Christmas, Dora eventually confesses to her godmother, Miss Clare; she repents and only then finds peace of mind again. The tale ends with the Temple family being joined by the excited Ragged School children marvelling at the model Tabernacle and a sermon by Miss Clare from the Second Epistle to The

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Corinthians comparing the temporary nature of the constructed earthly Tabernacle and the everlasting Tabernacle that is the human body: ‘We know that if that earthly house of this Tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’65 ALOE is credited with producing 150 titles for children in addition to many more tales published in periodicals; her books that promoted the Evangelical tenet of Sabbatarianism were given away in countless numbers as Sunday School prizes.66 She died in Amritsar in India, where she had relocated at the age of fifty-four in 1876, having taught herself Hindustani as a self-supporting zenana missionary in Punjab.67 She later moved to Batala and became a respected member of the community. She was buried in Batala without a coffin, at a cost not exceeding five rupees, in accordance with her will. As previously mentioned in Chap. 4, she bequeathed an endowment to the Batala school, later renamed in her honour. Evangelicals like Sherwood and ALOE were not alone in their vigorous defence of the Sabbath. High Church children’s authors such as Harriett Mozley and Elizabeth Sewell also introduced similar themes into their novels. In Laneton Parsonage: A tale for children on the practical use of a portion of the church catechism (1844–1846), Sewell published a trilogy on the spiritual battles of three ten-year-old schoolgirls, which formed the central focus. In Part One, the Reverend and Mrs Clifford, who are the epitome of exemplary Christian parents, educate their twin daughters Madeleine and Ruth at home. Likewise, Lady Catherine Hyde, who has adopted an orphan, Alice, gives educational and theological instruction to her charge. In Part Two, the twins are sent to Mrs Carter’s boarding school in London, with Lady Catherine dispatching Alice to the same school where they befriend Janet. In a section concerning the importance of keeping the Sabbath, Sewell aligns breaking the fourth commandment with the sins of drinking and gambling through the voice of Mrs Carter: ‘“If our Saviour had not risen from the dead, neither should we have had any hope of doing so. But as the day is especially our Saviour’s Day, as it is often called ‘the Lord’s Day,’ so must it especially be given to Him … . You know what it is to keep a birthday. The person whose birthday it is, is the one object, the great person of the day. We are constantly thinking what he will like; how we can please him: his wishes are consulted, and if we forget for a little while, we are always meeting with something to remind us of him. Now, our feeling on a Sunday should be of the same kind. Do you think it is?” There was silence.’68 Throughout the narratives, all three girls undergo many trials and testings of their Christian faith,

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providing Sewell with the opportunities to engage in biblical and theological exposition for her readers. In Mozley’s, The Fairy Bower (1841), the Sabbath features once again except it is parodied through the Evangelical Duff family, who are obviously modelled on the Clapham Sect. They have a strict governess Miss Newmarsh, who disallows any dancing or worldly games for the children after six o’clock on a Saturday evening in order to prepare for Sunday.69 Although the Duff children were allowed to play Bible riddles and forfeits using Bible verses as a means to sound biblical leisure pursuits.

Bible Play in Children’s Literature Vignettes, for example, Hannah More’s Sacred Dramas: Chiefly Intended for Young Persons (1782), Maria Edgeworth’s Little Plays for Young People (1814), and Mark Anthony Meilan’s Holy Writ Familiarised to Juvenille Conceptions (1791) were plays intended for children to re-enact. Demers notes that allegorical journeys, probably along the lines of Pilgrim’s Progress, designed especially for children also continued to flourish well into the nineteenth century and even inspired a board game, The Mansion of Bliss (1810). Apparently, on reaching the end of their playful journey, the winner was congratulated with a verse: Who enters the Mansion of Bliss, Will have cause to rejoice at his claim; So well has he travelled thro’ life, He has happily ended his game.70

The Evangelical and Quaker Lucy Barton (1808–1898), whose father was the poet Bernard Barton, also wrote for children in a more playful manner, reworking Scripture narratives into rhyme as well as a series of literary letters addressed to children. Her titles included: Bible Letters For Children (1831), The Gospel History Of Our Lord And Saviour Jesus Christ (1837), The Life Of Christ A Gospel History For The Use Of Children (1857), Natural History Of The Holy Land At Other Places Mentioned In The Bible (1856). In Bible Letters For Children, Barton presented an overview of well-known biblical stories using rhyme as a mnemonic device.71 Apart from Bible narratives put to verse, the remainder of Barton’s text takes the form of ‘epistles’ outlining popular Bible stories and offering a devotional example for children to contemplate. Her writing style is gentle and personable, addressing her readers as ‘Dear Children’ and signing off with ‘yours affectionately’. The book finishes with an invitation to the

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children to repent, an admonition to follow in the footsteps of the Lord and a key Bible verse: ‘Let it be known by your kindness and gentleness to all around you, by your love of truth, and hatred of a lie, by your industry in all your duties, and your cheerful obedience to your parents and teachers; that it is your delight to walk in the ways of the Lord, and to follow the commandments of him who hath said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”’ 72 Finally, on the subject of Bible amusement, an interesting tale for children, Adventures of a Family Bible Related by Itself, is told by a talking Bible, written by the Scottish author, teacher, and priest William Fordyce Mavor (1758–1837).73 The talking Bible relates its historical origins from King James 1 and commentates on its various journeys as it passes through the hands and households of different owners from diverse religious contexts. Some read it and some to its dismay never open its silver clasp and it feels neglected. However, it finds itself in the hands of a Puritan who overuses it and never lets it sleep, it complains that he is violent and thumps it on the pulpit. ‘He, indeed, did not give me leave to sleep: I was constantly on his table; and being a preacher he took me every Sunday up into the pulpit with him, and beat me violently against the cushion. At this period, I certainly received a great share of external homage, but from some things I observed in private, I had reason to conclude that my advice was much more talked of than valued.’74 The Bible falls into the hands of a theologian who, to the Bible’s distress makes copious annotations in its margins. ‘None of those who had hitherto used me had thought of soiling me; but I was now filled with marginal notes and explanations … those expressions which the most ignorant might have understood were lost in a cloud of erudition and tortured into meanings which common sense would never have conceived.’ Upon the theologian’s death, the Bible eventually is deposited in the College Library ‘in a fine lattice case amongst my brethren and seldom opened’.75 It is an interesting tale and one that was sure to fascinate its young readers. I now turn to ways in which the Bible’s infallibility was defended by Evangelical authors of children’s literature.

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In Defence of the Bible: The Evangelical Apologists The Evangelical emphasis on the importance and authority, if not the infallibility, of the Bible was also a product of the controversies concerning principal doctrines resulting from various advances in science and historical criticism. Geological discoveries emerging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were already questioning the accuracy of the Creation accounts in Genesis. Fossil records demonstrated that the earth was millions, not thousands of years old. However, the faith of many children’s authors would not be shaken. Maria Hack (1777–1844) who was a former Quaker but turned to Anglicanism because of her personal convictions over the primacy of scripture, is particularly fascinating for her theological explanation of the doctrine of creation for children via her popular fictional tale Harry Beaufoy, or The Pupil of Nature (1821). 76 Her text was based on William Paley’s Evidences of Christianity (1794), suitably simplified for young readers. Hack upheld the doctrine of natural theology through fictional conversations between the protagonist Harry and his parents, who encouraged him to use reason by way of Paley’s premise of ‘the watch and watchmaker’, charting the evidence from creation to that of a benevolent creator God. Hack’s sequel Familiar Illustrations of the Principal Evidences and Design of Christianity (1824) demonstrated Evangelicalism’s ever-increasing influence on her theological convictions. Having made a controversial move from the Society of Friends to the Anglican Church, she wrote a tract titled The Christian Ordinances and the Lord’s Supper, which underscored her belief in the absolute authority of Scripture and the importance of the sacraments. In 1830, Charles Lyell’s (1797–1875) Principles of Geology argued that the earth was formed through natural causes such as sedimentation and erosion rather than an instantaneous creation or a universal flood. Such challenges to biblical accuracy and authority were deeply felt by many influential men and women of the period. Within what remained a predominantly Christian culture, individuals shed their faith with some fear and trepidation; in his work, Nemesis of Faith (1849), J. A. Froude, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, illustrates well the trauma associated with the crisis of faith experienced by a mid-Victorian generation of intellectuals. In 1851, the art critic John Ruskin, who was raised as an Evangelical Anglican, wrote to Henry Acland: ‘You speak of the Flimsiness of your own faith. Mine, which was never strong, is being beaten into mere gold leaf, and flutters in weak rags from the letter of its old forms;

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but the only letters it can hold by at all are the old Evangelical formulae. If only the geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, nut those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.’77 However, in 1859, Charles Darwin’s ground-breaking work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, presented an unassailable contradiction of biblical truth and the accuracy of the Genesis narrative was called into question. In the famous exchange between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and the biologist T. H. Huxley in Oxford, on 30 June 1860 at the British Association for the Advance of Science, Wilberforce was invariably caricatured as an obscurantist cleric. 78 In fact, as scholars have more recently pointed out, it was Wilberforce, not Huxley, that won the day in the first instance, with Darwin himself describing Wilberforce’s written review of On the Origin of Species as ‘uncommonly clever’ and a telling case against some of his more speculative points.79 The following discussion focuses on two female children’s authors Margaret Gatty (1809–1873) and Elizabeth Rundle Charles (1828–1896), and seeks to illustrate that Evangelicals were more than capable of responding in relatively nuanced ways to the various challenges mounted against biblical inerrancy and authority during the mid-nineteenth century, while still maintaining a total commitment to the Bible’s inspirational status. Margaret Gatty was the daughter of the clergyman scholar and linguist, Rev Alexander Scott, who was also one-time chaplain to Horatio Nelson. Gatty’s mother Mary died when she was very young, and she and her sister Horatia experienced a solitary childhood. They educated themselves in their father’s extensive library, learning several languages, translating German and Italian poetry, and undertaking a range of artistic and literary pursuits. Margaret married the local curate, Alfred Gatty in 1839, and relocated with him to the parish of Ecclesfield, near Sheffield, remaining there for the rest of their lives. Gatty’s biographer, Christobel Maxwell, notes that one cannot help but be impressed by the imposing stained glass window unveiled in Ecclesfield Church in memory of the author of Parables from Nature in 1874 just a year after her death.80 The Gatty’s brought up eight children, which took its toll on Margaret’s health and after suffering a breakdown, she moved to Hastings to recuperate. While in Hastings, she took up what was to become her lifelong passion, phycology—the study of seaweeds. She became an accomplished marine botanist and networked closely through letters and meetings with W. H. Harvey, Professor of Botany of the Royal Dublin Society and George Johnston,

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the physician and naturalist. However, Gatty’s appreciation of the natural world was finely balanced with the tenets of her Evangelical faith. Maxwell noted that after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Gatty became particularly agitated, especially when she suspected her friends of leanings towards Darwinism. She also ‘relocated Darwin’s autograph … in her collection in juxtaposition with that of Voltaire and Tom Paine, in her Chamber of Horrors!’81 Gatty held strict religious views against High Church Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism. She considered Pusey’s sermons as ‘semi-papistical’ and in her diary in 1845 recorded: ‘We have lately borrowed a book that is making a noise now, Ward’s Ideal of a Christian Church in which he speaks of the burning hatred he feels towards that most miserable event, the English Reformation. I need not add the book is full of the Blessed Virgin, the duties of Penance, Confession, etc., and that man is an English clergyman! A great many people, however, are getting frightened now they see the results of Puseyism, and how it nearly borders on Popery. I hope earnestly there will be a reform among the bishops, for there it is terribly wanted.’82 On a visit to Leamington in 1843, Gatty visited a Roman Catholic chapel, describing the service as ‘really as great nonsense as you can see in a Playhouse, only wicked into the bargain.’83 And several years later, on discovering that her only sister Horatia had converted to Rome, would only tolerate her in her own home on the condition that the subject was not broached. ‘I am such a strong Protestant that even my dear Husband feared lest I should be unable to view this matter from a reasonable point.’ As her biographer Maxwell notes, it was at this time a parrot appeared in the Gatty’s vicarage, which Margaret taught to say ‘No Popery!’84 By the early 1850s, Gatty had published several children’s stories, her publisher George Bell, who at her request, paid her in kind with books on marine botany. Similarly, as with many children’s authors, Gatty aligned her allegorical tales in the style of biblical parables. Her most popular work was the five volumes of Parables from Nature, produced between 1855 and 1871, which remained in print even through most of the twentieth century. In these parables, she used natural history to teach religious themes and illustrated the complementary relationship between natural theology and science. Indeed, her motivation for writing children’s books was to educate her young readers in the Christian faith through the wonders of creation, promoting an argument for natural theology and the existence of God. Gatty justified her theological argument by referring to

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the Religio Medici, in which the seventeenth-century philosopher and physician Sir Thomas Browne stated, ‘There are two books from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of His servant, Nature.’85 The notion of science as ‘the handmaid of theology’, demonstrated that the world had been created by an all-powerful and loving God and was the basis of William Paley’s system of natural theology. In Parables From Nature, Gatty’s own study of natural theology, in particular marine botany, embodied an interestingly distinctive fusion of Christian apologetics with science and storytelling. As a self-appointed female guardian of Evangelical faith, she cleverly utilised the voices of talking animals and the wonders of nature to convey the biblical message to children about God’s divine plan of creation and salvation. ‘May the ‘Lesson of Faith’ and the ‘Lesson of Hope’ each work its appointed end, and may they combine to enforce on the mind of youth the value of that still more excellent gift of charity, which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things!’86 Tessa Cosslett has contended that female writers such as Gatty often used children’s literature as a means to convey their own public and private views and that Gatty utilised her role as a respected female scientist to preach her strong Christian views on natural theology to children.87 Gatty also promoted the more acceptable conventional divisions of home and work, where men participated in the public, competitive sphere of work, and women remained guardians of the hearth and home, ‘[t]he woman fulfils the role of conscience-keeper for the man’.88 To make her stories appealing to children, Gatty cleverly deployed the voices of animals to aid her polemic on the hierarchal paradigm of nature: ‘Animals under man— servants under masters—children under parents—wives under husbands— men under authorities—nations under rulers—all under God.’89 In 1857, a mutual friend wrote to Gatty with a message from Tennyson, conveying how much he admired one of her parables, The Unknown Land, it tells of a mother sedge warbler who theologises about an apocalyptic message of hope to her offspring. After the death of his great Cambridge friend Arthur Hallam in 1833, Tennyson’s grief was such that he began to doubt his own personal faith in God and in 1850, the year he was made poet laureate, finally published In Memoriam, one of the most famous and finest treatments of universal human themes such as despair, doubt, hope, and faith. In Memoriam mirrored its time perfectly, reflecting Tennyson’s anxiety at a new scientific vision of humanity and the brutality and indifference of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’.90 Gatty’s natural theology was in

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many ways an attempt to stem the spread of this type of intellectual doubt that threatened orthodox Christianity. She responded promptly to Tennyson’s message by dispatching a volume of her parables to him, and a friendship developed between the Gatty and Tennyson families. Alfred Gatty, Margaret’s husband, eventually wrote and lectured on Tennyson’s poetry, and several of her parables were prefaced by epigraphs from Tennyson himself. Gatty wrote many religious works for children based on the Bible, including Moral Tales: Proverbs Illustrated (1857), Legendary Tales (1858), and The Human Face Divine (1860) and as an accomplished artist, drew many of her own illustrations. Gatty’s daughter, Juliana Horatia Ewing, eventually overshadowed her mother’s writing career and became the prototype for the storyteller in Aunt Judy’s Tales (1859) and Aunt Judy’s Letters (1862). These narratives were based on Gatty’s childhood, published by Bell as Aunt Judy’s Magazine under her editorship. Suzanne Le-May Sheffield notes that unlike many Evangelical writers of the period, only two of Gatty’s works outside of Parables of Nature broach the subject of childhood death, and she suggests that this perhaps was because Gatty never fully recovered from the deaths of her own children.91 She battled with ill-health for most of her life, thought to have been a form of undiagnosed multiple sclerosis, but through dictation managed to continue writing until her death in 1873. Elizabeth Rundle Charles (1828–1896), was yet another female children’s author who tackled the current crisis of faith in her novels. She was the only child of John Rundle, MP for Tavistock, and his wife, Barbara. Charles was educated at home, she learned Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, geometry, and music and began her writing career at an early age. Although she was greatly impressed with Tractarianism in her youth and even considered joining the Catholic Church, according to Robert Lee Wolff, ‘[t]he intervention of a Swiss Protestant pastor saved her for the Evangelical wing of the Church of England’.92 Over fifty works are accredited to her name and were admired by Tennyson and the historian J. A. Froude who remarked that Mrs Charles’s writings for children had traces of genius in them.93 Charles’s diverse and influential network of friends and associates ranged from the High Church Tractarian Edward Pusey, the Dean of Westminster Arthur Stanley, Benjamin Jowett (Master of Balliol College Oxford), Archbishop Archibald Tait, Charles Kingsley, and the Salvationist, William Booth. As an avid historian, Charles was one of the most cultured

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and erudite authors of Evangelical children’s fiction and non-fiction. One of her most celebrated works was The History of the Schönberg Cotta Family (1862), set in sixteenth-century Germany, where Martin Luther’s vocation as a religious reformer is recounted through the eyes of his printer’s children. The text was translated into German, French, Arabic, and Indian dialects and enjoyed success in both England and America. Elizabeth and her husband Andrew Paton Charles, the co-owner of a soap factory, remained childless, and Charles occupied herself with philanthropic work amongst the poor employees of her husband’s factory and also taught in the Servants’ School in Great Ormond Street.94 Andrew Charles died in 1868, but Elizabeth managed to live on the royalties earned from her writing while remaining an active philanthropist as befitted her Evangelical convictions of serving the poor, sick and needy based on her strong biblical principles.95 In one of her best-selling novels, The Bertram Family (1876), Charles tackled several current biblical and doctrinal controversies of the period, including the authority of Scripture, the doctrine of the atonement, and eschatology. Wolff has commented on her presentation and writing style: ‘Mrs Charles is as surely Evangelical as Miss Yonge is Tractarian. But Mrs Charles, paradoxically for an Evangelical, often so intransigent, is far gentler: ‘She concedes to the opposition goodwill, even a glimpse of the truth, and she does not—as Miss Yonge does—condemn those of her characters who do not follow her straight and narrow path to severe chastisement.’96 The protagonist in The Bertram Family is Mrs Leigh, the wife of a dying priest the Rev Maurice Leigh, incumbent of a riverside slum parish. Rev Leigh sought daily to combat the evils of their poverty-stricken surroundings but eventually succumbed to cholera. His death initiated a crisis of faith in their son Eustace, and it is the subsequent exchanges between mother and son that function as a literary device for Evangelical apologetics. Through Mrs Leigh, Charles surreptitiously challenges the views of her friend Jowett, renowned for his essay ‘On the Interpretation of Scripture’ in the (in)famous work Essays and Reviews (1860), which was a mid-Victorian clerical attempt to popularise the results of biblical criticism. Jowett depicted the Bible not as the eternal literal Word of God but as the historically situated ‘voice of the congregation’, both fallible and mutable and thus to be read like any other book.97 Mrs Leigh’s influence on her son through Bible study and gentle persuasion brings Eustace back to his Evangelical faith and the Word of God; he eventually enters ordained ministry and follows in the footsteps of his father. As Wolff observes:

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‘Instead of allowing the recommended study of the Bible to lead Eustace to Broad Church latitudinarianism or—worse—to doubt, she [Mrs Charles] has it bring him back to faith and Evangelicalism … [she] defends the Bible stoutly against “vague crumbling criticism” against the feeling that “between the divine words and our feeble minds we need some softening or interpretative medium.” “Do not, she pleads, declare (like Catholics and Tractarians) that the Church alone can interpret the Bible, or declare (like Latitudinarians) that the book is ‘dry and ancient’. No, the Bible itself has the answer to both these depreciations.”’98

Concluding Reflections As this chapter has shown, the Bible was used by Evangelical authors in children’s literature in a diversity of ways, not only to convey conservative ideas of faith and piety, Sabbatarianism or daily spiritual guidance, but also to engage directly with some of the more controversial debates of the day. The primacy of biblical authority was used as a defence mechanism for teaching children about Evangelical faith, whether through allegory, symbolism, historical tales, or popular scientific accounts of the goodness of God’s natural creation. Despite the shockwaves resonating throughout the period resulting from radical scientific ideas of geology and evolutionary theory, and of the sophisticated new approaches of biblical and historical criticism, Evangelical authors held fast to the revelatory and inspired status of ‘God’s Word’ as they attempted to make the Bible accessible and intelligible to children. In the early years, the Evangelical insistence upon Bible teaching alone as the mainstay of education developed into a form of virtual bibliolatry.99 This single-minded focus on biblical teaching has meant that Sunday Schools have been eschewed by historians of the period as religiously narrow and restrictive with little broader impact on the surrounding culture.100 Sunday Schools may well have been partially responsible for their own demise due to the insularity and inflexibility of their Evangelical beliefs, but the movement was undoubtedly a significant force in moulding the lives of working and middle-class children, as well as the inspiration and facilitator for many adult authors of children’s Christian literature. By the end of the century, the singular emphasis on the Bible as the only example of moral instruction was in decline. In the early 1800s, for example, only Bibles were given out to children as their reward for attendance at Sunday School and day schools. In contrast, by mid-century, they were substituted with Sunday School Reward books that included

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fiction, prayer books, hymn books, lives of saints and heroes of the Church; by the end of the century, prizes also included outings by train or canal, as well as more social events such as anniversary teas, sports events, and field days. While such earthly rewards may have been attractive to children who regularly attended Sunday School for various reasons, it was the Evangelical mission to ensure they attained their spiritual reward in heaven and it is the subject of eschatology and children’s literature I explore in the final chapter.

Notes 1. Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyam, 1989). p. 12. 2. Larsen, Timothy. A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford; New York: OUP Oxford, 2011). p. 1. 3. Bebbington (1989, p. 13). 4. Ibid. 5. Larsen (2011, p. 1). 6. Prochaska, F. K. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford University Press, 1980). p. 16. 7. Storr. Vernon F. The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green, 1913). p. 70. 8. The Book of Proverbs 13 v 24. 9. Historians Claudia Nelson, John Tosh, and Julie Marie-Strange observe the way in which this mandate doubtless led to tragic cases of child abuse. See Nelson, Claudia. Invisible Men: Fatherhood in Victorian Periodicals, 1850–1910 (University of Georgia Press, 2010). p.  62. Strange, JulieMarie. Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2015). p. 184. Tosh, John. A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1999). p. 92. 10. Gillian Avery, Childhood’s Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children’s Fiction, 1770–1950 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975). p.  56. See also Harris, H.  J. Robert Raikes The Man and His Work, Biographical Notes Collected By Josiah Harris (London: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1899). 11. Quinlan, Maurice. Victorian Prelude, a History of English Manners, 1700–1830 (Hamden CT.: Archon Books, 1965). p. 160. 12. Spurgeon, Charles. Come Ye Children: A Book for Parents and Teachers on the Christian Training of Children (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1897, 1989). p. 104. ‘We love to see persons of some standing in society

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take an interest in Sabbath-schools. … [V]ery often, the wealthier members of the church stand aside as if the teaching of the poor were not (as indeed it is) the special business of the rich. In the United States, we have heard of Presidents, of Judges, Members of Congress, and persons in the highest positions, not condescending, for I scorn to use such a term, but honouring themselves by teaching little children in Sabbath-schools.’ 13. Cliff, Philip. The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England, 1780–1980 (Redhill Surrey: National Christian Education Council, 1986). p. 129. 14. For all of these statistics see ibid., p. 132. 15. Styler, Rebecca. Literary Theology by Women Writers of The Nineteenth Century, (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2010). p.  8. See also Kavanagh, Julia. Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity (London: Smith, Elder & Sons, 1852), p. 2. 16. Rendall, Jane. The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States 1780–1860 (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 73. 17. Patmore, C. The Angel in the House (London: Macmillan & Co., 1863). 18. See article by Buzwell, Greg. https://www.bl.uk/womens-­rights/articles/women-­authors-­and-­anonymity accessed 21/07/21 19. See ibid., Charlotte wrote: ‘Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’—we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.’ 20. For gendered attacks on female teachers, see Hilton, Mary. Women and the Shaping of the Nations Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750–1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). p. 9 21. Myers, Mitzi. ‘Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children’s Books’, Children’s Literature Vol. 14 (New Haven, 1986). 35. 22. Buchan, William. Advice to Mothers on the Subject of Their Own Health (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1811). p. 3. 23. Myers, ibid., p. 33. 24. Myers, ibid., p. 54. 25. See Frederick Rankin MacFadden Jr., on ‘Favell Lee Mortimer’ in Khorana, Meena. Ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale, 1996). p. 217.

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26. Mortimer, Favell Lee. The Peep of Day: Or A Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind Is Capable of Receiving (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1835). 27. See Frederick Rankin MacFadden Jr., on ‘Favell Lee Mortimer’ in Khorana, Meena. Ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale, 1996). p. 218. 28. Ibid., p. 219. 29. Mortimer, Favell Lee. Here a Little and There a Little, Or Scripture Facts (New York: Charles Scribner, 1853). p. 16. 30. Ibid., p. 195. ‘The Son of God was in such great sorrow and trouble that the blood came through his skin while he prayed and fell on the ground in great drops.’ 31. Ibid., p. 206. ‘If he [Judas] had gone and sincerely prayed for forgiveness, God would have forgiven him; for He pardons all who are really sorry for their sins. But Judas did not pray. He felt very unhappy so he thought he would kill himself. It is very wicked for a man to kill himself. Judas went into a field and hanged himself up in some high place; and while he was hanging, he fell down, and his body burst open, and all his bowels came out upon the ground. It must have been a dreadful sight. And what became of the soul of Judas? He went to his father the devil, to be tormented in hell forever and ever. It would have been good for Judas if he had never been born. Had his parents known when he was a child what a wicked man he would have grown up, oh how sorry they would have been! I hope your parents will never be sorry that you were born.’ 32. See Muir, Percy, pp. 123–124. 33. Shaw, Catharine. Out in the Storm; Or Little Messengers (New York: Carter, 1883). 34. Sherwood, Mary Martha, The Flowers of the Forest (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1830). p. 80. 35. The Gospel of Matthew Chapter 18 v 4. See also Avery, Gillian, 1975, p. 100. 36. Born into a Quaker family, Galton eventually joined the Moravian Church in 1818. Her pseudonym was Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck and she wrote for anti-slavery campaigns and included in her circle of associated was a network of eminent names such as James Watt, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Thomas day, Joseph Priestly, Erasmus Darwin, Anna Barbauld and Mary Martha Butt (later Sherwood). 37. Cameron, Lucy. The Two Lambs. An Allegorical History (London: Houlston and Sons, 1830). 38. See Wood, Naomi J. ‘Lucy Lyttleton Cameron’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, p. 50. 39. Cameron calculated in her diary ‘A plan has occurred to me, for enabling me to write half-an-hour a day:—300 half hours make 150 hours. In that time, I may write 1800 pages, equal at least to about 40 tracts.’ Ibid., p. 54. 40. Ibid., p. 54.

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41. See Charlotte Elizabeth, The Simple Flower and Other Tales (New York: Published by John S. Taylor & Co., 1842). 42. Avery (1975, p. 112). 43. Wilberforce, Samuel. Agathos, The Rocky Island, and Other Sunday Stories (London: Seeley and Co., 1905). 44. See Tolley, Christopher. Domestic Biography: The Legacy of Evangelicalism in Four Nineteenth-Century Families. Oxford University Press, 1997. 45. Ibid., p. ix. 46. Ibid., p. 13. 47. Ibid., p. 14. 48. Tolley, Christopher. Domestic Biography: The Legacy of Evangelicalism in Four Nineteenth-Century Families (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. pp. 24–25). 49. Bratton, J. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London; Totowa NJ: Croom Helm; Barnes & Noble, 1981). p. 82. 50. Midgley, Clare. Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (London; New York: Routledge, 1992). 51. Davidoff, Leonore. and Hall, Catherine. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 52. Copley, Esther. Scripture History for Youth (London: H. Fisher, Son & P. Jackson, 1829). pp. 16–20. 53. Ibid., p. 19. 54. Wigley, John. The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Sunday (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980). 55. See The Book of Exodus Chapter 20 v 8–11. 56. Avery (1975, p. 110). 57. Sherwood, Mary Martha. The History of the Fairchild Family, Or the Child’s Manual: Being a Collection of Stories Calculated to Shew the Importance and Effects of a Religious Education (London: Printed for J.  Hatchard … and sold by F.  Houlston and Son, Wellington, 1818). p. 113. 58. Hill, Rowland. Instructions for Children; Or A Token of Love for the Rising Generation (1831). p. 13. 59. Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965). p. 101. 60. ALOE, The Children’s Tabernacle, Or Hand Work and Heart-Work (New York: Carter, 1875). 61. Avery (1965. p. 102). 62. ALOE (1875). See Preface.

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63. Jay, Elizabeth. The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth Century Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). p. 69. 64. ALOE (1875, p. 83). 65. ALOE, p. 267. Scripture reference is taken from 2 Corinthians verse 1. 66. Cutt, Margaret Nancy.1979, p. 83. 67. Kent, Eliza F. Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). p.  144. Zenana missions were female missionaries who trained as doctors, nurses, and teachers allowed to visit the zenanas where they provided women with health care and also to evangelise them in their own homes. 68. Sewell, Elizabeth Missing. Laneton Parsonage (London Longmans, Brown, Green, 1846). p. 223. 69. Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. The Worlds of Victorian Fiction (Cambridge; Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975). p. 303. 70. Demers, Patricia. 1993, p. 115. 71. Barton, Lucy. Bible Letters for Children (London: John Souter, 1831). p. x. 72. Ibid., p. 151. 73. Mavor, William Fordyce. The Juvenile Olio or Youth’s Miscellany (London: E. Newberry, 1798). 74. Mavor. p. 25. 75. Mavor. p. 28. 76. Hack, Maria. Harry Beaufoy, Or, The Pupil of Nature (London: Harvey and Darton, 1821). 77. Alexander, Edward. Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and the Modern Temper (Ohio State University Press, 1973). p. 72. 78. See the account by J. R. Lucas, ‘Wilberforce and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter’ http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/legend.html See also Sheridan, Gilley. ‘The Huxley-Wilberforce Debate: A Reconsideration’, Studies in Church History, 17, pp.  325–340. Lucas argues that Wilberforce’s supposed demand to Huxley as to whether he thought it was through his grandmother or grandfather’s line that he claimed his descent from an ape, to which Huxley replied that he was not as ashamed of having a monkey for an ancestor as he would ‘rather be descended from an ape than from a cultivated man who used his gifts of eloquence in the service of prejudice and falsehood’ did not in fact occur in any of the contemporary accounts. 79. Lucas, J. R. Wilberforce, and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 80. Maxwell, Christabel. Mrs. Gatty and Mrs. Ewing (London: Constable, 1949). p. 15. 81. Maxwell., p. 125.

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82. Maxwell., p. 88. 83. Maxwell., p. 89. 84. Maxwell., p. 90. 85. Browne, Sir Thomas, Digby, Sir Kenelm, and Chapman, Thomas. Religio Medici (Oxford: J. Vincent, 1831). p. 31. 86. Gatty, Margaret. Parables from Nature (London: T. Nelson, 1855). See Preface. 87. Cosslett, Tess. ‘“Animals under Man”? Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature’, Women’s Writing 10, no. 1 (2003). pp. 137–52. 88. Ibid. 89. Gatty (1855, p. 268). 90. See Ricks, Christopher. ‘Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tennyson (1809–1892)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 91. Sheffield, Suzanne Le-May. Revealing New Worlds: Three Victorian Women Naturalists (Routledge, 2013). p. 73. 92. Wolff, Robert (1977, p. 244). 93. Charles, Elizabeth Rundle. Winifred Bertram, and the World She Lived In (London; New York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1866). 94. Jay, Elisabeth. ‘Charles, Elizabeth Rundle (1828–1896)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 95. Ibid. 96. Wolff (1977, p. 248). 97. See Jowett, Benjamin. The Interpretation of Scripture and Other Essays (London: G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1907). And also, Hinchliff, Peter. & Prest, John. ‘Jowett, Benjamin (1817–1893)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ‘In 1860 Jowett contributed an article, “On the interpretation of scripture”, to Essays and Reviews, a broad-church volume, in which each contributor chose his own theme without knowledge of the work of the others. Jowett’s essay was an attempt to expound a rational explanation of the authority and inspiration of the Bible. He insisted that biblical writings should be treated as other books as one would treat classical texts. They should be read as far as possible in the sense in which they had been intended, without the overlay of traditional and sometimes forced meanings which they had often acquired.’ 98. Wolff., p. 247. 99. Wolff., p. 139. 100. Wolff., p. 129.

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Bibliography ALOE, The Children’s Tabernacle, Or Hand-Work and Heart-Work (New York: Carter, 1875). Alexander, Edward. Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and the Modern Temper (Ohio State University Press, 1973). Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965). Avery, Gillian. Childhood’s Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children’s Fiction, 1770–1950 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975). Barton, Lucy. Bible Letters for Children (London: John Souter, 1831). Bebbington, David W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyam, 1989). Bratton, J. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London; Totowa N.J.: Croom Helm; Barnes & Noble, 1981). Browne, Sir Thomas. Digby, Sir Kenelm. and Chapman, Thomas. Religio Medici (Oxford: J. Vincent, 1831). Buchan, William. Advice to Mothers on the Subject of Their Own Health (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1811). Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. The Worlds of Victorian Fiction (Cambridge; Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975). Cameron, Lucy. The Two Lambs. An Allegorical History. (London: Houlston and Sons, 1830). Charles, Elizabeth Rundle. Winifred Bertram, and the World She Lived In. (London; New York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1866). Charlotte Elizabeth, The Simple Flower and Other Tales (New York: Published by John S. Taylor & Co., 1842). Cliff, Philip. The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England, 1780–1980 (Redhill Surrey: National Christian Education Council, 1986). Copley, Esther. Scripture History for Youth (London: H.  Fisher, Son & P. Jackson, 1829). Cosslett, Tess. ‘“Animals under Man”? Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature’, Women’s Writing 10, no. 1 (2003). pp. 137–52. Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children (Wormley: Five Owls Press, 1979). Davidoff, Leonore. & Hall, Catherine. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Demers, Patricia. Heaven upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature, to 1850 (University of Tennessee Press, 1993). Frederick Rankin MacFadden Jr. on ‘Favell Lee Mortimer’ in Khorana, Meena. Ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale, 1996). Gatty, Margaret. Parables from Nature (London: T. Nelson, 1855).

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Harris, H.J. Robert Raikes The Man and His Work, Biographical Notes Collected By Josiah Harris. (London: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1899). Hill, Rowland. Instructions for Children; Or A Token of Love for the Rising Generation (London: G. Thompson, 1794). Hilton, Mary. Women and the Shaping of the Nations Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750–1850 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Hinchliff, Peter. & Prest, John. ‘Jowett, Benjamin (1817–1893)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Jay, Elisabeth. ‘Charles, Elizabeth Rundle (1828–1896)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Jowett, Benjamin. The Interpretation of Scripture and Other Essays (London: G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1907). Kent, Eliza F. Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Laqueur, Thomas. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). Larsen, Timothy. A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford; New York: OUP Oxford, 2011). Lucas, J.  R. Wilberforce, and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Maxwell, Christabel. Mrs. Gatty and Mrs. Ewing (London: Constable, 1949). Midgley, Clare. Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (London; New York: Routledge, 1992). Mortimer, Favell Lee. Here a Little and There a Little, Or Scripture Facts (New York: Charles Scribner, 1853). Mortimer, Favell Lee. The Peep of Day: Or A Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind Is Capable of Receiving (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1835). Muir, Percy H. English Children’s Books: 1600–1900 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1954). Myers, Mitzi. ‘Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children’s Books’, Children’s Literature Vol. 14 (New Haven, 1986). Nelson, Claudia. Invisible Men: Fatherhood in Victorian Periodicals, 1850–1910 (University of Georgia Press, 2010). Prochaska, F. K. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford University Press, 1980). Quinlan, Maurice. Victorian Prelude, a History of English Manners, 1700–1830, (Hamden Conn.: Archon Books, 1965). Ricks, Christopher. ‘Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tennyson (1809–1892)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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Sanders, Valerie. Records of Girlhood: An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Childhoods (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). Sewell, Elizabeth Missing. & Sewell, Eleanor L. (ed.), The Autobiography of Elizabeth Missing Sewell, (London: Longmans, Green, 1908). Sewell, Elizabeth Missing. Laneton Parsonage (London Longmans, Brown, Green, 1846). Shaw, Catharine. Out in the Storm; Or Little Messengers (New York: Carter, 1883). Sheffield, Suzanne Le-May. Revealing New Worlds: Three Victorian Women Naturalists (Routledge, 2013). Sheridan, Gilley. ‘The Huxley-Wilberforce Debate: A Reconsideration’, Studies in Church History, 17, pp. 325–340, 1981. Sherwood, Mary Martha, The Flowers of the Forest (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1830). Sherwood, Mary Martha. The History of the Fairchild Family, Or the Child’s Manual: Being a Collection of Stories Calculated to Shew the Importance and Effects of a Religious Education (London: Printed for J. Hatchard and sold by F. Houlston and Son, Wellington, 1818). Spurgeon, Charles. Come Ye Children: A Book for Parents and Teachers on the Christian Training of Children (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1897). Storr, Vernon F.  The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1800–1860 (London: Longmans, Green, 1913). Strange, Julie-Marie. Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Tolley, Christopher. Domestic Biography: The Legacy of Evangelicalism in Four Nineteenth-Century Families. Oxford University Press, 1997. Tosh, John. A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1999). Wigley, John. The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Sunday (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980). Wilberforce, Samuel. Agathos, The Rocky Island, and Other Sunday Stories (London: Seeley and Co, 1905).

CHAPTER 6

Eschatological Themes in Evangelical Children’s Literature 1780–1900

Happy is the child whose youngest years receive instructions well; Who hates the sinner’s paths and fears the road that leads to Hell. (Watts, Isaac. Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language, for the Use of Children (New York: Printed and sold by Seward and Williams, 1810)) —Isaac Watts I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. (Darwin, Charles. & Barlow, Nora. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882: With Original Omissions Restored (New York: Norton, 1969). p. 87. This view was published posthumously in 1958 and was not included in Darwin’s original autobiography for fear of damaging his and his family’s reputation.) —Charles Darwin

Introduction The contentious subjects of heaven, hell, death, and judgment, also referred to as the ‘four last things’, encapsulate the Christian doctrine of eschatology. As can be seen from the above quotation by Charles Darwin, the doctrine of everlasting punishment surfaced vehemently throughout the nineteenth century and lay at the core of numerous theological debates.1 This chapter begins by identifying the principal eschatological © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. E. Smale, Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5_6

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debates within various social, historical, and theological contexts and also in relation to children’s literature. The motif of child death was shockingly recurrent in Victorian books for children and parents, and this chapter explores selected authors’ treatments of the doctrine of the four last things as a means to encourage young readers to repentance and conversion.

Debates and Controversies in Christian Eschatology 1780–1900 Geoffrey Rowell has commented in Hell and the Victorians that although the doctrine of Christian eschatology was undoubtedly not a new controversy in the nineteenth century, it was discussed publicly and with more vehemence throughout the period by clergy and laypeople alike.2 In order to understand the essence of the debates, they need to be examined within their broader historical context. Undeniably, the concept of a physical Hell has prompted a particularly fascinating discourse throughout Christian history. However, as a consequence of Reformation theology, the demise of purgatory and the mitigating practices of penance and prayers for the dead, left only stark alternatives for the departed, either to be consigned to an eternity in Heaven or Hell.3 David Walker has also pointed to issues of theodicy that arose between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and the attempts to reconcile the contradictory dilemma of the portrayal of a loving, wise, forgiving, and just God with that of a God who condemns unbelievers, including infants, to everlasting torment. Thus, Walker queried such illogicality, ‘If the universe is to contain for all eternity a heavy preponderance of evil that is, the great mass of wicked, tormented and damned, compared with a handful of happy saints, then it is difficult to explain why God created it.’4 Of particular interest, therefore, was the approximate historical estimation of the proportion of damned to saved human souls throughout eternity, since it would appear that the population figures of Heaven and Hell were invariably conditional on the fate of children who had died in infancy.5 In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz’s Théodicée (1710) grappled with the mystery of the proportionate numbers inhabiting the Kingdom of Satan compared to the Kingdom of God. He pondered, ‘It seems strange that, even in the great future of eternity, evil must win against good.’6 The Anglican divine, Matthew Horbery (1707–1773) calculated that, on the contrary, the high infant mortality rate meant that half

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of humanity had died in infancy before they had committed sin, so it could be concluded that the population of Heaven would exceed that of Hell, although consisting mainly of infants.7 But the French philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) had already argued that only those infants who had been baptised were saved and that this would reduce the number considerably.8 Putting to one side such contentious inconsistencies and, indeed, the apparent assumption of the existence of Heaven and Hell, one might question, ‘Why exactly did the harsh and punitive notion of Hell remain relatively unchallenged for so many centuries?’9 Walker argues that one of the reasons for this lay in the underpinning scriptural authority for this particular doctrine. Who would be prepared to challenge ‘the Word of God’ on such a significant issue, and at what potential cost to themselves? In addition, Walker observes that there existed a general consensus among theologians that historically, the doctrine of Hell acted as a useful, if not always effective, deterrent for immoral behaviour. Thus, if the fear of everlasting punishment were to be removed, civilisation would collapse into a state of utter moral decay and anarchy.10 While the fear of Hell may well have been a persuasive argument to encourage righteous living, Marie Huber’s psychological theory argues that the sheer excessiveness of eternal torment ultimately rendered this approach ineffective. ‘Although Christians might imagine they believe in Hell, nobody who admitted to believing in Hell, seriously considered it, in all its horror, as a possibility for themselves!’11 Throughout the nineteenth century, doubts concerning the morality and justification for the inducement of virtue via the threat of everlasting torment persisted.12 In The Nemesis of Faith (1849), J. A. Froude declared his total repugnance towards a ‘doctrine so horrible’, declaring that ‘[t]he largest portion of mankind … are to be tortured forever and ever in unspeakable agonies. My God! And for what?’13 Some of the most notorious nineteenth-century controversies concerning the afterlife in relation to the doctrine of eschatology were raised by clergy at the highest ministerial level. In 1855, Bishop Colenso of Natal publicly challenged the morality of the belief in Hell by asking: ‘How can a Christian comfortably eat butter with his bread, ride in a carriage, wear a fine nap upon his coat, or enjoy one of the commonest blessings of daily life if he believed heathen souls to be perishing in their millions?’14 In 1860, the Rev Henry Bristow Wilson published his highly contentious paper in Essays and Reviews, in which he challenged the traditional doctrine of everlasting punishment and proposed a tentative universalist approach instead. In taking up the arguments of F. D. Maurice’s theory,

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he proposed some kind of remedial process after death.15 Wilson wrote: ‘We must rather entertain a hope that there shall be found, after the great adjudication, receptacles suitable for those who shall be infants, not as to years of terrestrial life, but as to spiritual development—nurseries as it were and seed-grounds, where the undeveloped may grow up under new conditions … all, both small and great, shall find refuge in the bosom of the Universal Parent, to repose, or be quickened into higher life, in the ages to come, according to His Will.’16 However, in June 1862, Wilson was found guilty of contradicting the Athanasian Creed and inculcating erroneous doctrine through his refutation of Biblical inspiration and the future state of the dead. Proceedings for heresy were instituted against him, and the Court of Arches suspended Wilson for a year. He appealed but was not vindicated until February 1864, when the judicial committee reversed the decision. As a result of the case, Wilson’s health deteriorated, and he never completely recovered from the strain; he died on 10 August 1888. The 1864 judgement in Wilson’s favour still failed to offer any clear explanation as to what was meant by ‘eternal punishment’, and this lack of definition continued to cause grave concern to both High Churchmen and Evangelicals.17 The Lord Chancellor Westbury’s celebrated judgement, that allowed Wilson’s appeal, was met with disdain by both High Church and Evangelical clergy who accused him of ‘dismissing Hell with costs’ and diluting the truth of eternal damnation.18 In June 1863, the leading High Churchman and theologian Edward Pusey wrote to the then Bishop of London, Archibald Tait: ‘I am sure nothing will keep men from the present pleasures of sin, but the love of God or the fear of Hell: and that the fear of Hell drives people back to God, to seek Him, and in seeking Him to love Him first because He delivered them from Hell, then for His own sake.’19 Nevertheless, Pusey’s view on the doctrine of Hell appears to have changed over time. At first, he adopted a more universalist approach, as Rowell noted in 1828, he wrote to his future wife Maria just after his father’s death and was ‘convinced his father was in heaven, though he regretted he had not spoken any last words’.20 Rowell also observed that, ‘[h]e himself at this time had no doubts about the heathen being saved, and even the Jews—popularly held to be condemned for wilfully rejecting the Gospel—would, he believed, “be tried by the degree of spirituality to which under their darkness” they attained’.21 But later Pusey appeared to adopt a far stricter view, partly due to the deaths of his wife and daughter, which he understood to be a judgement upon himself. In his sermon on The Day of Judgement (1839), he propounded that there

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are two aspects to God’s revelation of himself to men, that of awe and fear and that of love and faith.22 Meanwhile, Pusey’s colleague, John Keble, composed A Litany of Our Lord’s Warnings in 1864, which included the words: ‘Jesu, from Whose lips full of grace, came thrice the terrible mention of “the whole body cast into Hell”…Have mercy upon us.’23 Keble’s litany included a confession of faith that stated that the Scriptures revealed the doctrine of eternal punishment to be fundamentally true. In an unusual alliance, the confession was signed by 11,000 clergymen from Tractarian and Evangelical parties, affirming that the Church of England believed and taught, ‘In the words of our Blessed Lord, that the “punishment” of the “cursed” equally with the “life” of the “righteous” is “everlasting.”’24 However, although Low and High churchmen might unite in support of this belief, Broad churchmen like Wilson or Maurice could not reconcile themselves to a confession which ultimately declared that it was God’s intention to ‘keep man forever and ever in evil’,25 a notion Maurice found abhorrent. Despite the inflexibility of the majority of the clergy, historians have documented the noticeable general decline in a literal belief in Hell as an everlasting punishment from this point until the end of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, debates continued concerning the eternal fate of infants and children.

The Development of Child Death Literature As previously discussed, the nineteenth century witnessed a deluge of narratives on the repentance, conversion, and piety of Christian children. Many texts frequently offered sensational descriptions of the suffering but ultimately joyful death of such child protagonists. In order to explain this seemingly macabre emphasis in children’s literature, a number of theories have been propounded by literary, social, and cultural historians. In Literary Ways of Killing a Child, Judith Plotz surmised that child death was not only pervasive in but also crucial to the golden age of children’s literature in the nineteenth century. She believes this was in fact due to the elevated cultural status accorded to childhood that had emerged by this point in time.26 As Chap. 1 of this study has explained, the nineteenth-­ century focus on childhood, evident in the deluge of reading material produced specifically for young readers, paved the way for the twentieth century, which has often been referred to as ‘the century of the child’.27 Whether expressed via literature, poetry, sermons, legislative change, or social campaigns, the child symbolised a fundamentally Victorian attitude

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and aim—that of a future-oriented social mission directed at purifying and improving the nation for future generations. Therefore, discussions on the eschatological fate of children sought to address questions around their own awareness and understanding of their spiritual condition compared with adults in particularly critical ways. As Anthony Krupp has shown, there was a shift from seventeenth-century perceptions of childhood as an inferior state, to that of the nineteenth-­ century Romanticist view of the child. The latter child appeared to be supremely capable of self-examination and emotional intelligence, qualities that seemed to be lacking in preceding generations. Nineteenth-­ century children, therefore, were deemed to demonstrate a greater capacity for love, gratitude, obedience, innocence, and sincerity. Thus, the Romanticist approach to childhood ushered in not only a deluge of parent and child guidance literature but also a particular fascination and sentimental obsession with child death.28 The theological arguments underpinning this development were all-­ pervasive. As Plotz explains, the motif of the child as a pious exemplar for adults in both life and death was highlighted and illustrated through the biblical notion of ‘setting a child in the midst’. As previously discussed, this phrase is repeated in all three synoptic gospels within the context of an episode in which the disciples were arguing about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus advice to them was to change and become like little children.29 Thus, for nineteenth-century Evangelical authors and theologians more generally, Christ’s mandate to become ‘as a child’ in order to live virtuously and enter the Kingdom of Heaven not only had major implications for the doctrine of soteriology but as noted in Chap. 4, the paradigm of the child as an evangel and disciple also held the key to a glorious death at the culmination of a visible, righteously lived life. Gillian Avery has pointed to the powerful parental preoccupation which often characterised Christian child death narratives.30 The extent to which familial love was actually expressed or even present during this period has proved a historical moot point. Lawrence Stone and David Grylls have argued that the level of investment of parental affection in the early modern and modern periods was frequently curtailed due to the high infant mortality rate.31 If children were more likely to die, a degree of emotional detachment on the part of the parents would surely help them manage their loss. However, certain historians, for example, Linda Pollock, have disagreed, arguing that parents across every century have experienced trauma over the suffering and death of their children.32 Indeed, the

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profusion of comfort and consolation manuals available for Victorian parents would suggest that, even in a large family and despite the survival of several siblings, a child’s death was invariably presented as an inconsolable loss.33 As a result, Evangelical authors and publishers produced consolation literature on an infinite scale, a phenomenon that the historian Mark Knight has referred to as the promotion of ‘the cult of the deathbed’ to guide bereaved parents through their trauma.34 In 1840, the annual death rate of infants was calculated at 154 out of every 1000.35 Evangelical addresses to children on the subject of death, therefore, become more comprehensible in the light of such statistics; by the age of 10 years, a child would have experienced at least one or more deaths in the family.36 The deathbed was the place where the Evangelical testified to their assurance of salvation. Thus Henry Venn, in The Complete Duty of Man (1812), urged parents to allow children to witness Christian deathbed scenes in preparation for their own: ‘If an opportunity could be found of bringing your child to the bedside of a departing saint, this object would infinitely exceed the force of simple instruction. Your child would never forget the composure and fortitude, the lively hope and consolation painted on the countenance of the Christian, nor his warm expressions of love and gratitude to the Saviour for a Heaven of peace within, and assurance of pardon.’37 Perhaps the most telling evidence of heartfelt parental affection and love, whatever the mortality rate of children, was the extent to which mothers and fathers kept journals or wrote memoirs about their personal feelings of loss and grief, both for private use and for the public edification of others. These fascinating accounts were meaningful acts that illustrate the emotional ties between Victorian parents and children and call into question religious and gender stereotypes in the face of extreme grief.38 Archibald Tait, for example, before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, saw each of his five daughters die in succession from scarlet fever. Over a period of weeks, he watched helplessly as each child battled with violent sickness, delirium, and convulsions, due to the unavailability at the time of medical or analgesic palliative care. Tait noted in his diary of his unspeakable agony at 4 am on Easter Tuesday in 1865, just after Cattie, the eldest and his favourite daughter, had passed away. He wrote that he felt compelled to rush to the Abbey grounds and shriek aloud his grief, but instead, he lay down on the dining room floor underneath the room where the maid was dressing her dead body.39 Tait’s palpable grief and his struggle to accept his children’s deaths appeared far more prolonged and problematic

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than his Evangelical wife Catharine’s. Pat Jalland has suggested that his grief was ‘complicated by his greater knowledge of Christian theology, and his deeper sense of divine retribution’.40 Catharine, although devastated, coped better by believing that there was still the eventual hope of a happy family reunion with their beloved daughters in Heaven; in time, this became the Taits’ overarching consolation. When five-year-old Chattie was dying, for example, her mother reminded her that she would be going to a much brighter home above, ‘to that heavenly mansion ready for us: and not long to be separated from those sweet playmates of your earthly home’.41 Jalland has also observed a similar, gendered difference evident in the grief of Tait’s successor to the archiepiscopate, Bishop Edward White Benson and his wife, Mary.42 Their son Martin died, aged seventeen years old, of tubercular meningitis. The day after Martin’s death, Mary wrote to Beth Cooper, the family nurse, ‘He is in perfect peace, in wonderful joy, far happier than we could ever have made him … free from fear, free from pain, from anxiety evermore.’43 It would appear, in contrast, that Edward Benson never really came to terms with his son’s death, writing in his diary that it was ‘inconceivable’. ‘It has changed all my views of God’s work … to be compelled to believe that God’s plan for him really has run on sweetly, and rightly for him and for all—and yet—he is dead.’ Although he admitted, ‘My dearest wife understood it all more quickly—better—more sweetly than I.’44 Archbishops Tait and Benson, by any account powerful, religious, professional Victorian clergymen, were emotionally broken by the deaths of their children and, in all honesty, did not hide their most profound grief in their tragic personal circumstances. Plotz has argued that such was the elevated notion of the child as a symbol of purity and innocence, loving parents held onto their dead children both emotionally and physically as they ‘embalmed, boxed, contained, fixed, preserved, stilled, revered and revisited them’.45 Through poetry and prose, they held tightly onto their children, which ‘signified death as more of a preserver than destroyer’.46 The consequence of this was the emergence of ‘death-watch poems’ in which the child pleads with the parent to let them go and die in peace. Plotz refers to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem Isobel’s Child, verse XXVII, below as evidence of this literary theme in which the dying child pleads: O mother, mother, loose thy prayer! Christ’s name hath made it strong.

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It bindeth me, it holdeth me With its most loving cruelty, From floating my new soul along The happy heavenly air. It bindeth me, it holdeth me In all this dark, upon this dull Low earth, by only weepers trod. It bindeth me, it holdeth me! Mine angel looketh sorrowful Upon the face of God.47

Regarded as one of the most outstanding English poets of the period, Browning was born into a wealthy and devoutly religious family, although not deemed particularly Evangelical. In The Seraphim and other Poems (1838), the title poem describes the crucifixion of Christ from the angels’ perspective. Many of her poems reflect Browning’s Congregationalist background, later modified by her increasingly unorthodox position and mistrust of established religions.48 In Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century, Laurence Lerner has drawn attention to Paul Ricoeur’s theoretical distinction between semiotic and semantic analyses, explaining that a text can move us in two mutually reciprocal ways.49 First, a text can elicit a response from the reader through its semiotic properties because it is articulately and powerfully written. Second, the reader’s knowledge that the text is based on an actual event will evoke further responsive emotions. In reading the journals of two bereaved clergy wives and mothers, the Anglican Evangelical Catherine Tait (1819–1878) and the Presbyterian Elisabeth Prentiss (1818–1878), wife of the Rev George Prentiss, both of whom watched their children die, Lerner contends that the reader is particularly moved by the spiritual autobiographies that describe their suffering. The text becomes subjective and is internalised by its readers because it challenges them to identify with their own experiences of suffering and loss.50 Ricoeur argued that it is not primarily textual information that the reader is searching for (in the above cases, for example, knowledge on how to develop one’s faith) but textual meaning, in other words, a deepening of self-understanding, through personal, subjective identification with their emotions, in this case of the grief and fear, conveyed by the writer.51 Not only would this be true of child and adult readers, this level of reader

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response is arguably why Evangelical narratives about dramatic deaths of pious children were so popular. We have learned, of course, that many Evangelical authors were initially prompted to write through their own harrowing experiences of personal bereavement and thus were motivated to write for other adults and children who could identify with the encounter of loss. As noted in Chap. 4, for example, Martha Sherwood suffered greatly from the loss of her son Henry and her daughter Lucy. While her journals described this in great detail, she was able to transpose these lived experiences into her writing, which frequently featured child deaths. The Fairchild Family actually contained more child deaths than any other novel of the period. It was, perhaps, so immensely successful precisely because of its semi-autobiographical content and the readers’ awareness of the reality behind the imaginary circumstances.52 As Elisabeth Jay observed: ‘Devout nineteenth-century readers were perfectly capable of distinguishing between purely admonitory, “manufactured” death bed scenes and accounts often derived from painful experiences, which placed a child’s death within the wider context of the Christian life.’53 But this liminal space bordering reality and fiction in the case of child death is not solely about the multiple layers of psychological, theological and emotional meaning and the self-analysis of the reader. William Gray has argued, for example, that in the fantasy writing of George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis, death was used as an authorial device for actually coming to terms with the reality of grief and mourning in the writer’s own life.54 Gray discusses Lewis’s strategies for dealing with the impact of his mother’s death and, ‘The way in which the heartbroken boy from Belfast haunts the pages of The Chronicles of Narnia. It also explains how that original traumatic event was uncannily mirrored in Lewis’s loss, again to cancer, of his wife Joy, the mother of his two stepsons.’55 Scholarly consensus reveals that the infant mortality rate declined during the Victorian period.56 Even in death, as in life, the subject child often functioned as an exemplar, mentor, and pedagogue. Authors used child death narratives, for example, to challenge parents about their own spiritual and eternal status: ‘A little boy, on his deathbed, was urging his father to repentance, and fearing he had made no impression, said: “Father, I am going to Heaven; what shall I tell Jesus is the reason you won’t love him?” The father burst into tears; but before he could give the answer, his dear Sunday School boy had fallen asleep in Jesus.’57 Under the increasing influence of Romanticist notions of childhood as a paradigm of moral purity and innocence, the dying child could be elevated to almost

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messianic status. Children were often perceived as being nearest and dearest to God because they had not had the opportunity in life to fall into any great depth of sin, thus providing consolation for the parents and hope for the child’s spiritual status. In William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1807), for example, the ‘little child’ is referred to as ‘best philosopher’, ‘mighty prophet’, and ‘Seer blest!’58 Similarly, Elizabeth Rachel Chapman, who was the great-­ grand-­daughter of Elizabeth Fry and who published between 1881 and 1897, eulogised her dead nephew in her poem A Little Child’s Wreath (1894): The child is, was, and still shall be The world’s deliverer; in his heart the springs Of our salvation ever rise, and we Mount on his innocency as on wings.59

Wilfrid Meynell, writing at the close of the century commented that the nineteenth century had achieved two significant things for literature: ‘[t]he Child, at last, has taken his proportionate place in Poetry’. He further observed that: ‘It has put man on a lover’s footing with nature, and it has, one may almost say, “discovered the Child”. Him the Modern Poets have Set in the Midst of us, even as he was Set in the Midst of men by the Lord of Poets.’60 In the preface to his book Meynell wrote: We read love’s tender lessons taught As only weakness can; God has His small interpreters— The child must teach the man. We wander wide through evil years, The eyes of faith grow dim; But he is freshest from His hands And nearest unto Him.61

Therefore, the death of a child became a well-worked nineteenth-­ century literary motif through which the reader, whether child or adult, might be persuaded to theologically reflect on the narratives significance and meaning for their own lives. The more specific ways in which Evangelical writers depicted the journey to the afterlife are explored in the following discussion.

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Eschatological Themes in Children’s Literature Themes of heaven, hell, death, and judgement in children’s religious literature can be traced as far back as the seventeenth century.62 In 1675, the Puritan minister and popular children’s author James Janeway wrote A Token for Children: An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths, of Several Young Children, in which he counselled parents about the importance of Christian guidance for their children: ‘Are the souls of your children of no value? Are you willing that they should be brands of Hell? Are you indifferent whether they be damned or saved? Shall the Devil, run away with them without control? Will not you do your utmost endeavours to deliver them from the wrath to come? They are not too little to die; they are not too little to go to Hell; they are not too little to serve their great master; too little to go to Heaven; for of such is the kingdom of God: And will not a possibility of their conversion and salvation put you upon the greatest diligence to teach them? Or are Christ and Heaven and salvation, small things with you?’63 A Token For Children was reprinted in seven editions between 1785 and 1830 as a renewed Evangelical mission tool. The subject matter of such texts continued to exert an immense influence upon nineteenth-century Christian children’s authors and literature.64 Mrs Cameron, the sister of Martha Sherwood, reworked Janeway’s text in 1828 to make the language more intelligible for nineteenth-century child readers but did not temper the threat of everlasting punishment in any way.65 Isaac Watts’s Song XI Heaven and Hell from his Divine Songs: Attempted in Easy Language For Children (1715) was another eighteenth-­ century text which became integral to English children’s literature for nearly two centuries.66 Twenty editions appeared in Watts’s lifetime alone, and by 1810, over 100 editions of Divine Songs were in circulation. Considered the founder of children’s hymnody, Watts believed that theology put to rhyme would be more easily memorised by children whose duty it was not only to read the Bible, obey their parents, avoid idleness and evil company but also to contemplate on death and the afterlife: ‘Since every child that is born into this world has a body and a soul, since its happiness or misery in this world depends very much upon its instructions and knowledge, it has a right to be taught by its parents, according to their best ability, so much as is necessary for its well-being both in soul and body here and hereafter.’67

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Childhood death and dying was a popular Victorian trope in both children’s and adult literature. Within Evangelical circles in particular, the death of a child was always a supreme test of Christian faith. The remainder of this chapter explores in greater detail the variety of ways in which ‘the four last things’ were discussed and presented by Evangelical children’s authors from various denominational backgrounds and at differing times throughout the nineteenth century. What characterises so many of these accounts is their semi-autobiographical nature and the identification of the writers themselves with the experience of close personal bereavement. Evangelicals disliked and were deeply suspicious of purely fictional writing for children. They preferred quasi-autobiographical accounts of devout individuals or narratives about real people in recognisable situations and places. The Rev Legh Richmond (1772–1827) wrote popular tales of village life based on his pastoral visits while a parish priest on the Isle of Wight. His disapproval of fiction was exemplified in his pragmatic approach, a style that won him long-standing acclaim. Richmond wrote under the pseudonym ‘Simplex’,68 which summarised the simple pathos and piety of his tales. They were first serialised in the periodical, The Christian Guardian between 1809 and 1811 and attained instant popularity. The tales were later reprinted by the RTS in 1814 under the title The Annals of the Poor. Altick notes that The Dairyman’s Daughter, The Young Cottagers, and The Negro Servant together circulated 1,354,000 copies in less than half a century.69 The book was later translated into French, Italian, German, Danish, and Swedish, and obtained an extensive circulation in America. It was calculated that the number of copies printed in the English language alone amounted to two million in the author’s lifetime.70 Richmond studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and was deeply influenced by Wilberforce’s A Practical View of Christianity. Death was a constant preoccupation for him, particularly the spiritual state of children in the afterlife. His Saturday school for children on the Isle of Wight was held on summer evenings next to the graveyard, where Richmond reminded his students that, young as they were, none of them were too young to die, and that probably more than half of the bodies buried in the graveyard close by, were those of little children.71 In a letter written in 1818 to his eleven-year-old son Wilberforce, (he named his son after the renowned Evangelical leader), he wrote: ‘If you are to die a boy, we must look for a boy’s religion, a boy’s knowledge, a boy’s faith, a boy’s Saviour, a boy’s

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salvation, or else a boy’s ignorance, a boy’s obstinacy, a boy’s unbelief, a boy’s idolatry, a boy’s destruction. Remember all this and beware of sin.’72 Richmond’s most well-known work, The Dairyman’s Daughter, first published in 1814, was expanded, and by 1816 had already reached two editions of 20,000 copies each.73 The tale was based not on a dairyman’s daughter, in fact, but on a young female parishioner, Elizabeth Wallbridge, who had initially requested Richmond to take her sister’s funeral service. Later Elizabeth contracted tuberculosis, and Richmond visited her, they corresponded until her death. The Dairyman’s Daughter was based on their conversations and Richmond’s reflections on the themes of heaven, hell, death, and judgement: ‘If there be a moment when Christ and salvation, death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell, appear more than ever to be momentous subjects of meditation, it is that which brings us to the side of a coffin containing the body of a departed believer.’74 In Paul Sangster’s critique of Evangelicalism, Pity My Simplicity: The Evangelical Revival and the Religious Education of Children (1963), he described The Dairyman’s Daughter as mawkish, wearisome, and full of Evangelical clichés. He refers particularly to a scene in a charnel-house (a vault or mortuary where human remains were stored) which included the singing of a hymn taken from Wesley’s Poetical Works Vol VI For the funeral of a believer. It was the deceased girl who had chosen the hymn for her own funeral: Ah lovely appearance of death! No sight upon earth is so fair! Not all the gay pageants that breathe, Can with a dead body compare: With solemn delight I survey The corpse when the spirit is fled, In love with the beautiful clay, And longing to lie in its stead.75

Richmond’s narrative contemplates the slow process of dying and death at a steady, measured pace. It draws upon the numerous pastoral visits made to the deathbeds of his parishioners to comfort first the dying and then subsequently the bereaved in the graveyard. The stories are interspersed with his own spiritual reflections and meditations on death as he journeyed across the Isle of Wight countryside on foot, inspired by ‘the Creator’s scenic landscape’.76 Tragically, Richmond’s son Wilberforce died of consumption at eighteen years old in 1825. The death of his older

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brother Nugent at sea, on his voyage home from India, followed just a few months later. Richmond wrote a moving memoir of his son Wilberforce, with whom he obviously had a very close relationship, but the trauma of his two sons’ deaths affected his own health; Richmond himself died just two years later in 1827, a broken man, despite leaving eight children who survived him.77 Although of a later generation of Evangelical writers, Maria Louisa Charlesworth, daughter of the Rev John Charlesworth, similarly drew upon personal memories of rural parish life in her reflections upon death. According to Margaret Cutt, Charlesworth was a ‘literary descendent’ of leading Evangelical writers such as Martha Sherwood and Hannah More. Charlesworth’s eschatology ‘perfectly reflects the moral fervour and concern with the four last things that characterised the Rev Legh Richmond and Mrs Sherwood in her earliest books for the young’.78 Her father, John Charlesworth, had originally studied medicine. While training in Clapham, however, he heard the famous preacher John Venn and was subsequently converted. He was impressed by the Evangelical approach to faith and became associated with the Clapham Sect. In 1814, the Charlesworth family arrived in the remote rural parish of Flowton, near Ipswich, where Maria was born, one of six children. The Rev Charlesworth was a keen cottage visitor, and from a young age, Maria went with him, visiting the poor of the parish. These formative childhood experiences were reflected in The Female Visitor to the Poor (1846), a series of tales similar to the tracts of Hannah More, which included useful advice for fellow visitors. Charlesworth’s most popular work was Ministering Children (1854); printed in several editions, it reached sales of 170,000 copies in England by 1881.79 Described as ‘the perfect Sunday book’,80 it was a collection of tales about virtuous children who manifest their Christian faith through charitable deeds. Charlesworth based many of her narratives on family members and her own experience of bereavement. For example, Mary Clifford’s character in Ministering Children was based on her sister, who had died at an early age. Set in an idyllic village presided over by a virtuous squire and his family, Ministering Children is nostalgically reminiscent of Charlesworth’s own childhood, as well as conveying the popular Evangelical notion of the child as evangel. Its depiction of the funeral is highly romanticised and suffers, according to Cutt, ‘from cloying sentimentality, a condescending tone and a distressing breathlessness of style’.81 ‘The day of the funeral came, and the whole village gathered to the grave—there came the old and feeble, whom her hands had clothed and

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fed, her lips had taught and comforted: there came the dark transgressor, whose chains of sin had melted under her fervent utterance of heavenly truth and love; there came the strong-built labourer, whose dull mind had gathered light under her teaching …; there came the village children … .all came to see the form they had loved, put to rest.’82 As the deathbed motif developed into an established and popular literary convention, it simultaneously became the subject of disparaging and satirical humour. As Kimberly Reynolds has noted, even amongst contemporaries, the child death scene was never immune from ridicule. Laurence Lerner concurs with this observation in Chapter Five of Angels and Absences: Child Death in the Nineteenth Century, titled ‘Sentimentality: For and Against’. ‘It has been said that if anybody can get a pretty little girl to die prattling to her brothers and sisters, and quoting texts of Scripture with appropriate gasps, dashes and broken sentences, he may send half the women in London, with tears in their eyes, to Mr Mudie’s or Mr Booth’s.’83 Similarly, Oscar Wilde is reputed to have remarked of Charles Dickens’ protagonist in The Old Curiosity Shop, ‘[o]ne would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears … of laughter’.84 But despite such contrasting responses from readers and critics, writers like Charlesworth continued to reiterate the urgent message of Evangelical eschatology, as evidenced in her second volume Ministering Children: A Sequel (1866). ‘There is one sadness that I deeply feel: many who took a warm interest in the first [book] have passed away, leaving earth poorer for their departed presence—dear and honoured names, leaving us a bright example to lead us on as followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.’85 The work of the philanthropist and spinster Catherine Sinclair (1800–1864) illustrates another critical dimension of Christian child death literature and how the passing of one child could be used as a vehicle for the conversion of siblings. Sinclair hailed from a zealous Evangelical family who were strongly anti-Catholic. She devoted her life to her father, Sir John Sinclair, to whom she acted as secretary until he died in 1835. Her children’s novel Holiday House: A Series of Tales (1839) was hailed as an essential breakthrough in children’s literature in its portrayal of Harry and Laura as ‘real children’, both mischievous and playful. At the beginning of the narrative, the children’s mother has recently died, and, in his grief, their father leaves them with relatives while he travels to the continent. Halfway through the book, the mood and plot change from tales of

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light-hearted adventures of playful children to a more religious, didactic tone as Harry and Laura watch their older brother, Frank, die. In the book’s preface, Sinclair states that Frank’s death was based on that of her brother James who had died in 1826, explaining her reason for writing the narrative. Sinclair was acclaimed by F. J. H. Darton for pioneering a new, informal style of children’s writing, far removed from the sombre moral content of its predecessors.86 Yet, it is impossible to ignore the Evangelical message in the narrative’s climax. Only through the traumatic experience of witnessing their pious brother Frank’s death are Harry and Laura brought to the realisation of the importance of ‘the great change’. Standing by Frank’s deathbed, they observe: ‘All was changed within and around them, sorrow had filled their hearts, and no longer merry, thoughtless creatures, believing the world one scene of frolicsome enjoyment and careless ease; they had now witnessed its realities, they had felt its trials, they had experienced the importance of religion, they had learned the frailty of all earthly joy, and they had received, amidst tears and sorrows, the last injunction of a dying brother, to ‘call upon the Lord while He is near, and to seek Him while he may yet be found.’87 However, not all authors writing on the doctrine of the four last things chose their words quite so sensitively as Richmond and Sinclair. For example, the Rev William Carus Wilson (1791–1859) and Father John Furniss (1809–1865) adopted a far more graphic and explicit style in their descriptions of the afterlife. Wilson was a prolific Evangelical author, known as the ‘Father of the cheap religious literature of the day’ due to his numerous publications and editorship of penny periodicals over a period of more than twenty-five years.88 His theology was resolutely Calvinist and, according to Cutt, his literature correspondingly demonstrated Evangelical teaching for the young in its most terrifyingly ‘Hell-fire’ manner.89 Wilson attended Trinity College, Cambridge between 1810 and 1815 and was tutored by the Evangelical John Fawcett, a convert of George Whitefield. Warned by Charles Simeon that his views were ‘unduly Calvinistic’, he was rejected by the Bishop of Chester, to whom he first applied for ordination, for that very reason; he finally gained a parish at Tunstall near Casterton. Wilson was a prominent philanthropist and an acquaintance of both Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury. In 1824, he founded the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire. 90 Charlotte Brontë was admitted to the school in that first year with her sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, and Emily. However, the two eldest girls developed tuberculosis while there and were sent home. Charlotte blamed the harsh conditions and

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punitive religious regime at the school for the early deaths of Maria and Elizabeth. She parodied Wilson in her iconic novel Jane Eyre (1847) as Mr Brocklehurst, the cold, cruel, self-righteous, and hypocritical clergyman who ran the charity school called Lowood Institution.91 Wilson established a successful juvenile periodical, The Children’s Friend, issued between 1824 and 1860 and it was the vehicle through which Wilson’s harrowing deathbed scenes and morbid, distasteful descriptions of children dying were publicised. The Children’s Friend was sold for one penny; each issue comprised twenty-four or thirty-two pages of small print and included poems, prayers, and several short stories. The journal also contained engravings depicting children reading, praying, or on their deathbed. Invariably, the tales were either based on the Bible or on pious children, which ended in a deathbed scene. In 1883, The Saga of Little Charles, age four years, concluded, for example, with the following reflections from the mother of Little Charles: ‘This fearlessness of death was evident through all his conduct, and often broke forth in an almost triumphant manner. I asked him one day, when he had been saying something on that subject, in order to see what ideas he had of the grave: “But, my love, are you not afraid to go down into the ground? The grave is very dark and cold is it not?” Charles was then sitting, or rather lying, on my knees; with a look of confidence, he replied, “But I shall not be there long; my Saviour has died for me, that I might not go to Hell, and he will soon take me up out of the pit-hole.”’92 In a premeditated attempt to instil fear into children and to persuade them to convert, Wilson was unashamedly alarmist in his style and tactics. Again, in the same 1833 volume of The Children’s Friend, he wrote: ‘My dear children, the whooping cough is spreading fast; several little ones have died of it. Day after day I hear the bell tolling, and one little child after another has been buried here; and as I walk out into the villages, and the lanes, and go into the schools, I see your little faces swelled, and hear your coughing; but I am pained to think how few of you would be found ready were you called to die of it. Let me beg of you dears to try to think about death; say to yourselves, “Perhaps I may soon die, and then where will my soul go? Will it go to Heaven, or will it be cast down into Hell, where there will be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth?”’ 93 As Avery noted, in cases of a really sinful child, Wilson simply intensified the savagery. For example, ‘Little Ann’, having lied to skip school, suffered the harrowing consequences of being almost burned to death. ‘Still, the Lord followed her; in all she was doing, she could not hide herself from him … . In love to her poor little soul he

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[God] caused the candle to catch her clothes on fire. The neighbour and another put out the fire, the Lord helping them in their labour of love, for he was not willing to burn little Ann to death, though he sought it needful to burn most of her clothes off.’94 Wilson also used death scenes as a means by which to illustrate the religious, cultural, and racial superiority of Christianity and to support Evangelical missionary work in converting Jewish, African, and Asian people to Christianity. In 1826, The Children’s Friend included a detailed macabre and graphic missionary tale of the purported ‘ritual practices of heathen peoples’, after which Wilson admonished: ‘Think, dear children, that it is from such horrid rites as these that we wish to free our fellow-­ creatures by means of our missionaries and our Bibles!’ 95It is, perhaps, a reflection of the times that Wilson’s fear-inducing style and publications were widely disseminated. According to Thomas Laqueur, ‘Carus Wilson’s three gory and, to modern readers, unsavoury magazines The Friendly Visitor (est. 1819) The Children’s Friend (1824), and The Teacher’s Friend (1844) were selling up to fifty thousand copies per month by 1850.’96 The English Redemptorist97 Father John Furniss (1809–1865) was probably the most renowned Roman Catholic children’s author who wrote on the subject of Hell. Over four million of his tracts were sold throughout English-speaking countries worldwide98 despite being berated as ‘infamous’ for their graphic content by the eminent historian W. E. H. Lecky in his two-volume work, History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869).99 In his 1864 publication, The Sight of Hell, for example, Furniss cautions: ‘In the fifth dungeon is the little child whom we saw before the judgement seat of the Lord Jesus Christ: The little child is in this red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in Hell despair, desperate and horrible! God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in Hell. So, God in his mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood.’100 As Rowell commented, ‘Furniss portrayed Hell as an enclosure in the middle of the earth, shot through with streams of burning pitch and sulphur, deluged with sparks, and filled with a fog of fire. It resounded, he wrote, with the shrieks of millions and millions of tormented souls, “roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, howling like dogs, and wailing like dragons.”’101 Lecky’s protest

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led to a pamphlet by G. Fitzgibbon, who railed against the granting of any state funding to Roman Catholic schools.102 The response by Furniss’s fellow Redemptorist T. E. Bridgett was that ‘Furniss’s sermons on Hell were no different from that of Christ’s.’103 John Sharp’s study of Catholic revivalism among children in Victorian Britain offers a fascinating insight into Furniss’s ministry to children.104 Born near Sheffield in 1809, the son of a wealthy master-cutler, Furniss was educated at Ushaw Catholic College, Durham, and ordained in 1834. He was a priest in Doncaster for five years until ill-health intervened, after which he went on a pilgrimage through Europe and the East. When he returned in 1847, Furniss worked with street children in Islington and later devoted himself to conducting children’s missions focusing on the 8–18 years age group in England and Ireland until his death.105 He was described by Catholics as the ‘Father of Children’s Missions’106 but was criticised by contemporaries for his excessively dramatic and over-­ emotional teaching style. Furniss’s personal appearance intensified his colourful performances; he was extremely emaciated, dressed in dirty clothes and appeared as an ascetic in his attempt to embody his idea of ‘Holy’. He viewed non-Catholic schools, orphanages, reformatories, and workhouses as ‘factories for proselytization’. His main aim was to persuade children to participate in the sacraments as their introduction to ‘Holiness’ and thus avoid the various ‘dungeons of Hell’. But Evangelical publications seeking to persuade children that time spent on earth was short compared to an eternity of Heaven or Hell, was not the sole monopoly of male authors. The Warning Clock or the Voice of the New Year (1823) was a fifteen-page illustrated tract written by Mrs Cameron that depicted a nurse attempting to arouse a child from sleep. She checks on the child hourly until midnight. ‘There was the picture of the dark room, the clock with its warning fingers fixed at twelve, no kind nurse at the bedside, but instead, in the doorway, the figure of a man whose face was veiled, and who held a lantern in his hand, the day’s last messenger, of whom the story affirmed that he would ‘brook no delay’. The child sat up in bed, wringing her hands with a look of agony upon the little face … the day was over, the night had come, and a life was lost.’107 In a similar vein, the previously mentioned children’s author Favell Lee Mortimer in The Peep Of Day: A series of the earliest religious instruction the infant mind is capable of receiving (1836) ended each lesson in catechistic style with a series of personal questions, the chapter on ‘The Judgement-Day’ stated: ‘At last Jesus will sit upon a white throne, and

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everybody will stand round his throne. He will open some books, in which he has written down all the naughty things people have done. God has seen all the naughty things you have done. He can see in the dark as well as in the light and knows all your naughty thoughts. He will read everything out of His books before the angels that stand around. Yet God will forgive some people because Christ died upon the cross. Whom will He forgive? Those who love Jesus with all their hearts. One day God will burn up this world we live in. It is dreadful to see a house on fire. Did you ever see one?’108 Eschatological themes were introduced across a broad spectrum of materials in Evangelical children’s literature. Not all writers like Wilson and Furniss emphasised the tragic or the morbid; indeed, many, like Sherwood, wrote positively about child death. In The Fairchild Family, for example, Charles Trueman dies ‘a happy death’, and in a deathbed conversation with his friend, Henry Fairchild, encourages him not to cry but to be happy for him. ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ Charles quotes from the book of Job, ‘and though after my skin worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God’.109 Therefore, death is frequently viewed by Evangelical authors as a happy release from the temptations and pain in this life, a cause not for sorrow but for joy. As Grylls has observed, both Puritan and Romantic perspectives on child death tended to assert that early death was a blessing because of a young child’s greater virtue and innocence. 110 A prime example of a joyful death or ‘happy homecoming’ can be found in Frederic Farrar’s hugely popular schoolboy novel Eric or Little by Little (1858). It was written just a year after Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), the catalyst for a new literary genre of boarding school tales.111 Eric encompasses themes of original sin, repentance, conversion, and missionary zeal, culminating in the popular soteriological motif of so much Evangelical literature ‘the return of the prodigal son’, the physical and spiritual homecoming: ‘Yes! At last he remembered his Father’s home…even then, in that valley of the shadow of death, a Voice had come to him—a still small voice—at whose holy and healing utterance Eric had bowed his head, and had listened to the messages of God, and learned His will; and now, in humble resignation, in touching penitence, with solemn self-devotion, he had cast himself at the feet of Jesus, and prayed to be helped, and guided, and forgiven…Yes, for Jesus’ sake he was washed, he was cleansed, he was sanctified, he was justified; he would fear no evil, for God was with him, and underneath were the everlasting arms.’112 Farrar

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was born into an Evangelical family; his father was a missionary, and he was educated at Cambridge under the influence of Evangelical contemporaries. As well as an Anglican cleric, he was a successful educator, master of Harrow, headmaster at Marlborough College and an author. His diverse writings included biblical criticism, theological essays, historical romances, and children’s tales such as Eric and St. Winifred’s, depicting boarding-­ school life in Victorian England. According to Norman Vance, twenty years after the publication of Eric, it was Maurice’s Christian socialism, liberal theology, and his doubts over eternal punishment that ‘alerted Farrar to questions, modified his inherited Evangelical outlook, and influenced [his] Westminster Abbey sermons, published as Eternal Hope (1878)’.113 Farrar eventually came to adopt Maurice’s views on Christian universalism. In a series of sermons in 1877, he lambasted the ‘eternal conscious torment theory’114of Calvinist theology and accused it of rejecting God’s love, mercy, and justice. He eschewed Aquinas’s view that ‘The bliss of the saved may be all the more keen because they are permitted to gaze upon the punishment of the wicked.’ He coined this view ‘abominable fancy’115 and stated that he could not accept Augustine’s teaching wherein un-baptised infants would be among the damned.116 Concerned that the publication of Eternal Hope might prompt renewed controversy, Edward Pusey responded to it in 1880 with his essay, What Is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment?117 Although Pusey agreed with Farrar that there might be no firm ground for believing that the majority of humanity was eternally damned, nor, he argued, could it be asserted precisely who was saved. If it was challenging enough for Victorians to reach any consensus on definitions of Hell, the doctrine of Heaven was equally indeterminate. Most historians agree that, by the end of the century, there remained no precise understanding concerning Heaven, although significant shifts were perceptible.118 In Heaven: A History, Colleen McDannell and Bernard Lang suggest a mid-Victorian transition from the traditional theocentric view that Heaven was ‘a restful place for psalm-singing saints, engaged in an eternity of worship,’ to two quite different anthropocentric models.119 The first reflected the Victorian work ethic, contempt for idleness, and idea of progress, where Heaven was perceived as a physical place where continuous growth and activity might occur. Such was the view of the Evangelical preacher, Charles Spurgeon, who declared that Heaven was: ‘A place of uninterrupted service … a land where they serve God day and

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night in his temple, and never know weariness, and never require to slumber. Do you know dear friends the deliciousness of work?’120 The second model portrayed Heaven as a happy homecoming and a heavenly reunion with loved ones in the hereafter. For many middle-class Victorians, the doctrine of the resurrection of the soul was blissfully optimistic, promising reunion with family and loved ones in a heavenly domestic parlour not dissimilar from the earthly one from which they had just departed. 121 Artistic, speculative, and literary readings of this notion of Heaven as a perfected home were ubiquitous in Victorian culture. As Rowell noted in Robert Bickersteth’s The Recognition of Friends in Heaven: a symposium (1866) enquires: ‘Reader, have you a little white-­ robed warbler in the celestial choir? Are you content to see his face no more forever? If you die in your present unregenerate state, where your child is, you can never come.’122 Even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert took a particular interest in the notion of Heaven as a domestic home. According to Rowell, in the six months before Prince Albert’s death, ‘[he] and the Queen had read a book together called Heaven Our Home. It depicted Heaven as an “etherealised, luminous, material habitation”, where there would be a reunion of friends in the future state and that those already departed were much concerned with those still on earth.123 Similarly, in her 1879 memoir, Catherine Tait reflected on the death of her two daughters: ‘Should I take the choice upon myself, and crave at any cost the life of this sweet child now so precious to us? I thought of the home in Heaven to which Chatty and Susan were gone, and then I thought of the very brightest home I might hope to secure for this little lamb on earth. If her Home in Heaven was ready, should I wish to keep her here? No.’124 Throughout the century, therefore, Heaven was described in many and various ways, both physical and spiritual, bodily and celestial, and a happy homecoming. The problem of defining the future state after death was neatly summarised by Lucy Sharpe, writing to her aunt, Lucy Smith in 1862 on the assortment of epitaphs in a country churchyard: ‘One can hardly walk through a village churchyard and see the various epitaphs, without feeling that few people have a very definite idea of the resurrection—some say their friends are now with God—some that their spirits only are there, some that body and soul await the sound of the last trumpet here below. And it seems to me that the form and manner of our last change is one of the subjects that our heavenly Father has left undefined, that each child should adopt that view most consoling to his spirit.’125

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Concluding Reflections Heaven or Hell? A mansion of eternal bliss or eternity spent in a fiery furnace? The consensus of most literary and religious scholars is that by the end of the century, the Evangelical predilection for a graphic, uncompromising, ‘Hell-fire’ doctrine of eschatology was diminishing. Theological debates on Christian Universalism and the perceived immorality and uncivilised nature of the doctrine of eternal punishment helped to erode such extreme views. Even Martha Sherwood, who, at the beginning of her writing career, exhorted parents to encourage their children to view corpses for their spiritual edification, moderated her theological views in later years. This was due arguably not only to her own experience of suffering through the loss of her children and beloved husband but also to the moderation of her original Calvinist theology. Her change of heart and surprising theological shift apparently alienated her from many of her more inflexible Evangelical friends and social networks. When she died on 20 September 1851, no clergyman was summoned to her deathbed.126 The contrasting eschatological perspectives across the theological spectrum exemplify the nebulousness of Evangelicalism through the diverse children’s literature readings of heaven, hell, death, and judgement, which this chapter has sought to illustrate. That such deeply traumatising subjects were considered appropriate for a juvenile readership may appear strange to a modern mindset, but death was never the taboo subject for the Victorians that it is for contemporary culture. After all, for the Evangelical children’s author, death, what might be expected and how best to meet it, was the natural concomitant of life. There is beyond the sky, A Heaven of joy and love And holy children when they die, Go to that world above There is a dreadful Hell, And everlasting pains Where sinners must with Devils dwell In darkness fire and chains. Isaac Watts 127

After 200 years, what relevance could research on this deluge of nineteenth-­ century Evangelical children’s literature possibly have for today? In the following brief epilogue, I outline more recent scholarship that is being conducted on theology and childhood which I believe is only

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just materialising and yet could amount to new and revelatory theological conversations.

Notes 1. Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness: Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. 1976). p. 48. 2. Rowell, Geoffrey. Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the NineteenthCentury Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). p. 31. 3. Jalland, Patricia. Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). p. 18. 4. Walker, D.  P. The Decline of Hell; Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). p. 36. 5. Ibid., 35. The notion of the elect derives from the Matthean passages 7:14; 20:16 and 22:14 ‘strait is the gate and narrow is the way’, ‘many are called, but few are chosen’. 6. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. and Farrer, Austin. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, Part 1. Para 17. Trans. E. M. Huggard. See Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17147 accessed 1 June 2021. 7. Horbery, Matthew. An Enquiry Into the Scripture-Doctrine Concerning the Duration of Future Punishment: In Which the Texts of the New Testament, Relating to This Subject, Are Considered; and the Doctrine, Drawn from Them Alone, Is Shewn to Be Consistent with Reason. Occasion’d by Some Late Writings, and Particularly Mr. Whiston’s Discourse of HellTorments (Oxford: James Fletcher, 1744). p. 207. 8. Bayle, Pierre. Oeuvres diverses de M. Pierre Bayle,… (La Haye: P. Husson, 1727). Tome III: 1077. Roman Catholics in Bayle’s day did not number un-baptised infants along with the damned, however, instead they placed them in a state of Limbo, thus they would not suffer eternal torment but would only be deprived of the beatific vision. Therefore, they could legitimately be numbered within the kingdom of God and dramatically increase the populace of Heaven. See also Walker, The Decline of Hell; Seventeenth-­ Century Discussions of Eternal Torment, p. 37. 9. Walker (1964, p. 4). 10. Ibid. 11. Rowell (1974, p. 30). See also Huber, Marie. The World Unmask’d …To which is added. The State of Souls separated from their Bodies (English Translation London, 1736) cited in Walker, 1964, p. 41. 12. Rowell (1974, p. 42).

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13. Wheeler, Michael. Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). p. 191. 14. Colenso, John William. Ten Weeks in Natal: A Journal of a First Tour of Visitation among the Colonists and Zulu Kafirs of Natal (Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1855). p. 252. 15. Rowell (1974, p. 118). 16. Parker, John William. Essays and Reviews (London: J.W.  Parker, 1860). p. 205. 17. Rowell (1974, p.  120). And see also Pusey to Tait 25 June 1863 Tait MSS. 80/109 18. Brock, M. G. and Curthoys, M. C. The History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth-Century Oxford (Oxford University Press, 1997). p. 708. 19. Rowell (1974, p. 120). 20. Ibid., p. 93. 21. Pusey MSS. Pusey to Maria Barker, 20 Sept 1827. 22. Rowell (1974, p. 94). 23. Keble, John. A Litany of Our Lord’s Warnings (for the Present Distress): With Suggestions for the Use of It (John Henry and James Parker, 1864). 24. Rowell, 1974, p. 121. 25. Ibid., p. 122. 26. See Plotz, Judith. ‘Literary Ways of Killing a Child: The 19th Century Practice’ in Nikolajeva, Maria. Aspects and Issues in the History of Children’s Literature (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995). 27. See Key, Marie Franzos Ellen. The Century of the Child (London: G.P.  Putnam& Sons, 1909). See The Internet Archive http://archive. org/details/centurychild00frangoog accessed 20 April 2021. 28. Krupp, Anthony. Reason’s Children: Childhood in Early Modern Philosophy (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2009). p. 15. 29. See the Gospels of Matthew 18:3; Mark 9:36; Luke 9:46. 30. Avery, Gillian. and Reynolds, Kimberley. Representations of Childhood Death (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). 31. Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). p. 651. Grylls, David. Guardians and Angels: Parents and Children in Nineteenth-Century Literature (London; Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978). 32. Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 33. Jalland, 2000. See Chapter Six, ‘That Little Company of Angels’. 34. Knight, Mark. Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). p. 50. 35. Rowell (1974, p. 12). 36. Ibid.

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37. Ibid., p. 7. 38. Avery, Gillian and Reynolds, Kimberley (2000, p. 2). 39. See A. C. Tait’s journal on the deaths of his children, 1856, Tait Papers, vol.39, fos. 1–28. 40. Jalland (2000, p. 138). 41. Ibid., p. 135. 42. Ibid., p. 139. 43. Ibid., 44. Ibid., p. 139. 45. Plotz (1995. p. 2). 46. Plotz (1995. p. 3). 47. See the The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Poetical Works, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This verse has resonances with the Bible verse: ‘For I say unto you that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven’—Matt. xviii, 10. https://www.gutenberg. org/files/33363/33363-­h/33363-­h.htm#ISOBELS_CHILD accessed 01/12/21. 48. Stone, Marjorie. ‘Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806–1861)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ‘Barrett Browning began writing at the age of six years; her early poems comprise one of the largest collections extant of juvenilia by any English writer. At the age of fifteen she was diagnosed with a debilitating illness causing head and spinal pain; after receiving several tortuous treatments which included the use of setons (passing thread or tape on a needle through folds of skin) she succumbed to an addiction to opiates which, some have argued, heightened her imagination, and thus enhanced her poetic skills. She married Robert Browning in 1846 in secret, for fear of her father’s disapproval, Robert was six years her junior, tragically her father disowned her, refused to reply to her letters and never spoke to her again. The Brownings went to live in Italy and after a series of miscarriages Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Robert Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Despite her illness she led an eventful life but became increasingly frail and died in 1861 in Florence.’ 49. Lerner, Laurence. Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997). p. 20. 50. Montefiore, Alan. Philosophy in France Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). p. 193. 51. See Archibald Campbell Tait et al., Catharine and Craufurd Tait, Wife and Son of Archibald Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury; a Memoir (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1880). Prentiss, Elizabeth and Prentiss, George Lewis. The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss (New York: A. D. F. Randolph & Company, 1882).

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52. Lerner (1997, p. 129). 53. Avery and Reynolds (2000, p. 122). 54. Gray, William. Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R.L. Stevenson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008). p. 5. 55. Gray (2008, p. 5). 56. McGavran, James Holt. Romanticism and Children’s Literature in Nineteenth-Century England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). p.  169. Demographics reveal that the number of children in Britain doubled between 1750 and 1850 from 3,600,000 to 7,300,000 and that the infant mortality rate fell from the mid-eighteenth century from 1750 when one in three infants died to 1850 when one in six infants died and in 1950 when one in thirty died. See also Barker, T.  C and Drake, Michael. Population and Society in Britain, 1850–1980 (New York: New York University Press, 1982). p. 39. 57. Knight, Mark. and Mason, Emma. Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature, p. 50. extract from The Soul’s Welfare (1850). Vol 1. p. 82. 58. Wordsworth, William. Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (Boston, MA: D. Lothrop and company, 1884). 59. McGavran (2009. p. 171). Chapman was said to bear a noticeable resemblance to Elizabeth Fry ‘That this likeness was also in her mind is attested by the “genius for benevolence” which she inherited from her ancestress, and by the tenderness of her affection and pity for all sufferers … as ordained to “a sort of natural priesthood.”’ 60. Meynell, Wilfrid. Patmore, Coventry Kersey Dighton. and Thompson, Francis. The Child Set in the Midst by Modern Poets: And He Took a Little Child and Set Him in the Midst of Them (London: Leadenhall Press; New York: Scribner, 1892). p. 2. 61. Ibid., p.2. 62. Hunt, Peter. Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). p. 19. 63. Janeway, James. A Token for Children: being an exact account of the conversion, holy and exemplary lives, and joyful deaths, of several young children (London: Religious Tract Society, 1863). p. 4. 64. Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965). p. 88. 65. Bratton, J. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble, 1981). p. 35. 66. Kinnell, Margaret. Publishing for Children 1700–1780  in Children’s Literature An Illustrated History, Peter Hunt (Ed) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). p. 28.

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67. Watts, Isaac. The Improvement of the Mind, with A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youths, (London: T. Nelson, 1856). p. 215. 68. See Munby, G.  F. W. ‘Richmond, Legh (1772–1827)’, Rev Clare L.  Taylor, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 69. See Altick, Richard. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). p.  101. See also Jones, William. The Jubilee Memorial of the Religious Tract Society (1850) cited in Quinlan, Maurice. Victorian Prelude, a History of English Manners, 1700–1830 (Hamden Connecticut: Archon Books, 1965). p. 124. 70. See Munby (2004). 71. Jay (1979, p. 156). 72. Grimshawe, Thomas Shuttleworth. A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond, (New York: G. & C. & H. Carvill 1829). p. 204. 73. See Munby (2004). 74. Richmond, Legh. The Funeral of the Dairyman’s Daughter: Being the Fifth Part of Her History. (London: Printed and sold by J. Evans & Son, sold also by F. Collins, 60, Paternoster Row and by J. Nisbet, 15, Castlestreet, Oxford-Street., 1817). p. 112. 75. Wesley, John. Wesley, Charles. and Osborn, George. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley: Reprinted from the Originals, with the Last Corrections of the Authors; Together with the Poems of Charles Wesley Not before Published (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1868). p. 193. 76. Richmond, Legh. The Dairyman’s Daughter (London: Religious Tract Society, 1814). 77. See Munby (2004). 78. Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Mrs Sherwood and Her Books for Children: A Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). p. 53. 79. Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels, p. 65. Charlesworth followed up its success with Ministering Children, a Sequel (1867). 80. Ibid., p. 66. 81. Ibid., p. 56. 82. Ministering Children, 1867, Chapter XV. 83. Lerner, 1997. p. 204. See also Francis Jacox, ‘About Goody Children’, Temple Bar, August 1868. 84. Avery and Reynolds (2000, p. 171). 85. Charlesworth, Maria Louisa. Ministering Children: A Sequel (London: S.W. Partridge, 1866), Preface.

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86. Darton, F. J. H. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed. (Cambridge & New  York; Cambridge University Press, 1932). p. 225. 87. Sinclair, Catherine. Holiday House: A Book for the Young (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1826). p. 252. 88. Juliet Barker, ‘Wilson, William Carus (1791–1859)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 89. Cutt (1979, p. 45). 90. Juliet Barker (2004). 91. In the year of Jane Eyre’s publication Carus Wilson reportedly took legal advice with a view to suing for defamation but desisted on receiving a letter of explanation and apology from the author. See article by Ian Herbert “Revealed: why Brocklehurst’s inspiration threatened to sue Brontë”. In The Independent (London: 25 May 2006). By contrast, the Evangelical author Emma Jane Worboise, who also attended the school in the 1840s, remembered Wilson as a kind, sincere, and generous man. 92. See Avery, Gillian (1965). 93. Avery (1965, p. 215). 94. Ibid., p. 215. 95. See The Children’s Friend 3 No: 33 (September 1826), p. 209. 96. Laqueur, Thomas. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working-Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). p. 117. 97. A member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, a Roman Catholic order specializing in preaching and missionary work, founded in Italy in 1732. 98. See Barry, A. ‘John Furniss’. In The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909). 99. Lecky, W. E. H. History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869) Vol ii, p. 237. 100. Furniss, J. The Sight of Hell (Baltimore: Kelly & Piet, 1864), Book 9. 101. Rowell (1974, p. 172). 102. Rowell (1974, p. 173). 103. Ibid. 104. Sharp, John. ‘Juvenille Holiness: Catholic Revivalism among Children in Victorian Britain’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35, no. No: 2 (April 1984). pp. 220–238. 105. See Samuel Boland, Early Redemptorist Missions in England, and Ireland (1848–1865). https://www.santalfonsoedintorni.it/Spicilegium/33/ SH-­33-­1985(II)283-320.pdf. Accessed 01.12.21. Furniss undertook over 100 missions in England and Ireland the vast majority were for children.

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106. Ibid., and also Livius, Thomas. Father Furniss and His Work for Children (London; Leamington: Art and Book Co., 1896). 107. See Avery and Reynolds, 2000, p. 98. And also Cameron, Lucy Lyttelton. The Warning Clock, Or, The Voice of the New Year (London: Houlston and Sons, 1823). 108. Mortimer, Favell Lee. The Peep of Day: Or, A Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind Is Capable of Receiving (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1835). p. 174. 109. Sherwood (1822, p. 292). 110. See Grylls (1978), Chapter 1. 111. See, for example Vance, Norman. Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 112. Farrar, Frederic. Eric or Little by Little A Tale of Roslyn School (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black North Bridge, 1858). p. 298. 113. Vance, Norman. ‘Farrar, Frederic William (1831–1903)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 114. Farrar, Frederic William. Eternal Hope (New York, E.  P. Dutton & Company, 1878). 115. Henle, Thomas and R.  J. The Treatise on law: being Summa theologiae, I-II. QQ. 90 through 97 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993). 116. Farrar, Eternal Hope, p. 66. 117. Pusey, Edward Bouverie. and Farrar, Frederic William. What Is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment? In Reply to Dr Farrar’s Challenge in His ‘Eternal Hope,’ 1879 (Oxford: James Parker & Co. 1880). 118. See Jalland, 2000, p.  265.; McDannell, Colleen. and Lang, Bernhard. Heaven: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Rowell (1974), Wheeler (1994). 119. McDannell and Lang (1988, p. 277 & p. 287). 120. Ibid., 279. Spurgeon, C.  H. Spurgeon’s Expository Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1951). Vol:8. p. 424. 121. Jalland (2000, p. 266). 122. See Rowell, 1974, p.  9. And also, Bickersteth, Robert J.  B & Owen, J. W. The Recognition of Friends in Heaven (London: J. Nisbett & Co, 1866), p. 308. 123. Rowell (1974, pp. 9–10). 124. Benham, W. (Ed.) Catharine and Craufurd Tait: A Memoi (London: Macmillan & Co.,1879), p. 327. 125. Sharpe, Lucy. cited in Jalland (2000, p. 269).

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126. Dawson, Janis. ‘Martha Sherwood’, in Khorana, Ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography, p. 280. 127. Watts, Isaac. Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language, for the Use of Children (New York: Printed and sold by Seward and Williams, 1810). Song XI Heaven and Hell (1715).

Bibliography Altick, Richard. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Avery, Gillian. and Reynolds, Kimberley. Representations of Childhood Death (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Avery, Gillian. Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780–1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965). Barker, T. C and Drake, Michael. Population and Society in Britain, 1850–1980 (New York: New York University Press, 1982). Barry, A. ‘John Furniss’. The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909). Bayle, Pierre. Oeuvres Diverses de M.  Pierre Bayle (La Haye: P.  Husson, 1727). Tome III. Benham, W. (Ed.) Catharine and Craufurd Tait: A Memoir (London: Macmillan & Co.,1879). Bickersteth, Robert J.  B & Owen, J.  W. The Recognition of Friends in Heaven (London: J. Nisbett & Co, 1866). Boland, Samuel. Early Redemptorist Missions in England and Ireland (1848–1865). Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness: Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. 1976). Bratton, J. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (London: Barnes & Noble, 1981). Brock, M.  G. and Curthoys, M.  C. The History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth-Century Oxford (Oxford University Press, 1997). Cameron, Lucy Lyttelton. The Warning Clock, Or The Voice of the New Year (London: Houlston and Sons, 1823). Charlesworth, Maria Louisa. Ministering Children: A Sequel (London: S.W. Partridge, 1866). Colenso, John William. Ten Weeks in Natal: A Journal of a First Tour of Visitation among the Colonists and Zulu Kafirs of Natal (Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1855). Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Mrs Sherwood and Her Books for Children: A Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). Darton, F. J. H. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, 3rd ed. (Cambridge & New York; Cambridge University Press, 1932).

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Darwin, Charles. & Barlow, Nora. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882: With Original Omissions Restored (New York: Norton, 1969). Farrar, Frederic William. Eternal Hope (New York, E. P. Dutton & Company, 1878). Farrar, Frederic. Eric or Little by Little A Tale of Roslyn School (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black North Bridge, 1858). Furniss, J. The Sight of Hell (Baltimore: Kelly & Piet, 1864). Gray, William. Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald and R. L. Stevenson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008). Grimshawe, Thomas Shuttleworth. A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond, (New York: G. & C. & H. Carvill, 1829). Grylls, David. Guardians and Angels: Parents and Children in Nineteenth-Century Literature (London; Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978). Henle, Thomas and R.  J. The Treatise on law: being Summa Theologiae, I-II. QQ. 90–97 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993). Horbery, Matthew. An Enquiry Into the Scripture-Doctrine Concerning the Duration of Future Punishment: In Which the Texts of the New Testament, Relating to This Subject, Are Considered; and the Doctrine, Drawn from Them Alone, Is Shewn to Be Consistent with Reason. Occasion’d by Some Late Writings, and Particularly Mr. Whiston’s Discourse of Hell-Torments (Oxford: James Fletcher, 1744). Huber, Marie. The World Unmask’d …To which is added. The State of Souls separated from their Bodies (English Translation London, 1736). Hunt, Peter. Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History (Oxford; New  York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Jalland, Patricia. Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Janeway, James. A Token for Children: being an exact account of the conversion, holy and exemplary lives, and joyful deaths, of several young children (London: Religious Tract Society, 1863). Jones, William. The Jubilee Memorial of the Religious Tract Society (1850) cited in Quinlan, Maurice. Victorian Prelude, a History of English Manners 1700–1830 (Hamden Connecticut: Archon Books, 1965). Keble, John. A Litany of Our Lord’s Warnings (for the Present Distress): With Suggestions for the Use of It (John Henry and James Parker, 1864). Key, Marie Franzos Ellen. The Century of the Child (London: G.P.  Putnam& Sons, 1909). Kinnell, Margaret. Publishing for Children 1700–1780 in Children’s Literature An Illustrated History, Peter Hunt (Ed) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Knight, Mark. Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Krupp, Anthony. Reason’s Children: Childhood in Early Modern Philosophy (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2009).

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Laqueur, Thomas. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture 1780–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). Lecky, W. E. H. History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (New York: D Appleton & Company, 1869). Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. and Farrer, Austin. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, Part 1. Para 17. Trans. E. M. Huggard. Lerner, Laurence. Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997). Livius, Thomas. Father Furniss and His Work for Children (London; Leamington: Art and Book Co., 1896). MacFadden Jnr. Frederick Rankin. ‘Favell Lee Mortimer’ in Meena Khorana. Ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale, 1996). McDannell, Colleen. and Lang, Bernhard. Heaven: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). McGavran, James Holt. Romanticism and Children’s Literature in Nineteenth-­ Century England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). Meynell, Wilfrid. Patmore, Coventry Kersey Dighton. and Thompson, Francis. The Child Set in the Midst by Modern Poets: And He Took a Little Child and Set Him in the Midst of Them (London: Leadenhall Press; New York: Scribner, 1892). Montefiore, Alan. Philosophy in France Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Mortimer, Favell Lee. The Peep of Day: Or A Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind Is Capable of Receiving (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1835). Parker, John William. Essays and Reviews (London: J. W. Parker, 1860). Plotz, Judith. ‘Literay Ways of Killing a Child: The 19th Century Practice’ in Nikolajeva, Maria. Aspects and Issues in the History of Children’s Literature (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995). Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Prentiss, Elizabeth. and Prentiss, George Lewis. The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss (New York: A. D. F. Randolph & Company, 1882). Pusey, Edward Bouverie. and Farrar, Frederic William. What Is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment? In Reply to Dr Farrar’s Challenge in His ‘Eternal Hope,’ 1879 (Oxford: James Parker & Co. 1880). Richmond, Legh. The Dairyman’s Daughter (London: Religious Tract Society, 1814). Richmond, Legh. The Funeral of the Dairyman’s Daughter: Being the Fifth Part of Her History. (London: Printed and sold by J.  Evans & Son, sold also by F.  Collins, 60, Paternoster Row and by J.  Nisbet, 15, Castle-street, Oxford-­ Street., 1817).

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Rowell, Geoffrey. Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). Sharp, John. ‘Juvenille Holiness: Catholic Revivalism among Children in Victorian Britain’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35, no. No: 2 (April 1984). pp. 220–238. Sinclair, Catherine. Holiday House: A Book for the Young (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1826). Spurgeon, C. H. Spurgeon’s Expository Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1951). Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). Stone, Marjorie. ‘Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806–1861)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Tait, Archibald Campbell. Catharine and Craufurd Tait, Wife and Son of Archibald Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury; a Memoir (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1880). The Children’s Friend 3 No: 33 (September 1826). Vance, Norman. ‘Farrar, Frederic William (1831–1903)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Vance, Norman. Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Walker, D.  P. The Decline of Hell; Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). Watts, Isaac. Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language, for the Use of Children (New York: Printed and sold by Seward and Williams, 1810). Watts, Isaac. The Improvement of the Mind, with A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youths (London: T. Nelson, 1856). Wesley, John. Wesley, Charles. and Osborn, George. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley: Reprinted from the Originals, with the Last Corrections of the Authors; Together with the Poems of Charles Wesley Not before Published (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1868). Wheeler, Michael. Heaven, Hell, and the Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Wordsworth, William. Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (Boston: D. Lothrop and company, 1884).

CHAPTER 7

Epilogue: Contextualising Theology and Childhood Today: A Developing Field of Theological Scholarship

This multi-disciplinary study has argued from evidence that there was a substantial body of Evangelical children’s literature published throughout the long nineteenth century that has yet to be explored by scholars of theology, women’s history, ecclesiastical history, children’s literature, and sociology. Although research juxtaposing theology and childhood studies has begun to emerge in recent years, the scope and scale of the vast corpus of children’s literary theology and its writers, merely touched on in this particular study, is a testament in itself of the infinite possibilities for further exploration. In this book, I have attempted to demonstrate that Evangelical authors and the texts they produced specifically for children in this period, emerged as a highly significant and prolific phenomenon. The authors’ courageous attempts to navigate generations of children and parents through the heterogenous and often traumatic experiences of living through the nineteenth century’s social, political, and ecclesial upheavals via the medium of the printed word, had both positive and negative results. Since many of the texts are still available including in digitised format, the legacy of Evangelical authors and publishers continues as a rich source, to support historical and theological research today. Within academia, theology and childhood is a developing field but as Marcia Bunge highlighted, current literature still lacks a full account of past theological perspectives on childhood.1 The origins of historical scholarship on childhood vis-à-vis theology are often traced back to the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. E. Smale, Women, Theology and Evangelical Children’s Literature, 1780–1900, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19028-5_7

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work of the eminent theologian Karl Rahner (1904–1984), hailed arguably as the most significant Roman Catholic theologian of the twentieth century. As Mary Ann Hinsdale has highlighted, Rahner’s theology had a remarkable influence on the paradigm shift witnessed during the 1950s in modern Catholic thought.2 His substantive contribution to theological reflections on childhood can be found in, Ideas for a Theology of Childhood (1971)3 whereby he pursued questions such as: ‘In the intention of the Creator and Redeemer of children what meaning does childhood have, and what task does it lay upon us for the perfecting and saving of humanity?’4 Rahner focused on what he perceived as the ‘unsurpassable value of childhood’ and sought to interpret its meaning through a holistic understanding of Scripture and tradition, drawing on anthropological, spiritual, and eschatological dimensions. Rahner perceived childhood not simply as a developmental phase in which all human beings grow out of as it dissipates into oblivion and individuals move onto the next stage in life, but rather all that is experienced in childhood is gathered up and carried throughout life. As a result, his ground-breaking ‘theology of childhood’ has become increasingly regarded as inspirational by theologians from diverse faith traditions seeking to explore the creative interconnections between childhood, theology, and spirituality.5 However, this study also argues that the origins of theological reflection on childhood can be traced much further back than Rahner’s investigations, to the deluge of child-oriented Christian literature, authors and practitioners that emerged in the nineteenth century referred to by Richard Altick and explored throughout this research. This period was frequently acknowledged as a watershed for the innovative exploration of new theological concepts. David Ford, for example, has pointed to the nineteenth century as a period of profound theological creativity and crises, which, in turn, paved the way for new, ground-breaking theological developments in the twentieth century.6 For example, the marginalisation of women and women’s forgotten voices over the centuries inspired the advancement of Christian feminist theologies.7 Similarly, the distorted historical and theological binary representations of children as either angels or demons have spawned the development of re-imagining childhood as a significant and more nuanced arena of historical and spiritual enquiry.8 It is the aim of this study to challenge such distortions by shedding new light on the vast production of children’s literary theology and the themes and ideas conveyed through that deluge of literature, including not least the Church’s response

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particularly through the authorship of innumerable creative, pioneering, and proactive women. Within nascent theological research, several leading developments in the field of theology and childhood have transpired that explore the difference between how childhood has been shaped by historic theologies and equally important what scholars and practitioners can learn about theology through the experience of childhood. By way of example, I briefly outline below how these recent developments are pertinent for theological study today. Throughout human history, storytelling and play have always served as an essential and influential role for shaping both child and adult development. The pedagogical, reflective work of Sophia Cavalletti (1917–2011), who originated The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd,9 and the work of American Episcopal priest Jerome Berryman who initiated the child-­ centred method of ‘Godly Play’, 10 created storytelling methodologies for children that have also proved illuminating for scholars and practitioners. Both Cavalletti’s and Berryman’s methods focused on ‘the child as theologian’ or ‘children doing theology’, allowing children creative and imaginative space in which to offer their own theological insights rather than simply absorbing adult ideals uncritically. Unlike their historic predecessors, children are allowed the freedom albeit through a process of imagining, wondering, and questioning, the meaning of biblical narratives and their practical applications for the spiritual life today.11 In Chap. 5 of this study on the subject of biblical authority, examples were presented on children’s adherence to and their perceptions of biblical narratology, with interpretations of the texts prescribed by adult mentors. However, in the Gospel of Luke chapter two, Jesus is portrayed as a twelve-year-old boy, having spent three days in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, not only listening to them, but posing perceptive questions. As a consequence of the above methodologies, discursive treatments of a theology of play within Christian thought and practice, have observed both children and adults wondering, questioning, and experimenting with biblical accounts. Thus, the importance of biblical narratology, creativity and the exploration of imaginative play has been found expedient as a theologising tool.12 ‘The Child Theology Movement’13 has also emerged to inform scholars about new ways of studying childhood, theology, mission, and praxis. The movement emanated from the international conference ‘Cutting Edge III’, where theologians and practitioners working with children within an

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ecclesial context posed over 200 theological questions and invited the conference to respond to the ways in which childhood experiences are not only shaped by, but also critique, theology. This concept is based on the biblical account of Jesus setting a child in the midst of his disciples who were debating about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of God.14 In the narrative, Jesus elevates the child as a paradigm, and in Chaps. 3 and 4 of this study I highlight both the child as exemplar and evangel portrayed in children’s literature. I am grateful to Jackie Horne’s fascinating research on emulation theory that has contributed to my train of thought and its relevance for Evangelical children’s literature.15 The Changing Childhood International Conference hosted by the University of Chichester, England facilitated further the explorations of scholarship on childhood and theology. The deliberate ambiguity of the conference title facilitated conversations around the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the United Nations ‘International Year of the Child’. Its aim was to celebrate the UN’s achievements in making changes of global magnitude to the lives of countless children over three decades. The valuable contribution that conceptualizations of children and childhood have made to theological discourse was explored in detail. It also facilitated a theological exploration of the changing state of the experience of childhood, historical conceptualisations of childhood, the Church’s ongoing contribution to changing and improving childhood through the advance of education, the Sunday School Movement and Church Schools all generously financially underwritten by Christian philanthropists. All of these developments indicate the vitality of theology and childhood studies in recent years. They also reflect the extensive revision and re-imagination since the 1960s of theology itself, not least the introduction of contextual theologies such as feminist, public, political, and child theologies. Therefore, this study is pertinent not only for the historical development of nineteenth-century children’s literary theology but also its spiritual legacy and its impact on succeeding generations. It identifies and breaks new ground in the historical origins across the wider spectrum now being explored in child theology, theologies of childhood, and the creators of theologies for children for which there are many bibliographic sources referenced throughout this study. It acts principally as a lens through which to critique the implicit and explicit construction of modified theologies in children’s literature and questions whether historically, children were simply passive recipients of such resolute teaching or active participants. It examines the socio-political effectiveness of the Church’s

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influence on the nation during the period 1780–1900, despite its many failures, its philanthropic benevolence is remarkable without which so many children’s lives would not have benefitted educationally or even survived. Time and space restrict us in studying the succeeding generations of these prolific authors their heirs and progeny. In what ways did their writing influence their own children and grandchildren and what became of them? 16 Doubtless, the offspring of the authors of the Evangelical Movement would have had their own personal fascinating versions to reveal. Cutt observes that Martha Sherwood’s family quietly found their niche back in the Established Church. Her only surviving son Henry Martyn, who was her inspiration for Henry Fairchild and Henry Milner was ordained into the Anglican Church and sustained his parish ministry longer than any other priest in the country at that time. Her daughter Sophia followed in her mother’s footsteps and engaged in writing, but it has been remarked that her work was inferior to her famous mother’s. Samuel, the brother of Maria Charlesworth was ordained and became rector of a parish in a deprived area of London. Both the Charlesworth and Tucker heirs continued to contribute to the Evangelical Movement through the Salvation Army. Two daughters of Samuel Charlesworth, Florence and Maud, became famous evangelists in their own right; Maud married and became Mrs Ballington-Booth. Florence was a talented musician and married an Anglican minister, she also became a popular novelist; her most famous work The Rosary reached a sale of 150,000 copies in its first year increasing to over 1,000,000 by 1921. While some of Dr Barnardo’s orphans wrote about their experience of childhood in the Cottage Homes, the RTS and the SPCK continued to supply free books to emigrants in schools, Sunday schools and libraries in overseas colonies. The original generation of Evangelical children’s authors were succeeded by more imaginative, artistic, and accomplished writers in the next century, enjoying a freedom of imaginative flair not permitted by their stricter forebears. Sunday reading continued to be popular until other more enticing distractions materialised, and Sunday observance declined. Of the several generations of children exposed to the deluge of Evangelical literary theology much more could be written. To date, my research has identified in excess of one hundred authors, countless titles, and an expansive range of theological themes. In fact, the subject of ‘Children’s Christian Literature’ across the literary, theological, and historical spectrum could quite easily sustain a set of capacious volumes on its

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broad and multifarious dimensions. And as Margaret Cutt has succinctly suggested, it is possible and profitable to recover something of the experience of nineteenth-century Christian authors and their young readers and to listen to ‘some smaller but no less authentic voices of the time’.17

Notes 1. Bunge, Marcia. The Child in Christian Thought. (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2001). 2. Bunge (2001, p. 413). 3. Rahner, Karl. Theological Investigations Volume VIII: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971). Trans: David John Bourke. 4. Ibid., p. 33 5. See Weber, Hans Ruedi. Jesus and the Children: Biblical Resources for Study and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979). Hay, David. The Spirit of the Child: Revised Edition (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006). Richards, Anne. Through the Eyes of a Child: New Insights in Theology from a Child’s Perspective (London: Church House Publishing, 2009). 6. Ford, David. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918., 3rd ed. (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005). p. 7. 7. See Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983); Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985); Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Daggers, Jenny. The British Christian Women’s Movement: a Rehabilitation of Eve (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002). 8. See Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Alfred A.  Knopf, 1962). De Mause, Lloyd. The History of Childhood. (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974). Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 9. Cavalletti, Sofia. The Religious Potential of the Child: 6 to 12 Year Old (Illinois: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Publications, 2002). Cavalletti lived in Rome, was a Roman Catholic, and a Hebrew scholar and was greatly influenced by the educational techniques of Maria Montessori.

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10. Berryman, Jerome W. Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach To Religious Education, 1st ed. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1999) and also the website: http://www.godlyplayfoundation.org. 11. Although this method has been criticised by those of a conservative tradition for its lack of explicit didacticism, it is becoming increasingly popular not only in areas of Christian Education but as a methodological tool for creative storytelling and explorations of the Christian metanarrative with people of all ages and cultures, including its more recent applications as a successful therapy for dementia patients. 12. See Berryman, Jerome. Teaching Godly Play: How to Mentor the Spiritual Development of Children (Denver: Morehouse Education Resources, 2009). Berryman helpfully cites the following scholars for a historical and theological overview of play. Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Play (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955). Lang, Bernhard. Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979). Miller, David L. Gods and Games: Towards a Theology of Play (New York: Harper Colophon, 1973). 13. See https://childtheologymovement.org/, accessed 31/08/22 14. See Willmer, Haddon. and White, Keith. Entry Point: Towards Child Theology with Matthew 18 (London: WTL Publications Ltd, 2015). 15. See Horne, Jackie. History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature (Abingdon: Ashgate Publishing, 2011). 16. I have drawn on Margaret Cutt’s chapter 11 for a brief overview of the succeeding generations. 17. Cutt. p. 187.

Bibliography Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). Berryman, Jerome W. Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach To Religious Education, 1st ed. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1999). Berryman, Jerome. Teaching Godly Play: How to Mentor the Spiritual Development of Children (Denver: Morehouse Education Resources, 2009). Bunge, Marcia. The Child in Christian Thought. (Michigan: Wm. B.  Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2001). Cavalletti, Sofia. The Religious Potential of the Child: 6 to 12 Year Old (Illinois: Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Publications, 2002). Daggers, Jenny. The British Christian Women’s Movement: a Rehabilitation of Eve (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002). De Mause, Lloyd. The History of Childhood. (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974).

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Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983). Ford, David. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918., 3rd ed. (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005). Hay, David. The Spirit of the Child: Revised Edition (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006). Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). Horne, Jackie. History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature (Abingdon: Ashgate Publishing, 2011). Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955). Lang, Bernhard. Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship (New Haven Conn: Yale University Press, 1979). Miller, David L. Gods and Games: Towards a Theology of Play (New York: Harper Colophon, 1973). Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Play (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Pollock, Linda A. Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Rahner, Karl. Theological Investigations Volume VIII: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971). Trans: David John Bourke. Richards, Anne. Through the Eyes of a Child: New Insights in Theology from a Child’s Perspective (London: Church House Publishing, 2009). Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983). Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985). Weber, Hans Ruedi. Jesus and the Children: Biblical Resources for Study and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979). Willmer, Haddon. and White, Keith. Entry Point: Towards Child Theology with Matthew 18 (London: WTL Publications Ltd, 2015).



Appendix

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Appendix

THE SPIRITUAL BAROMETER: A Scale of the Progress of Sin and of Grace ‘The Spiritual Barometer: A Scale of the Progress of Sin and Grace’ in the Evangelical Magazine 8 vols (London: T. Chapman, 1793–1800), 8 (1800): 526. See the Hathi Trust at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd. ah6lsd;view=1up;seq=556, accessed 15/12/21.

Index1

A Abbeychurch, 91 Activism, 40, 45, 116, 117, 159 Adair, Cecil, 53 Adams, Henry Cadwallader, 51 Adams, Sarah Fuller Flower, 56 Adams, William, 51 Agathos, 51, 116, 159–161 Aikin, John, 56 Altick, Richard. D., 1, 4, 5, 16, 21, 29n66, 36, 41, 63, 197, 222 Ariès, Philippe, 226n8 Arnold, Thomas, 18, 55 Atonement, 44, 45, 111, 112, 174 At the Back of the North Wind, 55, 97 Aunt Judy’s Magazine, 117, 118, 173 Avery, Gillian, 11–14, 28n47, 84, 95, 190, 202

B Ballantyne, Robert Michael, 56, 134, 135 Balleine, George Reginald, 65n7, 141n80 Baptists, 41, 44, 47, 53, 54, 113, 151, 162 Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, 11, 56, 85, 178n36 Baroness Herbert of Lea, 59 Barruel, Abbé, 78 Bayle, Pierre, 187, 209n8 Bebbington, David W., 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 79, 115, 116 Benson, Edward White, 156, 192 Berquin, Arnaud, 84, 102n47 Berryman, Jerome, 223, 227n12 Biblical authority, 2, 9, 19–21, 24, 40, 61, 126, 136, 149–176, 223 Biblical narratology, 152–158, 223

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

1

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INDEX

Bickerstaffe-Drew, Francis Browning, 88 Bickersteth, Edward, 44 Bickersteth, Robert, 207 Booth, William, 54, 173, 200 The Boy’s Own Paper, 55, 64, 134 Bradley, Ian, 43 Bratton, Josephine, 6, 12, 16, 93, 135, 161 Brenda (Georgina Castle Smith), 50, 92 British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), 55, 60, 63, 64, 87 Brontë, Charlotte, 94, 130, 153, 201, 214n91 Brown, Ford K., 116 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 55, 192, 193, 211n47, 211n48 Burder, George, 13, 55, 61 Burns, James, 57, 58 Burns and Oates, 57, 58 C Calvinist, 9, 11, 17, 28n30, 42, 87, 93, 96, 97, 114, 118, 201, 206, 208 Cameron, Lucy Lyttleton, 9, 10, 49, 157, 158, 178n37, 196, 204 Campbell, John, 13, 55 Carroll, Lewis, 55 Catechism, 7, 9, 17, 39, 151, 161 Catholic Truth Society (CTS), 57–59, 89 Cavalletti, Sofia, 223, 226n9 Chapman, Elizabeth Rachel, 195, 212n59 Charlesworth, Maria Louisa, 14, 15, 17, 49, 159, 199, 200, 225 Cheap Repository Tracts, 48, 49, 61, 76, 79 Child emigration, 21, 112, 132–135, 143n97 The Children’s Friend, 202, 203

Child Theology Movement, 223 Clapham Sect, 13, 48, 80, 167, 199 Clare, Austin, 50 Cliff, Philip B., 19, 23, 62, 152 Colenso, Bishop John William, 187 Coleridge, Christabel, 35 Cologan, William, 58, 59, 89 Congregationalists, 47, 53, 55, 61, 96, 193 Constable, Rosalind, 9, 154 Copley, Esther, 54, 114, 137n13, 162, 163 Corfield, Clara Lavinia, 50 Cunningham, Hugh, 5, 6 Cutt, Margaret Nancy, 12, 14, 15, 76, 83, 90, 98, 123, 129, 199, 201, 225, 226, 227n16 D The Dairyman’s Daughter, 53, 64, 197, 198 Darton, Harvey F. J., 8–12, 17, 27n22, 49, 114, 201 Darton, Thomas Gates, 49 Darton, William, 8, 70n69 Darwin, Charles, 37, 99n14, 130, 138n23, 170, 171, 185 Day, Thomas, 56, 83, 84 de Genlis, Madame, 84, 102n46 Deism, 78, 80, 98, 99n14 De Mause, Lloyd, 226n8 Demers, Patricia, 17, 23–24, 36, 115, 117, 167 Dickens, Charles, 15, 36, 55, 121, 130, 142n82, 200 A Dish of Orts, 97 Dissenting, 24, 37, 41, 47, 53, 54, 78, 85, 92, 94 Dixon, Emma, 52 Dodge, Mary Thurston, 50 Drabble, Margaret, 10 Drummond’s Tract Society, 60

 INDEX 

E Edgeworth, Maria, 11, 56, 84, 167 Eliot, George, 112 Elliott, Ruth, 53 Émile, 81–84 Emulation theory, 84, 102n43, 224 Enlightenment, 43, 56, 78, 81, 83, 86, 98, 113 Eric or Little by Little, 52, 205 Eschatology, 2, 19–22, 24, 46, 66n13, 174, 176, 185–189, 199, 200, 208 Evangelical Movement, 20, 22, 24, 37, 40–43, 46, 48, 59, 111, 150, 225 Everett-Green, Evelyn, 53 Ewing, Juliana, 49, 173

233

Grenby, Matthew Orville, 6, 77 Grylls, David, 190, 205 The Guardian of Education, 77, 78

F The Fairy Bower, 51, 93, 167 Farrar, Frederic William, 52, 205, 206 Farrer, Austin, 209n6 Fenn, Lady Ellenor, 11, 50 Field, E. M., 8–10, 56 Four last things, 40, 46, 185, 186, 197, 199, 201 French Revolution, 41, 75–81, 83, 86 Froggy’s Little Brother, 50, 92 Froude, J. A., 169, 173, 187 Fry, Caroline, 51 Furniss, John, 46, 59, 201, 203–205

H Hack, Maria, 49, 169 Hatchard, John, 70n69, 77 Hazard, Samuel, 70n69, 140n58 Heywood, Colin, 81 Hill, Rowland, 54, 61, 62, 114–118, 164 Hilton, Andrew Boyd, 40, 43, 44, 46 The History of Henry Milner, 83 The History of Sandford and Merton, 83, 84 The History of the Fairchild Family, 83, 114 Hocking, Silas Kitto, 53 Hodder, Edwin, 42 Holt, Emily Sarah, 52 Horbery, Matthew, 186 Horne, Jackie, 84, 120, 224 Houlston and Son. F., 60 Howatt, James Reid, 56 Howitt, Mary, 55 Hughes, Mary, 84 Hughes, Thomas, 18, 48, 52, 205 Hunt, Peter, 17, 18 Huxley, T. H., 112, 136n6, 170, 180n78 Hymns in Prose, 56, 85

G Gatty, Margaret, 49, 117, 118, 170–173 Genre theory, 36 Giberne, Agnes, 50 Gilmartin, Kevin, 21, 76, 77, 119, 120 Gray, William, 55, 95–97, 194 Green, Samuel Gosnell, 54, 61

J Jacobinism, 76–78 Jalland, Patricia, 192 Jane Eyre, 94, 153, 202, 214n91 Janeway, James, 196 Jay, Elisabeth, 38, 40, 41, 45, 67n38, 94, 95, 130, 165, 194 Jenner, Edward, 116, 117

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Jessica’s First Prayer, 14, 17, 89, 121–123 Joyful death, 22, 189, 205 K Keble, John, 51, 90, 91, 189 Kilner, Dorothy, 11, 84 Kingsley, Charles, 18, 48, 52, 96, 130–132, 173 Kingston, William Henry Giles, 132, 134 L A Lady of England (ALOE), 14, 15, 29n57, 50, 117, 129, 133, 164–166, 225 Laqueur, Thomas W., 23, 62, 203 Larsen, Timothy, 38, 149, 150 Leathley, Mary Elizabeth Southwell Dudley, 9 Lecky, W. E. H., 203 Le Fanu, Sheridan, 10 Lefeuvre, Amy, 50 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 186 Leslie, Emma, 52 Lewis, C. S., 55, 194 Literary theology, 18, 152, 161, 221, 222, 224, 225 Little Meg’s Children, 92 London Missionary Society (LMS), 55 Lyster, Annette, 52 M Macaulay, Zachary, 13, 48 MacDonald, George, 55, 95–97, 194 Mackarness, Matilda Anne, 52 Macmillan and Company, 35 Margaret Percival, 92 Marshall, Emma, 54

Maurice, F. D., 52, 96, 112, 118, 141n81, 187, 189, 206 Mayhew, Henry, 5 Methodist Book Room, 60 Methodists, 41, 44, 45, 47, 53, 54, 117, 122, 133, 161 Meynell, Wilfrid, 195 Ministering Children, 14, 49, 159, 199, 200 Molly’s Prayer, 59, 89 More, Hannah, 11, 13, 21, 48, 76, 77, 79, 80, 86, 87, 119, 153, 157, 163, 167, 199 Morgan, Sue, 25n5, 68n47 Mortimer, Favell Lee, 9, 49, 154, 155, 204 Mozley, Harriet Elizabeth, 51, 93, 94, 130, 166, 167 Muir, Percy H., 11, 155 Mullholland, Rosa (Lady Gilbert), 59 Myers, Mitzi, 39, 153 Mythopoeia, 96 N Natural theology, 82, 85, 169, 171, 172 Newman, John Henry, 51, 57, 58, 90, 93 Nikolajeva, Maria, 36 Nonconformist, 47, 53–57, 63, 91, 94–97 O Oates, Mother Mary Salome, 58 Oates, William Wilfrid, 58 Original Sin, 21, 44, 46, 81, 83, 111–116, 119, 124, 126, 131, 205 Ospringe, Emily, 84, 85

 INDEX 

P Paget, Francis Edward, 51 Paine, Thomas, 80, 86, 171 Paley, William, 85, 169, 172 Parker, John William, 210n16 Paull, Mrs Henry B, 51 Peck, Lillie, 53 The Peep of Day, 9, 49, 154 Personal Recollections, 86, 88 Philanthropy, 18, 116 Pinsent, Pat, 57, 89 Plotz, Judith, 189, 190, 192 Pollock, Linda A., 190 Potter, Frederick Scarlett, 51 Prentiss, Elisabeth, 193 Presbyterians, 47, 53, 56, 85 Priestley, Joseph, 56 Pseudonym, 14, 49, 50, 52, 53, 79, 87, 89, 121, 153, 164, 178n36, 197 Puritan, 8, 9, 43, 168, 196, 205 Pusey, Edward Bouverie, 90, 141n77, 171, 173, 188, 189, 206 Q Quakers, 10, 47, 49, 53–55, 70n69, 117, 154, 162, 169, 178n36 Queen Victoria, 57, 159, 207 R Rahner, Karl, 222 Reed, Talbot Baines, 55 Religious Tract Society (RTS), 9, 16, 50, 52, 54, 55, 60–62, 64, 80, 89, 96, 113, 114, 121, 134, 197, 225 Reward books, 13, 29n73, 38, 175 Richmond, Legh, 53, 64, 96, 197–199, 201 The Rights of Man, 80 Romanticist, 118, 136, 190, 194 Rosman, Doreen, 16

235

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 56, 81–84 Rowell, Geoffrey, 186, 188, 203, 207 S Sabbatarianism, 22, 79, 159, 163–167, 175 Salvation Army, 54, 225 Sandham, Elizabeth, 52 Sangster, Paul, 198 Sargent, George Eliel, 54, 113, 114 Sewell, Anna, 55 Sewell, Elizabeth Missing, 51, 92–94, 166, 167 Sewell, Mary Wright, 54, 55 Shaftesbury, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 42, 92, 121, 201 Sharpe, Lucy, 207 The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, 80 Sherwood, Mary Martha, 9–11, 45, 46, 48, 49, 60, 63, 67n40, 83, 114, 120, 123–129, 140n65, 156, 157, 163, 166, 178n36, 194, 196, 199, 205, 208, 225 Sidney, Edwin, 66n17 Sinclair, Catherine, 57, 200, 201 Smith, Sarah, see Stretton, Hesba (Smith, Sarah) Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 50–52 Soteriology, 2, 19–21, 24, 44, 111, 112, 126, 132, 136, 136n1, 190 Spence, Catherine Helen, 35 Spurgeon, Charles H., 44, 88, 151, 176n12, 206 Stone, Lawrence, 190 Stories Explanatory of the Church Catechism, 128 Storr, Vernon F., 44, 111, 150 Street Arab Tale, 16, 53, 58, 92, 120 Stretton, Hesba (Smith, Sarah), 14–17, 48, 53, 54, 89, 92, 117, 120–123, 134, 161

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INDEX

Sunday at Home, 64, 121 The Sunday Fairy, 12, 28n47 Sunday School Union (SSU), 51, 52, 54, 60, 62, 63, 134 T Tait, Archibald Campbell, 173, 188, 191, 192 Tait, Catherine, 193, 207 Tayler, Charles Benjamin, 53 Taylor, Ann, 11, 56 Taylor, Helen, 56 Taylor, Jane, 11, 56, 70n69 Temple, Crona, 50 Tennyson, Alfred, 55, 172, 173 Theology of childhood, 97, 132, 222 Thornton, Henry, 13, 48, 116 Tolkien, J. R. R., 55, 96 Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth Browne Phelan, 50, 77, 86–88, 158, 159 Tractarian, 24, 51, 57, 90, 91, 94, 95, 174, 175, 189 Tracts for the Times, 90, 141n77 Trimmer, Sarah, 6, 10, 11, 52, 77–79, 82, 83, 85 Trinitarian, 56, 126 Tucker, Charlotte Maria, see A Lady of England (ALOE) Typology, 132, 133, 164 U Unitarians, 47, 53, 56, 87, 99n14 Universalism, 95–97, 206 V Vaughan, Dr Herbert Alfred, 58, 59 Village Politics, 79, 80

W Wakefield, Priscilla, 11, 55 Walker, D. P., 186, 187 Wallbridge, Elizabeth, 198 Walton, Mrs O. F., 15, 50 The Water Babies, 37, 52, 96, 130, 132 Watts, Isaac, 8, 56, 196, 208 Webb-Peploe, Annie, 52 Wesley, Charles, 42 Wesley, John, 42, 60, 81, 115, 129, 149, 198 What Books to Lend and What to Give, 92 Wheeler, Michael, 66n13, 210n13, 215n118 Whitefield, George, 42, 201 Whittemore, William, 70n69 Wilberforce, Samuel, 6, 48, 51, 115, 159, 161, 170 Wilberforce, William, 13, 43, 48, 63, 80, 82, 113, 115, 116, 159, 160, 197 Wilde, Oscar, 200 Wilson, Carus, 49, 201–203, 205, 214n91 Wilson, Henry Bristow, 187–189 Wolffe, John, 38 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 11, 86 Woodd, Basil, 13 Worboise, Emma Jane, 55, 94, 95, 214n91 Wordsworth, William, 55, 195 Y Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 35, 48, 51, 90–95, 174 The Youth’s Magazine, 63