Outline for early history through the Victorian Era and into the Golden Age

I still have a few gaps (like between the 17th century and the 19th century/Victorian Era, and the Golden Age), but I will rectify that.

“Children’s books are here to be pulled to pieces.” Dr. Hoffmann, author of Struwwelpeter

Notes from: Illustrating Children’s Books: History, Technique, Production Henry C. Pitz, New York Watson-Guptill Publications 1963

Three Centuries of Children’s Books in Europe Bettina Hurlilmann, Translated and Edited by Brian W. Alderson, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York 1967

Once Upon A Time: Illustrations From Fairytales, Primers, Pop-Ups, and Other Children’s Books Amy Weinstein, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2005

And the online artice Picturing Childhood http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/special/childhood/pictur.htm


-Johannes Gutenberg developed the printing press around 1440

-Through the 15th to 17th and even into the 18th century, children were viewed as miniature adults.

-Hornbooks were one of the earliest forms of children’s education, originated in England in 1450
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornbook)
“In early childhood education, a hornbook was a primer for children consisting of a sheet containing the letters of the alphabet, mounted on wood, bone, or leather and protected by a thin sheet of transparent horn or mica. Sometimes the sheet was simply pasted against the slice of horn. The wooden frame often had a handle, and it was usually hung at the child's girdle. The sheet, which was first of vellum and later of paper, contained first a large cross, from which the horn-book was called the Christ Cross Row, or criss-cross-row. The alphabet in large and small letters followed. The vowels then formed a line, and their combinations with the consonants were given in a tabular form. The usual Trinitarian formula - "in the name of the Father and of the Sonne and of the Holy Ghost, Amen" - followed, then the Lord's Prayer, the whole concluding with the Roman numerals.”


Illustrating Children’s Books:
-Der Ritter vom Turn printed with woodcuts in Switzerland in 1493; then Caxton in England produced an illustrated Aesop in 1484 - Before Comenius

-Discussions of the origin of the children’s illustrated book begins with Bishop (John Amos) Comenius (1592-1670).
- “Disgusted with the pedantic instruction of his day, he instituted the idea of teaching language through pictures.”
- One of the first children’s picture books, “Orbis sensualium pictus” or “Visible World in Pictures.” printed in Nuremberg in 1658
- “One often quoted sentence of Comenius, ‘Pictures are the most intelligible books that children can look upon,” is certainly an age-old truth which has lost none of it’s luster.”

- 1665, volume of Aesop’s Fables engraved by Hollar, Stoops, and Barlow
-Wenzel Hollar was an accomplished etcher
-Francis Barlow could be called England’s first illustrator
-The volume was a little too fancy to really be a children’s book, and was only given to children on special occasions and not for general reading or learning

-The Puritans published a lot of very serious texts for the education of children
-Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”
-Crouch’s “The Young Man’s Calling” was a pirating of Puritan texts
-Chapbooks were sold on the street in Britain
-cheap, crude adventure and fairy tale stories with “gory happenings from history”
-not really intended for children

The Victorian Era 1837-1901

-From Once Upon a Time: “Illustrated children’s books flourished at a time when educational theories inspired by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and evolving concepts of childhood innocence took firm root in the growing American middle class. In the introduction to their 1855 Painted Picture Playbook, London-based publisher Dean and Sons advised parents that leisure-time reading was a valuable pastime for children, suggesting that,
Like a tender plant, the Infant Mind requires the aid of watchful care;
Direct its early thoughts aright, the good effects will soon appear.
With pleasing pastimes now and then the leisure moments pass away,
The more important tasks may well engage the mind of riper day.

-The influence of John Locke (17th Century philosopher) and Jean Jacques Rosseau (18th Century philospher) “revolutionary principles of education and child-rearing were instrumental in radically altering established doctrine that regarded children as miniature adults, sinful creatures whose innate propensity for evil demanded eradication through stern discipline.”
-Children were now regarded as “blank slates” to be molded with parental guidance and age-appropriate activities

-However, it should be noted that fairytales written by The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen contained very harsh and gruesome punishments, and these tales were published in the 19th century. Popular through the Victorian Era and into the Golden Age of illustration, so although children were now given a more age-appropriate childhood to be reared in and nurtured, many stories aimed at them were sometimes still scared them into good behavior.
- “Their writings were directed at the education of upper-class thriving British and American publishing industry catering to children as children, with unique needs and abilities.”Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffman 1845