Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

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can be read as an adventure story with fantastic elements. Two other classics of the 
eighteenth century, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), 
were not written for children, either. 
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From this arises an initially paradox situation. In the 
eighteenth century, the young and still developing genre of children’s literature had three 
bestsellers
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- The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels - sold as books 
for adults. Yet, providing a quest, fantastic or exotic adventures and a happy ending, they 
appealed to the young, who skipped the political and sociocritical dimension. Soon, 
abbreviated, “defused” versions of these novels could be obtained, tailored to the new target 
group. From a political satire for adults, Gulliver’s Travels were thus cut in length in order to 
obtain a tightened fantastic adventure story for children. 
According to Darton, “[c]hildren’s books did not stand out by themselves as a clear 
but subordinate branch of English literature until the middle of the eighteenth century”.
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For 
him, a landmark of children’s literature, this time intended and written for them, was the 
publication of John Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744). In London, John Newbery 
was a pioneer in the newly developing field of publishing for children. When devising 
attractive offers for children’s books, he relied on modern merchandising strategies. With 
certain books came gender-specific toys, encouraging a purchase of the “product” book. In 
contrast to the stern and austere seventeenth-century Puritan books for children, Newbery’s 
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See Thwaite, Primer, p. 23 as well as Darton, Children’s Books, p. 51.
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Thwaite, From Primer to Pleasure, p. 1. 
7
Ibd., p. 4. 
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Darton, Children’s Books, p. 106. 
9
Ibd., p. 8. 
10
Ibd., p. 1. 

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concept consisted of making reading - and education along with it - enjoyable.
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In honour of 
his achievements for the development of children’s literature and the impulses he gave to this 
genre, the “John Newbery” Medal was created in the USA in 1921 in order to annually 
distinguish America’s most meritable book for children.
With the close of the eighteenth century, religious strife slowly gave way to 
secularisation. Religion was to be complemented by the values of the Age of Reason, such as 
logic and empiricism. Consequently, the spectrum of topics for children’s books opened up. 
Spiritual literature, with its focus on afterlife and salvation, fell behind worldly education and 
learning.
Rousseau’s pedagogical oeuvre Émile (1762) and Locke’s theoretical tracts had 
great influence on the ideal education of that time. As the pioneer Newbery had propagated 
earlier referring to reading, it was now demanded that education be a joyful experience.
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However, logic and empiricism tend to exclude or hinder imagination, so the Age of Reason 
was far from being the ideal breeding ground for fantasy. Only after the heyday of the 
Enlightenment did fantasy slowly begin to be admitted to and tolerated in literature for 
children, until such a point where, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, it even played
an 
important market role.
Critics call the period spanning from about 1860 to 1930 the Golden Age of children’s 
literature.
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During these eventful 70 years most of today’s classics were conceived and 
published and fantasy managed to leave its marginal position. Arguably, the achievements of 
this fruitful era with a qualitatively high output have not yet been met again.
In 1863, a milestone publication rang in the Golden Age of children’s literature when 
the English clergyman
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Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) published The Water-Babies: A Fairy