Clive Hurst on Children's Books in the Bod

On February 28th Clive Hurst, Head of Rare Books and Printed Ephemera at the Bodleian Library, presented a personal selection of early children's books from collections at the Bod. Clive matched each image of a Bodleian treasure with a witty excursus on its significance: the squirm-inducing descriptions of the 'brands of Hell' in Janeway's Token for Children: Being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children, for example, were popular enough to warrant a 'further account', while even the subscription lists for the Gigantick Histories contained jokes (apparently the Vatican Library was a faithful subscriber). Tracing representations of learning and play in illustration and word throughout his talk, one of Clive's most fascinating examples confirmed the connections between Oxford and the children's book. The earliest known printed horn-book (circa 1620) was found in the foundations of Brasenose in 1882 during excavation works there. Of course, this volume did not have far to move once it resurfaced: it was deposited just across Radcliffe Square in the Bodleian, where it remains to this day.

At left, an illustration from Punctuation Personified, or, Pointing Made Easy, published by J. Harris. The Bodleian holds an 1824 copy from which Clive showed us images.

A facsimile version is available from the Bodleian bookshop.

Shira Wolosky on Harry Potter

This from Alice Nuttall on the CLYCC talk which took place on February 14th:

In our second talk of the term, Professor Shira Wolosky discussed the ethical principles and paradigms in the Harry Potter series which are the subject of her recent book The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests. Beginning by noting the series’ use of political allegory, such as its references to the Second World War and modern conflicts, Shira then went on to explore how the series’ central focus is the dichotomy of love (represented by Harry and his allies) and power (represented by Voldemort). Shira noted that the characters in Harry Potter either seek power, which makes them dominant but leaves them isolated, or love, which brings strength in the form of friends and family. She read the prophecy ‘Neither can live while the other survives’ as suggesting that no-one can pursue both love and power, and that characters who try, such as Snape, must ultimately commit to one or the other. Shira also spoke of the series’ secondary ethical paradigms: that people should be treated as an end, not a means, and that one’s moral choices are more important than one’s abilities. Judging by the questions and discussion following the talk, Shira’s presentation inspired many readers to go back to the series on interpretative quests of their own.

For more information on Shira's book, published last year by Palgrave Macmillan, visit http://us.macmillan.com/theriddlesofharrypotter. Our thanks to Shira for presenting this term while at Oxford as the Rothermere Institute's Drue Heinz Visiting Professor.

Sarah Iversen on Children's Dictionaries

This term I'm going to post a little summary of each presentation for those who were unable to attend on the day. Here goes...

In our first talk Sarah Iversen from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, presented on one aspect of her research into children’s dictionaries. Looking at a number of historical examples including Anna Murphy’s A First or Mother’s Dictionary for Children (c.1813) and Wilby’s Infant School Spelling-Book (1844), as well as Maria Edgeworth’s glossary appendix in Early Lessons (1801), Sarah demonstrated that children’s dictionaries of the period teach not just words, but also broader moral attitudes. Many of these relate to gender, with boys and girls constructed in different ways: playing with different toys, exhibiting different virtues (or vices), and destined for different social roles. Indeed, as Sarah explained, even when word definitions were gender-neutral, the accompanying pictures frequently gendered, say, pat as a masculine verb (and activity), pet as a feminine one. Sarah also gave a fascinating account of contrasting definitions of particular words across individual lexicographers and across dictionaries for children as opposed to adults. Thanks, Sarah, and best of luck for your upcoming viva!

At right, an example from Sarah's presentation: an illustration for the word strut from Wilby's Infant School Spelling-Book, and Pictorial Dictionary (1844).

Image copyright British Library Board, shelfmark RB.23.a.1641.

Hilary 2011 Times

So sorry for omitting times in my earlier post!

We are meeting at 5.15pm for each session this term.

Hope to see many of you there.

Hilary Term 2011 Programme

Happy New Year, and welcome to a fresh batch of CLYCC offerings! Still meeting in Room 11 of the St Cross Building on Manor Road, and all are still welcome.

Week 3 (January 31^st): ‘“To Teach Little Boys and Girls What It Is Proper for Them to Know”: Gendered Education and the Children’s Dictionary’. Sarah Iversen, Lady Margaret Hall

Sarah Iversen, a DPhil candidate at LMH, will explore the role of nineteenth-century children’s dictionaries in the gendered education of children. Children’s dictionaries are widely regarded strictly as mid-twentieth-century phenomena. Pre-twentieth-century lexicography has also been traditionally regarded as an exclusively male pursuit. Contrary to these assumptions there were, in fact, many dictionaries specifically written for children in the nineteenth century, several of which were compiled by women. This paper will demonstrate that both dictionaries compiled by women and men aimed, not simply to impart the meaning of words, but also to teach ‘little boys and girls’ how to behave and prepare them for their future roles as men and women. These gender ideologies, encoded in dictionary definitions, example sentences, and pictorial illustrations, often varied according to the background of individual lexicographers, as Iversen will show.

Week 5 (February 14^th): ‘The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests’. Professor Shira Wolosky, Drue Heinz Visiting Professor at the Rothermere Institute and Professor of English and American Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Professor Wolosky will discuss her recent book on the Harry Potter series, published by Palgrave Macmillan, in which she argues that Harry Potter’s wild popularity ultimately relates to its literary depth and power: its symbolic meanings, psychological experience, moral reflection, word revelation. Harry Potter offers a literary world of psychological and political allegories, moral fables and paradigms, wordplay, and sudden plots. These together form a web of riddles and secrets—hidden and then discovered meanings—where objects, creatures, events, and words themselves are all filled with significances that have to be deciphered, and whose meanings unfold through constant interpretation and reinterpretation, as earlier books take on new senses in light of later ones. Harry Potter as literary experience thus emerges as one of interpretive challenge and adventure through unfolding patterns of psychological, historical, and moral meanings.

Week 7 (February 28^th): ‘Children’s Books in the Bodleian Library’. Clive Hurst, Head of Rare Books, Bodleian Library

In the late 1980s, following a massive fundraising appeal, the Bodleian Library acquired Peter and Iona Opie’s personal collection of around 20,000 children’s books (including many early books, as well as archival materials like Peter Opie’s accession diaries, which document the genesis of the collection). The preservation of the Opie Collection in the Bodleian, along with other significant children’s book holdings in the Douce Collection among others, makes Oxford the home of some of the world’s most significant resources for the study of children’s books and culture. The head of the Bodleian’s Rare Books division, Clive Hurst, who has written on the Opie Collection and curated exhibitions of children’s books from the Bodleian, will discuss the important children’s book resources at the Library and introduce the group to some of the most extraordinary examples across collections.

Michaelmas Term 2010 Programme

Hello and welcome to the new academic year at CLYCC! We are still meeting in the English Faculty (directions here), though we've switched rooms (now in Room 11). Details of our exciting programme this term below:

October 25 (Week 3): Reading Other People's Minds: Literary Cognitivism and Children's Literature. Prof. Maria Nikolajeva, Professor of Education and Director of the Cambridge/Homerton Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature, University of Cambridge

Literary cognitivism is a relatively recent direction of inquiry that pursues the question of whether works of literature can convey knowledge, and if so, how this happens. Children's literature has throughout history been employed as an educational vehicle, yet its actual mechanism of providing knowledge has not been properly discussed. The epistemic value of children's literature can be considered on different levels, including knowledge of the world, knowledge of society, knowledge of other people, knowledge of self, aesthetic knowledge, ethical knowledge and metaphysical knowledge. Professor Nikolajeva will in this talk focus on the issue of whether fiction can be used as a source of knowledge and understanding of other people's minds, taking as a point of departure some recent studies at the crossroads of literary theory and cognitive science.

November 8 (Week 5): Words of Violence: Savages, Monsters and (Neo)colonial Writing. Alice Nuttall, Oxford Brookes University

Alice will present on her doctoral research at Oxford Brookes, which considers the portrayal of American Indians in children's literature and culture. Her paper examines the establishment of the savage stereotype in colonial children's literature about American Indians, and how that stereotype has continued into children's literature in the postcolonial period.

November 22 (Week 7): Do-It-Yourself Drama: Nineteenth-Century English Boys and Toy Theatre Play. Dr Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Associate Professor of Education and Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State University

In early nineteenth-century England, toy theatres (known as juvenile drama) were one of the most popular toys with middle-class children, especially boys. Toy theatres are elaborate paper artifacts that enable a child to stage a complete theatrical production in miniature by providing paper sheets of characters, scenes, wings, as well as a model stage and play script. In this talk Dr Reid-Walsh will discuss several boy consumers of the artifacts in terms of their purchasing and play strategies. She will examine first-person retrospective accounts and one child’s toy theatre set reassembled by a young Victorian boy in relation to the emerging consumer culture of the period.

Trinity Term 2010 Programme

We're meeting 5.15pm odd Mondays in the History of the Book Room again this term; directions to the faculty can be found here - and here's what we have to look forward to:

Week 1 (April 26): Play, Edwardian Empire, and Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. Prof. Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, Wolfson College
Professor Boehmer will explore some of the many contradictions inherent in Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys, a highly ideological text that expounds imperial values yet also promotes the creative and non-directed aspects of play and performance. She will question whether empire at its height in fact opened these contradictions, and if that might begin to explain why this period of literary history produced an outpouring of children's literature.

Week 3 (May 10): Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Secret Garden. Prof. Gretchen Gerzina, George Eastman Visiting Professor, Balliol College
Professor Gerzina will discuss the life and works of Frances Hodgson Burnett, especially with regard to her present-day reputation as an author primarily for children. Her most famous works for a child audience (The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy) were greatly overshadowed during her lifetime by the wealth of other material she produced, including 53 novels and thirteen plays written primarily for adults. The highest paid woman author of her time, Burnett's life and work will be re-examined in light of images, biographical materials, and new textual interpretation, reviving and reinterpreting the image of The Secret Garden's author that we have today.

Week 5 (May 24): Mirrors and Windows: Diversity and Children's Publishing. Ms Laura Atkins, Lecturer, National Centre for Research in Children's Literature (NCRCL), Roehampton University
Ms Atkins will look at recent controversies in the children's publishing world around race and representation, drawing partially from her own experience editing multicultural picture books in the United States. How are non-white characters represented in books published in the US, and how are these representations directed by the editorial and publication process? Recent discussion around this topic on the blogosphere will be shared before the floor is opened up for questions. With the election of a black president some have said the US is now a 'post-racial' society, but Ms Atkins will suggest just the opposite.

Week 7 (June 7): 'The Simple Creed / Of Childhood': Poetic Progeny and the Early Romantics. Amelia Greene, University College
Amelia's research for the M.St. focuses on issues of abandonment, illegitimacy, and independence as they relate to the status of children and ideas of childhood during the early part of the Romantic period. Examining the autonomous, non-social, foraging, 'natural' child found in both Wordsworth and Coleridge, and revisiting the Blakean representation of the dependent, socially and politically contingent, often urban, youth, Amelia will explore the ways in which Romantic poetry serves to simultaneously celebrate the literary ideal of the abstract 'Child' and to repress, neglect, or de-emphasise the troubled social status of British children during the period.

Hope to see many of you there!