The boundaries between children’s literature and literature for adults are difficult to determine. Until books were written specifically for children – first of all to teach them their letters and instruct them in the rudiments of religion and social behaviour and only later to amuse them – they would read whatever came to hand from other sources. In the eighteenth century animal fables and chapbooks would be their most likely reading material. But other more demanding books might also attract their attention. In this way such classics as Defoe’sRobinson Crusoe(1719) and Swift’sGulliver’s Travels(1726) were adopted by...

It may seem wayward to begin a consideration of the contribution of Germany to British children’s literature with a book that was not really designed for children. But the stories about Baron Munchausen were quickly adopted by children and became a runaway success. They were, moreover, the earliest such children’s book to be published in England. Children love fun, adventure and characters that are larger than life, and the tall stories of Munchausen provide all of those things in plenty. The colourful, eccentric Baron has proved an enduringly popular hero for more than two hundred years, and his stories have...

The stories of Munchausen reflect the excitement and wonderment of people at the end of a century in which new discoveries and inventions were being made all the time. This wonderment, however, was transposed into a fantasy world of recent history and geographical and technological exploration where surprise and satirical amusement were the order of the day. Only three years afterMunchausenwas first published in English a quite different sort of German book reflecting the fascination of world exploration made its appearance on the British scene. This was Joachim Heinrich Campe’sNew Robinson Crusoe(London: John Stockdale, 1788), a...

A great deal of eighteenth-century German children’s literature is concerned with matters of morality, understood in the wide sense. As we have already seen with Campe, moral issues and rational conduct also underlie stories of exploration and adventure. They form the central concern of Campe’s contemporary, Christian Gotthilf Salzmann, whoseMoralisches Elementarbuch(first edition 1783, new improved edition Leipzig: Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, 1785) was translated into English by Mary Wollstonecraft asElements of Morality(London: Joseph Johnson, 1790). This translation is noted in virtually all histories of English children’s literature, most probably because of Wollstonecraft’s name, but very little comment...

German fairytales are indelibly linked first of all with the names of the Brothers Grimm, who produced the first edition of their celebrated collection in 1812-15. Other writers had been publishing a variety of fairytales before then,⁴³but because they were not scholarly collectors of traditional tales their contributions have not been given much credit. Two names, however, deserve passing mention here. Johann Gottlieb Schummel, whose description of Basedow and the Philanthropin in Dessau we encountered in the chapter on Campe, included four fairytales in hisKinderspiele und Gespräche(Children’s Games and Conversations) (1776-78); they seem to be the earliest...

The earliest connexions between England and Germany were to do with trade rather than with culture. Not only did Germans from the Hanse towns settle in London, but Englishmen and their families also established communities in cities such as Hamburg and Danzig. The main contact was with northern Germany. With the Reformation religion made further connexions, as many of the English reformers visited or took refuge in Protestant Germany, and the newly founded University of Wittenberg attracted scholars anxious to pursue their studies with such men as Luther, Melanchthon and Karlstadt. Wittenberg is where Shakespeare had Hamlet study. Germany now...

WithThe Swiss Family Robinsonwe come to one of the great classics of children’s literature in English. This story of a father and mother and their four sons who were wrecked on a desert island in the tropics, encountered all manner of birds, beasts, fish and reptiles as well as plant life and established themselves comfortably there has enjoyed extraordinary popularity for nearly two hundred years. Its combination of adventure, danger and discovery with paternal instruction in botany, zoology and geography made it irresistible to generations of youthful readers. Though Campe’sRobinson der Jüngerewas by far the most...

From the end of the eighteenth century to at least the middle of the nineteenth the dominant pattern of children’s literature in the British Isles was didactic. Fairytales and traditional chapbook romances were distractingly popular, but the leaders of educational opinion inveighed against them as superstitious, untruthful, pernicious, misleading and immoral. The sober middle classes required their children to be socialized, taught how to behave properly towards other people of whatever status and to internalize the virtues that made for a harmonious and orderly society. As we have already seen, German writers such as Campe and Salzmann formed part of...

It often comes as a surprise to modern students of German Romanticism to find out that the author who made the greatest impact on English-speaking readers was Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Motte Fouqué. Apart fromUndinevery little of his massive literary output has survived as popular reading. Even by the end of his own lifetime he ceased to be taken very seriously, despite his earlier connexions with Chamisso, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Eichendorff. Fouqué came from a French family that had settled in Germany after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Born himself in 1777...

In Britain the German Romantic writer Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) is known for one thing only – his extraordinary story of Peter Schlemihl, the man who exchanges his shadow for a purse which, like that of Fortunatus, produces gold coins every time he puts his hand in it. Later in the story Schlemihl acquires a pair of seven-league boots which enable him to travel quickly wherever he wants to go. These are fairytale devices, butPeter Schlemihlwas not designed as a children’s book any more than was Fouqué’sUndine. In what they enable to happen the gold-producing purse and...

Without a shadow of doubt the single most important German contribution to world literature is the collection of traditional tales made by the Brothers Grimm and first published in two small volumes in 1812-15. It outshines Goethe’sFaustand such twentieth-century classics as Mann’sDeath in Veniceor Kafka’sThe Trialby virtue of an infinitely greater readership. Not only have the tales been translated in whole or in part into virtually every major language in the world, but they have generated countless new editions and adaptations and become the cornerstone of the study of folktales not only in Germany,...

Although the Brothers Grimm and Hans Andersen came to dominate the world of fairytales in the second half of the nineteenth century, pushing Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy from centre stage, they were not the only collectors or authors of fairytales to gain an English-speaking public during this period. Other German collectors of traditional tales are dealt with elsewhere, but of those writers who composed their own tales Wilhelm Hauff heads the list. HisMärchen, whether published as a book or separately, have kept a firm place in German children’s reading from the time of their first appearance right to the...

Although Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm now dominate discussion of folktales and fairytales, they were far from being the only ones concerned with collecting and publishing such material in Germany during the nineteenth century. The Grimms had separated the traditional tales that they were interested in into two broad categories –MärchenandSagen. Märchenare basically fictional in character and include tales of magic (what we usually call fairytales), comic, religious, nursery and animal tales, whileSagenare legends and make some claim to recount incidents that are believed to have actually happened. The Grimms published a large collection of...

Hoffmann’sNußknacker und Mausekönigis an extraordinarily innovative and unusual piece of writing for children, way ahead of its time in its complete abandonment of didacticism and moral instruction. Almost fifty years before Lewis Carroll’sAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandit incorporates its original audience as characters within the story, but whereasAliceblends fantasy with parody and comedy theNutcrackerdisplays a less whimsical, perhaps more subtle sense of humour. It is a more realistic kind of fantasy in that the nocturnal events actually unfold in the same place that the children themselves inhabit. Like many of Hoffmann’s other tales...

Nineteenth-century Germany experienced a virtual industry in the collecting and writing of fairytales. While the Grimms and Bechstein dominated the field as far as national collections of traditional tales were concerned, many others devoted their efforts to particular regions of Germany. Their work is dealt with in another chapter. But there were also many writers who composed fairytales of their own, sometimes adapting traditional material, but often creating their own tales. Some of them, such as Fouqué, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Brentano and Hauff, gained considerable literary renown, and their fairytales figured prominently in works translated for the educated English...

The fairytales of Clemens Brentano were among the last works of German Romanticism to come to the notice of English-speaking children. Readers were already long familiar with the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and Wilhelm Hauff, with several of Fouqué’s stories, especially his perennially appealingUndineand, a little less, the heroicSintram, also with Chamisso’sPeter Schlemihland E. T. A. Hoffmann’sNutcracker. In addition there were selections from Musäus and their namesake Albert Ludwig Grimm and from their competitor in the field of traditional tales, Ludwig Bechstein. But Brentano’s fairytales were a different kettle of fish–leisurely, self-indulgently...

Alongside the many German children’s books that were translated into English during the nineteenth century we find a variety of books by British authors that presented aspects of German history to children and young people. Some of these deal with important historical figures. Maria Elizabeth Budden wroteHofer, the Tyrolese(London: John Harris and Sons, 1824) and Charlotte Maria Tucker, who wrote under the initials A.L.O.E. (‘A Lady Of England’), producedThe Life of Luther(London: The Book Society, 1873). This was followed byThe Boyhood of Martin Lutherby Henry Mayhew (London and Edinburgh: Gall & Inglis, c. 1890). Other...

Without any question the period of the Thirty Years War, from 1618 to 1648, was one of the most horrifying in the history of Germany. Not only were huge numbers of soldiers killed in battle in virtually every part of the Holy Roman Empire, but even greater numbers of the civilian population died in the conflict or through starvation or disease. Houses, churches, villages and towns were burnt and destroyed, and by the end of the war the population had been reduced from about sixteen millions to about four. Although the war took place on German soil, many foreign powers...

There is no hard and fast dividing line between moral and religious tales on the one hand and historical tales and adventure stories on the other. The moral and religious concerns of nineteenth-century children’s writers do not disappear overnight: they simply become less prominent. The telling of a gripping story, the presentation of historical events and the description of distant places and unfamiliar human activities become more important than a simple didactic message. The lure of adventure is of course present in German children’s books right from Campe’sRobinson der Jüngereand the exploits of Baron Münchhausen and is swiftly...

It is not possible within the scope of this book to deal with all the German illustrators whose work found its way into British children’s books during the nineteenth century. That would really require a separate study. We shall note elsewhere Wilhelm Kaulbach’s illustrations forThe Heroic Life and Exploits of Siegfried the Dragon Slayer(1848), and his designs for Goethe’sReynard the Fox(1860) circulated much more widely. Ludwig Richter’s illustrations to Bechstein’s fairytales were used for bothThe Old Story-Teller(1854) andAs Pretty as Seven. Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s pictures for theNibelungenliedaccompanied Lydia Hands’s retelling...

One of the commonest patterns in the history of children’s literature is the way in which traditional tales, medieval epics and romances become part of children’s reading. Some of them then survive principally as children’s books, though they started out as entertainment for the whole community. This was how British children became the primary consumers of the tales of Guy of Warwick, Robin Hood and Valentine and Orson. The same was true in Germany, as Goethe attests in a well-known passage in book 1 of his autobiography,Dichtung und Wahrheit(Poetry and Truth). Two of the works he mentions –...

During the last three decades of the nineteenth century the number of new German children’s books that were translated into English declined, although earlier books continued to be reissued. Germany did not cease to be of interest, but the interest was expressed in different ways. What I want to discuss in this chapter is the way in which British writers dealt with contemporary Germany through novels centred on the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). This may seem an unlikely subject for British children’s books, since Britain was not directly involved in the war. But there are at least ten books written between...

In the English-speaking world the development of girls’ stories is particularly linked with two American classics – Louisa M. Alcott’sLittle Women(1868) and Susan Coolidge’sWhat Katy Did(1872) – after which the genre blossomed in both North America and the British Isles. L. T. Meade’s most famous book wasA World of Girls(1886), but that was simply one of more than 300 that she wrote. Only a little less prolific was Evelyn Everett-Green, whose first stories appeared in the 1880s. Two of her later books are of special interest in that they deal with aspects of the...

No war has been more exhaustively recorded in every kind of medium than what we now call the First World War. During the period 1914-18 itself writers of all kinds documented its impact in both public and private forms, through newspaper reports, propaganda items, works of literary ambition and expressions of personal experience. Painters, illustrators and photographers also bent their skills to the task. Both during and after the war for about twenty-five years poems and novels attempted to distil diverse areas of an experience that, for the soldiers in the trenches, was the most shattering and also the profoundest...