CHAPTER VII

1825-1840

Old story-books! old story-books! we owe you much, old friends, Bright-coloured threads in Memory's warp, of which Death holds the ends.

Who can forget? Who can spurn the ministers of joy

That waited on the lisping girl and petticoated boy?

Talk of your vellum, gold embossed, morocco, roan, and calf;
The blue and yellow wraps of old were prettier by half.

ELIZA COOKE

Their works of amusement, when not laden with more religion than the tale can hold in solution, are often admirable.

Quarterly Review, 1843

I

1825-1840

American Writers and English Critics

Tis customary to refer to the early writings of Wash

ington Irving as works that marked the time when literature pure and simple developed in America. Such writing as had hitherto attracted attention concerned itself, not with matters of the imagination, but with facts and theories of current and momentous interest. Religion and the affairs of the separate commonwealths were uppermost in people's minds in colonial days; political warfare and the defence of the policy of Congress absorbed attention in Revolutionary times; and later the necessity of expounding principles of government and of fostering a national feeling produced a literature of fact rather than of fancy.

Gradually all this had changed. A new generation had grown up with more leisure for writing and more time to devote to the general culture of the public. The English periodical with its purpose of "improving the taste, awakening the attention, and amending the heart," had once met these requirements. Later on these periodicals had been keenly enjoyed, but at the same time there appeared American magazines, modelled after them, but largely filled by contributions from literary Americans. Early in the nineteenth century such publications were current in most large towns. From the short essays and papers in these periodicals to the tales of Cooper and Irving the step, after all, was not a long one. The children's literature of amusement developed, after the

end of the eighteenth century, in a somewhat similar way, although as usual tagging along after that of their parents.

With the constantly increasing population the production of children's books grew more profitable, and in eighteen hundred and two Benjamin Johnson made an attempt to publish a "Juvenile Magazine" in Philadelphia. Its purpose was to be a "Miscellaneous Repository of Useful Information;" but the contents were so largely drawn from English sources that it was probably, like the toy-books, pirated from an English publisher. Indeed, one of the few extant volumes contains only one article of distinctly American composition among essays on Education, the Choice of a Wife, Love, papers on natural history, selections from poems by Coleridge and Cowper; and by anonymous makers of verse about Consump tion and Friendship. The American contribution, a discussion of President Washington's will, has already been mentioned.

In the same year, 1802, the "Juvenile Olio" was started, edited by "Amyntor," but like Johnson's "Juvenile Magazine," was only issued at irregular intervals and was short-lived.

Other ventures in children's periodicals continued to be made, however. The "Juvenile Magazine," with "Religious, Moral, and Entertaining Pieces in Prose and Verse," was compiled by Arthur Donaldson, and sold in eighteen hundred and eleven as a monthly in Philadelphia-then the literary centre-for twelve and a half cents a number. In eighteen hundred and thirteen, in the same city, the "Juvenile Portfolio" made its appearance, possibly in imitation of Joseph Dennie's "Port Folio;" but it too failed from lack of support and interest.

Boston proved more successful in arousing attention to the possibilities in a well-conducted children's periodical, although it was not until thirteen years later that Lydia Maria Child established the "Juvenile Miscellany for the Instruction and Amusement of Youth." Three numbers were issued in 1826, and thereafter it appeared every other month until August, 1834, when it was succeeded by a magazine of the same name conducted by Sarah J. Hale.

This periodical is a landmark in the history of story-writing for the American child. Here at last was an opportunity for the editors to give to their subscribers descriptions of cities in their own land in place of accounts of palaces in Persia; biographies of national heroes instead of incidents in the life of Mahomet; and tales of Indians rather than histories of Arabians and Turks. For its pages Mrs. Sigourney, Miss Eliza Leslie, Mrs. Wells, Miss Sedgwick, and numerous anonymous contributors gladly sent stories of American scenes and incidents which were welcomed by parents as well as by children.

In the year following the first appearance of Mrs. Hale's "Juvenile Miscellany,” the March number is typical of the amusement and instruction the editor endeavored to provide. This contained a life of Benjamin Franklin (perhaps the earliest child's life of the philosopher and statesman), a tale of an Indian massacre of an entire settlement in Maine, an essay on memory, a religious episode, and extracts from a traveller's journal. The traveller, quite evidently a Bostonian, criticised New York in a way not unfamiliar in later days, as a city where "the love of literature was less strong than in some other parts of the United States;" and then in trying