Death, religion, and the Victorians

'No one will ever understand Victorian England who does not appreciate that among highly civilised countries...it was one of the most religious that the world has ever known.  Moreover, its particular type of Christianity laid a direct emphasis on conduct...'
(R.K. Endsor quoted in Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The public school phenomenon, 1977 p,70)

Queen Victoria as a Child, Martin Archer Shee,
(Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,
Culture Service, Leighton House Museum)

All well brought up Victorian children received religious instruction which in Britain mostly meant Protestant Christianity.  The discoveries of Darwin and the religious controversies of the 19th century led in most cases to the abandonment of literal interpretation of the Bible, and caused many adults to re-assess their beliefs, but on the whole they did so within the Christian faith.

The work of the Nonconformists among the working classes had given people a strong sense of religious duty by the beginning of Queen Victorian's reign. This was increasingly identified with social duty and care for people's bodily welfare; almost as important as caring for their souls.

 However, the attitude of parents of whatever sect towards their children's religious observance during the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and America is shown typically by the Rev. Mr. Hawtrey's reaction to his son Stephen's casual remark, "Oh, I don't like sermons".
 Their gentle-tempered father, his voice trembling with emotion, said:-
' "If ever I hear one of my children saying a word showing want or respect towards the Word of God or religion, I will disinherit him!" and immediately left the room.  The children were awe-struck, and could not speak, but began to cry.  In a few minutes their father returned, and said, "If I have spoken too angrily, my children, it was because I could not hear a word said of disrespect towards religion", and he wept.'  (Florence Molesworth, The history of the Hawtrey family, Vol. 1, 1903, p. 154.  Internet archive version available)

The keynote here is 'respect'. The observance of religious faith differed from sect to sect and was expressed in different ways over the years, as religious conflicts were at least partly resolved.  The steady divorce of religion from politics and the growing respect for the Nonconformist social contribution much reduced anti-sectarian discrimination.  Although religion was still of prime importance in most middle class people's lives it began to find expression in work among the disadvantaged rather than in personal soul-searching and prayer. Children were encouraged to develop social consciences early and involve themselves in constructive work rather than continuing to practise the introspection of the early Puritans.  This religious and moral training, reinforced by public schools, formed the exceptionally honest and conscientious administrators who governed Britain and the Empire, and bred the many missionaries who felt called to take Christianity to far-flung countries and British slums.

Lord have mercy on us, Henry Baraud, c.1850
(Newstead Abbey)

In many households Sunday meant no books except the Bible or religious works, no toys, or only toys with Biblical significance such as Noah's Ark, positively no games, no music or singing except hymns, no running up and down.  The author of Vice Versa, F. Anstey as a child had a set of Scripture bricks showing biblical incidents with texts, Alison Uttley was allowed Noah's Ark.  The Anstey family read Ministering Children, a best-selling story about helping the poor, 'which always affected me with the profoundest melancholy.' and The Fairchild Family, which was rather less successful: 'But a spirit of such irreverence came over us and she (mother) and we laughed so much that I think the readings were given up.' (F. Anstey, A long retrospect, 1936 p. 12, 24, Alison Uttley, Ambush of young days, 1937 p. 123)

Children and adults went to church, often twice, perhaps because it provided one of the few possible diversions on Sundays.  The Ansteys went to St. Paul's in the morning and the Congregational chapel in the evening, enjoying the music at the first and the sermon at the second.
(F. Anstey, A long retrospect, 1936, p.23)
Younger children generally learned a Bible text, older children might teach Sunday school.  Few allowances were made for children, and they were usually expected to observe Sunday as rigorously as adults.  For those who had no deep religious conviction to sustain them it was often excruciatingly boring.

We praise thee o' Lord, Henry Barraud, c.1850
(Newstead Abbey)

So the popular American author Mrs. Lydia Child strongly recommended parents take care not to prejudice children against religion by too strict observance on Sunday.  She quotes the story of the little girl who on being told how God had come down to earth remarks, "Oh, what a good time the angels must have had, when God was gone away."
(The Mother's Book, 4th ed. 1832 p. 72)

Children traditionally began their religious instruction early, particularly in Nonconformist households like the Quaker Gurneys:
"We were very little children when he (their father, Joseph Gurney, brother of Elizabeth Fry the prison reformer) began to take us into his study for times of religious retirement and prayer.,..I think I shall never forget the very great solemnity, the holy, and, to me as a little child, the almost awful feeling of these occasions"
(Augustus Hare, The Gurneys of Earlham, 1895, Vol. 2, p. 17  Internet edition available)

Earlham Hall, East Anglia,
Childhood home of Elizabeth Fry, and the Gurney family.
 (Wikipedia: University of East Anglia)

This was also the rule in American Nonconformist households like the Swedenborgian Alcotts:
'On Sundays we had a simple service of Bible stories, hymns, and conversation about the state of our little consciences and the conduct of our childish lives.'
(Louisa May Alcott, her letters and journals,  ed. Ednah D. Cheney, 1889, p. 29.  Internet edition available Louisa May's famous children's story, Little Women was loosely based on her own childhood)

For others, like Samuel Butler, the experience was more unpleasant.  The semi-autobiographical The Way of All Flesh embodies the very image of a traditionally stern Victorian upbringing:
'Before Ernest could crawl he as taught to kneel; before he could well speak he was taught to lisp the Lord's Prayer, and the General Confession.  How was it possible that these things could be taught too early?  If his attention flagged, or his memory failed him here was an ill weed which would grow apace, unless it were plucked out immediately, and the only way to pluck it out was to whip it, or shup him in a cupboard, or dock him of some of the small pleasures of childhood.'
(Samuel Butler, Ernest Pontefex or The Way of All Flesh, 1903, Methuen ed. 1964 p.79.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Saumeu Butler aged 23 (Wikipedia)

Augustus Hare received his first religious instruction as a similar early age but he was made of more resistant stuff than the unfortunate Ernest Pontefex:
'After dinner to-day, on being told to thank God for his good dinner, he would not do it...talked to him about his dinner, did not he love God for giving him so many good things, and I knelt by him and prayed God to forgive him for being so naughty....'The result was a tantrum; Augustus eventually consented to say grace, sitting under the table.
((Augustus Hare, The years with mother, ed. Malcolm Brown, 1952, p., 16.  Abridgement of
The story of my life, 1896.  Interent edition available).

Researching Augustus Hare I discovered that he included the story of The Vampire of Croglin Hall
in his Story of My Life, here's the cover of the Penny Dreadful based on his story (credit: Vaultofevilproboards)

Many such children could scarcely begin to grasp the concept of God and Heaven, and the results of this early instruction were sometimes rather comic.  The Unitarian preacher and social reformer W.J. Fox (1780-1864) had his first religious instruction at the age of four when his brother died:
'On this occasion my father ...made the first attempt to inform my mind as to the existence of a Heaven.  It was rather premature; years afterwards my deity was a huge old muscular man stretched out at full length on the upper side of a solid sky, and at this time it was with great difficulty that I attained such elevation of thought as to understand that little Charles was gone a long way above the height to which the smoke ascended from the tallest chimneys in our street.'
(R. & E. Garnett, The life of W.J. Fox, public teacher and social reformer, 1786-1864.  1910, p.6.  Internet edition available)

The children's writer Alison Uttley was equally literally-minded as a child.  One day of fitful bursts of brilliant sunshine she came running in, radiant, crying:
'"I've seen Jesus! I've seen Gentle Jesus peeping through the clouds!"'
(Ambush of young days, 1937 p.63)

One of Alison Uttley's well-known Little Grey Rabbit books
(Amazon internet)

Marianne Mordaunt's son John, aged seven, wanted to know all about God and Heaven in very precise detail. He demanded:
'"Do you think I shall think every thing in Heaven as beautiful when I have been there a good many years, as I shall the first year...Does God take part of the angels to make us?"'
(Elizabeth Hamilton, The Mordaunts, an eighteenth century family, 1965, p. 256  There is a bit of background on the book and family at mordauntfamilyhistory.com.)

Early and over-earnest religious instruction sometimes made children morbid.  The Puritan practise of driving adults and children alike through fear of hell-fire to self examination and searching of their consciences was, of course, continued into the 19th century by certain ~Nonconformist sects.  The  American writer Henry James, father of the more famous writer, describes his struggles:
'I am sure no childish sinews were ever more strained than mine were in wrestling with the subtle terror of his name.  This insane terror pervaded my consciousness more or less ...made me loath at night to lose myself in sleep, lest his dread hand should clip my thread of life without time for a parting sob of penitence...'
(Quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James, 1953, vol. 1, p.29  Henry James Sr was born in 1809)

The humorous writer Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) author of Three Men in a Boat, had a similar upbringing.  When he 'got' religion, he:
'gave up taking sugar in my tea, and gave the twopence a week to the Ragged School in Threecold Street.  On Sundays I used to pore over a great illustrated Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.  This used to be a popular book in religious houses.'  He agonised over the state of his soul:
'How was I to be sure that I did believe sufficiently?'  His failure to move a mountain of rubbish by prayer alone convinced him that he was not a strong enough believer.  He was extremely miserable about this, and about the possibility of unknowingly committing something called, in his circle, the Unforgivable Sin:  'If only one knew what it was one might avoid it.'  One day in a fit of rage he called his deaf Aunt Fan a bloody fool, and was convinced that this was the unnamed sin.  He suffered in agonies of conscience until someone found out and reassured him.  Most probably the sin was masturbation, but unfortunately he does not go into further details.
(Jerome K Jerome,  My life and times, 1926 p. 21, 22.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1563
(British Library, internet ed.)

Edmund Gosse had the advantage of a father who firmly believed his son was born one of the Elect.  The central event of his childhood was his baptism into full communion at ten.  His father 'admitted the absence in my case of a sudden, apparent act of conversion resulting upon conviction of sin.  But he stated the grounds of his belief that I had, in still earlier infancy, been converted, and he declared that if so, I ought no longer to be excluded from the privileges of communion.'  Edmund Gosse was examined by two elders of the church, amazing them by his humility, knowledge of scripture, and other signs of divine grace.  Large numbers of Plymough Brethren came from all over the county to witness his baptism by total immersion.  (Edmund Gosse, Father and son, 1907, Penguin ed. p. 126-133 )

This famous account of Victorian childhood is well worth reading.  One of the interesting things about Gosse's account of his childhood is the contrast between his father's idealised image of his son and the fallible human reality.  The discrepancy between the two is particularly marked in Gosse's account of his baptism.  At this solemn and central moment which he wholeheartedly entered into, he betrays the very un-spiritual, natural bumptiousness of an over-praised ten year old:

'I would fain close this remarkable episode on a key of solemnity, but alas! if I am to be loyal to the truth, I must record that some of the other little boys present presently complained to Mary Grace that I put out my tongue at them in mockery, during the service in the Room, to remind them that I now broke bread as one of the Saints and that they did not.'

The extreme strictness of Gosse's upbringing as a member of the Plymouth Brethren imposed a considerable strain on him which, though unrecognised during his childhood, he was able to analyse on looking back as an adult. Part of his description of the feat of endurance that was his Sunday is worth quoting with Gosse's comment on it, as an illustration of this.  After breakfast the family and servants had a long sermon and prayers.  Then, in fine weather, they spent half an hour walking in the garden.  Afterwards they each sat in a separate room with Bible and commentary and prepared themselves for the morning service, two hours long, which they attended at 11am.  After Sunday dinner Edmund would go into the garden for a while, and later in the afternoon he and his stepmother went to Sunday school, where he taught a class of smaller boys.  After tea they all went to evening service, followed by the Believers' Prayer Meeting.  All this took Edmund long past his usual bedtime, and he was not only bored but exhausted by the end of the day:

'What made these Sundays, the observance of which was absolutely uniform, so peculiarly trying was that I was not permitted the indulgence of any secular respite.  I might not open a scientific book, nor make a drawing, nor examine a specimen.  I was not allowed to go into the road, except to proceed with my parents to the Room, no to discuss worldly subjects at meals, not to enter the little chamber where I kept my treasures.  I was hotly and tightly dressed in black, all day long, as though ready at any moment to attend a funeral with decorum.  Sometimes, towards evening, I used to feel the monotony and weariness of my position to be almost endurable, but at this time I was meek, and I bowed to what I supposed to be the order of the universe.  (Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, p, 166-7)

Like other children Gosse accepted his early religious instruction without question. His first doubts came when this parents' theories were tested against the directness of his childish logic.

When Gosse tried to obtain a splendid humming top through the power of prayer, justified by his mother's statement that 'no thing or circumstances are too insignificant to bring before the God of the whole earth '   his father, instead of taking the theological line that it was not His Will that Edmund should have the top, told him 'it was not right for me to pray for things like humming-tops, and that I must do it no more.' (Gosse, Father and Son, p.36-7)

Edmund's faith in his father's directives was shaken, and after an address on 'idolatory' he put them to a further test.  Idolatry, his father informed him, 'consisted in praying to any one or anything but God himself' and 'God would be very angry, and would signify his anger if anyone, in a Christian country, bowed down to wood and stone.'  In a spirit of scientific experiment Edmund Gosse tested this: 'With much labour, I hoisted a small chair onto the table close to the window.  My heart was now beating as if it would leap out of my side, but I pursued my experiment.  I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table and looking up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, only substituting the address 'O Chair!' for the habitual one.  He then waited for God's reaction.  When nothing happened, he did not question the existence of God, but his father's omniscience: 'My father had said, positively, that if I worshipped a thing made of wood, God would manifest His anger.  I had then worshipped a chair, made (or partly made) of wood, and God had made no sign whatsoever.  My Father, therefore, was not really acquainted with the Divine practise in cases of idolatry.' (Gosse, Father and Son, p.38-9)

Gosse's experiment weakened his faith in his father, but not his faith in God, and few children at this time would have followed the lead of the independently-minded George Sitwell, who with an Archbishop for a guardian, was over-exposed to religious enthusiasm, and by his own account became an agnostic and later an atheist:
'When I was three or four, I came to the conclusion that I was too young to understand such things properly, and so had better reserve my judgement until I was old enough to form an opinion of my own'
(Osbert Sitwell, Left hand, Right hand, 1945, vol. 1, p.127)

Given the strong religious atmosphere of most Victorian households, and with life expectancy being much shorter than it is now in Modern Europe or America, it is not surprising that death was very much more part of daily life than it is now.  Children were made aware of it early.  Particularly in evangelical households it was quite usual to take children not only to pay their last respects to a dead relative but also to view their corpses, to remind them of their own mortality and so bring them closer to God.

This was no new custom but a longstanding tradition, late 18th and 19th century moral stories  contain many deathbed scenes like this in The History of the Fairchild Family, 1818:
 '"Should you like to see the corpse, my dear?" asked Mr. Fairchild "You never saw a corpse, I think?"
"No, Papa", answered Lucy: "We should like to see one."
"I tel you beforehand, my dear children, that death is very terrible.  A corpse is an awful sight."
"I know that, Papa," said Lucy, "but we should go."
(Mrs. Sherwood, The History of the Fairchild Family, 1818 p. 146.  Garland facsimile ed. 1977. Internet edition available)

In Victorian children's books, as in novels for adults, deathbed scenes provided emotional climaxes in the narrative.  The death of a major character in a 19th century children's story served to encourage moral and religious faith.  The Religious Tract Society, in fact, expected a Christian death bead scene to be included in the plot of books published by them.  This example is from Little Meg's Children, one of the most popular best-sellers by Hesba Stretton:

'It did not seem  possible to Little Meg that the baby could really be dead.  She chafed its puny limbs, as she had seen her mother do, and walked up and sown the room singing to it, now loudly, now softly, but no change came upon it, no warmth returned to its death-cold frame, no life to its calm face.  She laid it down at length upon the bed, and crossed its thin wee arms upon its breast, and then stretching herself beside it, with her face hidden from the light, little Meg gave herself up to a passion of sorrow.  "If I'd only asked God, for Christ's sake," she cried to herself, "maybe he'd have let baby wake..."'
(Hesba Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868, p.110-111, Facsimile ed. Johnson Reprint Corporation 1970)

Even that iconoclastic romp the Victorian favourite Holiday House ends with Harry and Laura reformed characters at the deathbed of their beloved, exemplary, brother Frank:
'All was changed within and around them, - sorrow had filled their hearts; and no longer merry, thoughtless young creatures, believing the world one scene of frolicksome enjoyment and careless ease, they had now witnessed its realities, - they had felt its trials,- they had experienced the importance of religion, -they had learned the frailty of all earthly joy, - and they had received, amidst tears and sorrow, the last injunction of a dying brother, to "call upon the Lord while He is near...."'
(Catherine Sinclair, Holiday House, 1839, Blackie ed. c. 1896 chapter 17)

Illustration from Holiday House, 1839
 (University of Roehampton internet edition)

In the American author Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women, Part II, published in Britain as Good Wives, the death of Beth has a similar uplifting effect on her tomboy sister Jo, which she expresses in a poem:

'Oh my sister, passing from me

Out of human care and strife,

Leave me, as a gift, those virtues

Which have beautified your life...'

   (Louisa M. Alcott, Good Wives, 1869, Dent ed. 1953 p.209)

Louisa May Alcott aged about 25 (Wikipedia)

Modern authors dispose of parents by sending them on archaeological digs, a lecture tour, or even to prison, and death normally seems only to occur in stories about personal adjustment to it.  In 19th century children's fiction, however, death is another convenient device for removing parents who are an impediment to the plot.

The emotionally shattering opening of The Secret Garden by an English emigrant to the USA, Frances Hodgson Burnett, has everyone but the heroine dying of cholera so that the before the story can get going:
'It was in this strange and sudden way that May found out that she had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib.  That was why the place was so quiet.  It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling snake.'
(Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911)

The Secret Garden, 1st American edition, 1911,
(Harvard University, Houghton Library)

The possible psychological impact on children was not apparent to the Victorians, although many must, like Virginia Stephen, later Virginia Woolf, have remembered the shock of the compulsory visit to a parent's deathbed all their lives:
'No she was lying straight in the middle of her pillows.  Her face looked immeasurably distant, hollow and stern.  When I kissed her, it was like kissing cold iron; the feeling comes back to me - the feeling of my mother's face, iron-cold and granular.
(Virginia Woolf, Moments of being, Sussex U.P. 1976, p.92)
.
This was a world where death was ever-present.  In Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1863-4, Julia Snow criticised the practise of taking children to view corpses, which she makes plain was as common in America as in Britain. (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1863-4, Vol. 28, p.693-7 internet copy available)

The famous scene in Mrs. Sherwood's History of the Fairchild Family, 1818, where the children are taken to see the corpse of a murderer hanging in chains to rot was omitted from late Victorian editions. (History of the Fairchild Family, 1818 ed., Vol. 1, p.57 internet edition available)   It was true to the time when it was written; public executions and leaving certain corpses on show as a public warning only ceased in 1868, and is still practised in some parts of the world (I wrote this in the 1970s, sadly this has in no way changed)

The History of the Fairchild Family, first published 1818,
 1902 ed.charmingly illustrated by Florence M. Rudland, 
showing how long the book remained popular.
(Project Gutenberg internet ed.)

Lilias Rider Haggard describes in her autobiography an old lady who had been a child in the 1840s telling her how, as a child, her father would tell her to pull the gig's rug over her head and not to look as they drove past Norwich Castle if there had been an execution, so that she should not see the corpses suspended from the bridge (Lilias Rider Haggard, Too late for Tears, 1969 p. 74).   Tess of the D'Urbervilles was inspired by the public execution or a murderess which Thomas Hardy saw as a teenager. (Robert Gittings, Young Thomas Hardy, 1975 p. 32-3)

Although in the reign of Queen Victoria few middle, upper or respectable working class families failed to observe Sunday as a day of worship, by the late 19th century Sunday seems to have been observed with less rigour than in the mid 19th century, at least that is the observation of Edmund Gosse in Father and son, (Penguin ed. 1949 p. 166.  First pub. 1907.  Internet ed. available)

This may have been due to the influence of the Royal household, led by Prince Albert, who found the English Sunday, extremely trying in contrast to the more relaxed German Lutheran Sunday.  In the Royal household Sundays, though not neglected, were treated as holiday, with sailing, skating, battledore and shuttlecock, skittles and country walks.  (Daphne Bennett, Queen Victoria's children, 1980 p.30)

Thomas Younghusband and his Family met Queen Victoria and her Family at Crystal Palace.
C. Wells (Museum of London)

Moral stories for Georgian children

'"Oh what a shocking story," said the children, and that miserable man who hangs there is Roger, who murdered his brother? Pray let us go, Papa"  We will go immediately" said Mr. Fairchild; "but I wish first to point out to you, my dear children, that these brothers, when they first began to quarrel in their play, as you did this morning, did not think that death, and perhaps hell, would the the end of their quarrels"'
 (Mrs. Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, 1818, p.60.  Google digital download)

Mrs. Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, 1818
(University of Roehampton digital collection)

The same writers who banished fairy tales from Georgian nurseries were happy to give children poetry and were very interested in children's education.  They produced a large number of text books which filled a real need.  Mrs. Trimmer produced illustrated introductory history books, Jeremiah Joyce, John Aikin and his sister Mrs. Barbauld wrote popular introductions to science and natural history, using imaginary conversations between parents and children.  These dialogues were based on the educational theories of the French philosopher and educationalist Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778, born Geneva, domiciled in France during the French Revolution.  see Sylvia Wiese Patterson The influence of Rousseau's Emile upon the writers of children's books in England in the late 18th century, University Microfilms Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1970) )

Mrs. Barbauld also wrote and published, in 1778, the very first book for children not only written in very simple language but also printed in large, clear type.  Lessons for Children was written for her adopted nephew Charles because she could not find any books suitable for teaching him to read.  Mrs. Trimmer, in The Guardian of Education, recognised the book as a landmark.
(Guardian of Education, vol. 1,1802, p.153)

Mrs. Barbauld, Lessons for Children, 1778,
 Google Digital Archive copy, Oxford University

Children's literature in the late 18th century and the first thirty years of the 19th century was dominated by the moral stories produced by members of the Christian Evangelical movement.  They give an interesting, slightly distorted, view of the lives led by real children at the time.
The households in these stories are mostly quite well off, though not rich, religious, with few servants, occupied in good works of various kinds, and closely united, loving family units.  The stories encouraged honesty, charity, love of God, kindness to animals, industry and selflessness.  Mrs. Maria Edgeworth's stories, in particular, give a charming picture of 18th century family life.

Mrs. Edgeworth was very influenced by Rousseau and many of her stories are based on  his theories about the importance of learning from good example and by experience.  These are fictionalised in his popular and influential book Emile, 1762 (publicly burned in Paris that year) The central thesis of Emile is that a child in born not, as the Puritans believed, naturally evil, but naturally innocent.  The child must be protected from contact with corrupting influences and carefully nurtured so that natural instincts and talents are encouraged to develop.

Title page of Rousseau's Emile, 1762
Wikipedia

Rosamund, the little heroine of many of Mrs. Edgeworth's tales, has an elder sister, the good one who is never cross, always puts her needles away tidily in her housewife, never lies in bed late on cold mornings, and, being provident, is always infuriatingly ready with quietly given pennies for the deserving poor.

Rosamund and Laura, Harry and Lucy are forever far-away Georgian children in caps and ribbons, set in a Georgian landscape of gravel walks and neat flower borders but their behaviour is timeless children's behaviour;
'I am sure - no, not quite sure - but, I hope, I shall be wiser another time!'
says Rosamund of her unwise choice of the beautiful purple jar in the chemist's chemist's shop, which turns out to be merely a glass jar filled with nasty-smelling purple liquid, instead of the shoes she really needs and then has to manage without.  This is an object lesson which she remembers when offered a housewife to keep her needles safe or an imitation plum with which to play tricks on her brother and sister.  She chooses the useful housewife, though not without some agonising.
 In another story Rosamund gets a thorn in her little finger and won't let her mother take it out because she is afraid of being pricked with the needle.
'It does not hurt me in the least, whist I hold it still, and whilst I hold it out quite straight, mamma."
"And is it your intention to hold your finger out quite straight and quite still, Rosamund, all the remainder of your life?"
With gentle irony, mamma leads Rosamund to realise that having the thorn removed is the wisest thing to do.
Rosamund is never punished directly, simply made to suffer the logical consequences of he actions.  As she is a rational child, she then corrects her faults herself, or at least tries to.
(Maria Edgeworth, The Parents' Assistant, 1796, and Early Lessons, vol. 2 p.1-132 and 96-107)

Rosamund and the purple jar, Early Lessons, 9th ed.
Google digital download 

John Ruskin described his upbringing, based on Rousseau's theories, in his autobiography, Praeteria, and also recognised its shortcomings:
'My mother's general principles of first treatment were to guard me with steady watchfulness from all pain or danger; and for the rest to amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome.  But the law was, that I should find my own amusement.  No toys of any kind were at first allowed...Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toy-shops.  I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older, I had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks.'
(John Ruskin, Praeterita, vol. 1, 1885.   Univ. Cal. download p.13)
When Ruskin was older he was taught by his parents and by a series of carefully chosen tutors and, according to Rousseau's principles, kept from the possibly contaminating companionship of other children,

The essence of Rousseau's theory was that the child should be protected from all outside influences which would threaten the natural innocence of its mind, and should acquire knowledge naturally through a benevolently guided exploration of the world around it.  The foundation of Ruskin's lifelong study of art, architecture and aesthetic principles were laid in his early childhood through the tactile and visual exploration of everyday objects.  His building bricks were particularly important to him:

John Ruskin c.1864
Wikipedia

'I never saw or heard of another child so fond of its toy bricks except Miss Edgeworth's (fictional) Frank.  Maria Edgeworth's tales, particularly Harry and Lucy, were of course part of Ruskin's staple reading.   Ruskin developed finely tuned artistic sensibilities as a result of his early education.   It is likely that Darwin and other Victorian scientists, also following their natural inclinations, developed their habits of scientific analysis, while still children, as a result of the same method of education, having been encouraged to collect cabinets of shells, geological specimens, insects or botanical specimens and examine them.

However the solitary upbringing advocated by Rousseau and the ceaseless vigilance with which Ruskin was watched over as a youth left him 'only by protection innocent, instead of by practise virtuous' (Praeteria download version p.55), emotionally vulnerable because his emotions had never been tested, and lacking social graces.  So the eruption into his life of the charming girls who came to stay for a while when Ruskin was about seventeen was overwhelming, the embarrassment of trying to entertain them awful, and possibly his over-protected childhood led to the failure of his marriage.(Praeteria download version p.273-)

In Mrs. Sherwood's books, as in Maria Edgeworth's, moral lessons are taught by the children's failings.  The History of the Fairchild Family, (3 vols, 1818, 1841, 1847) is another children's book which  remained very popular throughout the 19th century.  Maybe this is also what made it popular with children.  Emily, Henry and Lucy are always falling short of perfection in their own eyes as well as in their parents; trying to be good and failing.  In the chapter forbiddingly called The constant bent of man's heart towards sin, for instance, the children have been left at home under the care of a servant.  They are determined to be good.  They begin their lessons, but see a pig in the garden and think it would be good to chase it out.  This would be good, but instead of stopping at the gate they follow it down the lane and through a stream.  A farmer's wife sees how wet and muddy they are and invites them in to get dry.  This is kind of her, but they should not have accepted because her children are naughty children and their parents have forbidden them to play there.  The farmer's wife gives them cake and cider, which was kind, but they get tipsy and fall down in the lane and muddy their clothes even more.  They are very remorseful for a while, but then they are tempted by the swing in the barn, on which they are not allowed to play unsupervised.  Of course their swinging gets out of hand and Emily falls off and cuts her head.  In despair the servant, John, ties the other two children to a chair so that they cannot get into any more mischief.  When their parents get home they are very sorry and run to confess their naughtiness.  (Mary Sherwood, History of the Fairchild Family, vol.1, 1818, digital p. 70-83.  Available in digital download, University of Roehampton)

History of the Fairchild Family,
 illustrated by Florence Rudland, 1902
(Project Gutenberg internet edition)

In these stories the cardinal sins are disobedience to parents and lying.  One of the most forceful stories in The History of the Fairchild Family is Absence of God where Mr. Fairchild punishes Harry, explaining that a father stands in relation to his children as God does to man and so disobedience to his father is a sin against God.(p 265-75)  The children's worst punishments, in accordance with this religious theory, are their own remorse and their parents' displeasure.  Emily steals damsons from the cupboard and is so overcome by guilt that she nearly dies of a fever.(p.114-123)  Henry refuses to learn his first Latin lesson on the ingenious grounds that although this one is easy he has looked at later lessons and knows he will not be able to do them: 'I am sure I cannot learn all the hard words in this book, and so I won't begin;  (p.265-275)  Harry's punishment is to be ignored by his family, though his little sisters are very tearful about it, and he is quickly brought to a state of remorseful repentance by the moral weight of family disapproval, another example of the kind of psychological punishments which both John Locke and Rousseau favoured.  On one terrible occasion the children art taken to see the body of a hanged man on a gibbet, as a lesson in how small faults can lead to greater ones and eventually to the gallows.  (Google digital edition p.,75-6)

As might be expected religious duties are strongly stressed in these moral stories, but in fact religious observance clearly varied between puritanism as strict as any practised in the 17th century to Henrietta Hotham's lighthearted declaration in 1763 at the age of eleven: 'I have not yet declared of what Religion I shall be; but I go three times a week to the Church door; and upon Moses Hart's having done a most humane and charitable action by one of Mr. Carr's sons, I have been to the Jew's synagogue; it is observed that there is no Apprehension of my being a Papist, I like Fish too well to have it my Duty to eat it.'
(A.M.W. Stirling, The Hothams,  2 vols, 1918, p.95)

Even in a strict Quaker household such as the Gurney's the children's private journals for spiritual self-examination contain some surprisingly rebellious sentiments:
'At this time I do not believe in Christ' 'Oh how I long to get a broom and bang all the old Quakers who do look so triumphant and disagreable.'
(Augustust J.C. Hare, The Gurneys of Earlham, 1895, Vol. 7 p.72, 79)

Generally, however both adults and children who belonged to the various sects which disented from the established Church of England were particularly fervent in their religious beliefs, partly, no doubt, because in the latter half of the 18th century dissenters were still liable to persecution.  As late as 1800 Isaac Taylor, (brother of Jane Taylor who wrote Twinkle twinkle little star) described a near escape from a mob bent on attacking their house, and there was strong feeling against the Catholics due to the Stuart claim to the Crown.
(Doris May Armitage, The Taylors of Ongar, 1938 p. 24-55)

 Adults and children were exposed to propaganda such as The Protestant Tutor, 1713, advertised as:
'Instructing Youth and Others in the Complete Method of Spelling, Reading, and Writing True English: Also Discovering to them the Notorious Errors, Damnable Doctrines and Cruel Massacres of the Bloody Papists; which England may expect from a Popish Successor, with Instructions for Grounding them in the Protestant Religion.  To which is added the Preamble to the Patent for Creating the Electoral Prince of Hanover a Peer of the Realm, Duke of Cambridge.
(later George I  The Protestant Tutor, 1713, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham))
The anti-Catholic Foxe's Book of Martyrs was also still very popular reading.

Image from Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1563
British Library digital image

Mrs. Sherwood remembered being at school in Reading where many French refugees fled during the French Revolution (1789-99) One of them, the Abbe Beauregard, attempted to convert her to the Catholic religion which she resisted:
'Popery of course must be wrong, because my parents had said so, and because those people worshipped saints; and God alone, I had been taught, was the fit object of worship.'
(The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, 1857 A digital version is available on Google)
Stephen Hawtrey, at school in France shortly before the Revolution, experienced the reverse prejudice, being told that, as a Protestant, he could not be a Christian because he had not been baptised.
 (Florence M. Hawtrey,  The History of The Hawtrey Family, 1903, Vol. 1, p. 392)

Although the 18th and 19th centuries were a period of strong and active religious feeling in Britain which expressed itself in generally puritanical attitudes to dress and behaviour, it is evident from the force with which Nonconformist and Evangelical writers condemned such behaviour that a large number of middle and upper class children were being brought up under what, to their eyes, appeared a deplorably lax regime, and to very different standards.  Many late 18th and early 19th century stories proclaim the superiority of spiritual beauty over physical, ridicule overdress, spoilt children, and extol the virtues of plain dressing, simplicity and personal cleanliness, something which was beginning to be expected in polite circles.

Mary Hughes, The Ornaments Discovered, 1815,
 Copy:internet  Biblio.co.uk, Abbey Antiquarian Books

The Ornaments Discovered by Mary Hughes contrasts the behaviour of Emma:
'dress, unfortunately for her, was the most important object in life' and foundling Fanny, whose spiritual ornaments give the title.  Fanny is so sweet natured, or lacking in discrimination, that she continues to regard Emma as her dearest friend when the latter's lack of moral courage has led to Fanny being considered a liar and a thief.  She is, in fact, a shining moral example of not only virtues such as honesty but also those qualities which the Georgians and especially the Victorians thought so essential in a woman, utter unselfishness, sweet-nature, good temper and gentleness.
(Mary Hughes, The Ornaments Discovered, 1822 edition, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

The poem Finery in Jane and Anne Taylor's popular collection Original Poems for Infant Minds makes the same point:

''Twas Lucy, tho' only in simple white clad
(Nor trimmings, nor laces, not jewels she had)
Whose cheerful good nature delighted them more
Than all the fine garments that Harriet wore.'
(Jane and Anne Taylor, Original poems for infant minds, 1804.  p. 99.
Garland Press facsimile 1976.  Digital copy available on Google Project Gutenberg, but pagination differs)

For a few years at least simplicity became the fashion.  However, with so many pretty things to tempt them who could blame those who could afford it for yielding to the temptation to display their wealth and dress themselves and their children up like Christmas trees?

The New England Puritans were no more successful in discouraging people from a taste for finery than the British Nonconformists and Evangelicals. Alice Morse Earle quotes, for example, a long letter from a twelve year old American girl, Anna Green Winslow, written in 1771, describing her complicated toilet for a special occasion:
'I was dress'd in my yellow coat, black bib & apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my aunt Storer sometime since presented me with blue ribbins on it, a very handsome locket in the shape of a hart, the paste pin my Hon'd Papa presented me with in my cap, my new cloak & bonnet on, my pompedore gloves, and I would tell you they all lik'd my dress very much.'...Nor was this all, on another occasion she wore'...black feathers....my paste comb, all my paste, garnett, marquasett, and jet pins, together with my silver plume...'
(Alice Morse Earle Child life in Colonial days, 1899, p.58-9.  Digital copy available on Project Gutenberg, an excellent account of child life in the USA)

Fairy tales are a danger to children!

'Partial as we confess ourselves to be, to most of the books of the old school, we cannot approve of those which are only fit to fill the heads of children with confused notions of wonderful and supernatural events. 'Mother Bunch's Tales are of this description.'
 Mrs Sarah Trimmer, The Guardian of Education, Vol. 2. 1803,p.185)

Sarah Trimmer (Wikipedia)

The late 18th and early 19th century is remarkable for the large number of Evangelical writers who turned to producing stories for children.  This was largely a result of the growth of the Sunday School Movement; people like Mrs. Trimmer, Hannah More and Mrs. Sherwood quickly found that there were no suitably improving stories for the children in their new Sunday schools for the poor to read.  There was also a steady demand from the better off, particularly parents in the same Evangelical; circles as the writers mentioned above.  They came from a section of society which had traditionally taken a close interest in their children's upbringing.  Their works were popular in both Britain and America. The influential American writer Mrs. Lydia Child recommended in The Mother's Book, an instruction manual for young mothers, the work of the Taylors, the Edgeworths, Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Trimmer, whom she describes as 'among the very best writers of juvenile books; her influence is pure and holy'.  She had reservations about Mrs. Sherwood because of the extremely Calvinistic tone of her theology, and regretted that the Edgeworths, for ideological reasons, as follower of the French philosopher Rousseau, omitted any religious teaching from their books for children.  (Mrs. Lydia Child, The Mother's Book, 1831.p95-103 of 4th ed 1832)  Lydia Child was an influential campaigner for women's rights, the abolition of slavery and Native American rights)

Naturally parents and writers in these social circles carefully scrutinized the books they gave their children and from 1802 to 1805 Mrs. Trimmer edited and largely wrote the very first reviewing journal for children's literature, The Guardian of Education.

One of the most remarkable effects of the virtual monopoly which this group of authors and educationalists established over the production of children's books at this time was the virtual abolition of traditional fairy tales for almost the first twenty-five years of the 19th century.  The Puritans had strongly disapproved of folklore and fairy tales, which they associated with Catholicism and witchcraft, and considered superstitious nonsense.  Mrs. Trimmer's own mildly fanciful moral story, The History of the Robins, 1786, was prefaced by a disclaimer reminding children that robins cannot really talk as they do in the story.  Children should be 'taught to consider them, not as containing the real conversations of birds (for that it is impossible we should ever understand), but as a series of Fables, intended to convey moral instruction...'
(The Guardian of Education, Vol. 2,)

Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories.
with The History of the Robins
(British Library)

The 19th century attack on fairy tales was, however, launched largely on grounds of morality.  In 1802 a correspondent in The Guardian of Education roundly condemned Cinderella, saying it 'is perhaps one of the most exceptional books that was ever written for children...It paints some of the worst passions that can enter into the human breast, and of which little children should, if possible, be totally ignorant; such as envy, jealousy, a dislike to  mothers-in-law (sic, meaning step-mothers) and half-sisters, vanity, a love of dress, etc. etc.' (Guardian of Education, Vol. 2, p.15 and 448 )  Mrs. Trimmer was forced to re-examine her old favourites such as Mother Bunch and Mother Goose, and shortly afterwards produced a damning review of Benjamin Tabart's very charming Juvenile Library, which included the first printed text of Jack and the Beanstalk, 1802.  Even works such as the very respectable Sarah Fielding's The Governess, which both Mrs. Trimmer and Mrs. Sherwood loved as children became suspect.  Mrs. Sherwood replaced the fairy tales it contains with something more improving.

John Newbery's publications became virtually unobtainable.  Charles Lamb,author of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, complained to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writer of The Ancient Mariner: 'Goody Two Shoes is almost out of print.  Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery...Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men.  Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil?  Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history! ' ( Harvey Darton Children's Books in England,p. 131 quoting Lamb's letter to Coleridge)  This complaint is a fore-runner of Charles Dicken's satirical attack on the Rationalists, epitomized by Mr. Gradgrind, in Hard Times, 1854, by which time fantasy and fairy tales were once more accepted: 'Now, what I want is, Facts, Teach these boys and girl nothing but Facts.  Facts alone are wanted in life.  Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.  You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.'

Fairy tales were considered harmful mainly on moral grounds but also because it was feared that children would learn to confuse truth and falsehood, which may have not been unjustified.  Caroline Hutton, daughter of the Birmingham historian William Hutton, recalled that, 'Nothing delighted me so much as did the tales of the fairies.  I no more doubted their truth than I did my own existence.'  She was most disappointed when her home-made wand failed to turn the parlour grate to gold. (Caroline Hutton Reminiscences of a gentlewoman of the last century.  Letters of Caroline Hutton ed. C.H. Beale, Cornish, Birmingham, 1891 p.2)  Mrs. Sherwood as a child peopled the woods near where she grew up with fairies: 'If I could discern fairy rings, which abounded in those woods, they gave me another set of images; and I had imaginary hermits in every hollow of the rocky sides of the dingle, and imaginary castles on every height, whilst the church and churchyard supplied me with more ghosts and apparitions than I dared to tell of.' (Life of Mrs. Sherwood, edited by her daughter Sophia Kelly, 1857 p.37)

Many children, of course, still had access to folk tales in spite of official disapproval.  Harriet Martineau, born 1802, whose father 'held that they developed the imagination in the wrong channels', was told them by her nurse, like many other children, and the traditional tales, along with more sensational literature, were still sold in the form of crudely printed little chapbooks carried round the country by pedlars and having a status similar to modern comics.  (Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, 1877, Vol. 1, p.119)

It was serious folklore collectors, the Grimm brothers in Germany, Andrew Lang and Henry Cole on Britain, who restored fairy tales to the nursery by putting the weight of their considerable reputations behind well presented translations and editions of traditional tales which they collected.  Edgar Taylor argued for the encouragement of the imagination in the preface to the first English translation of Grimm's fairy tales, published in 1823:

'Our imagination is surely as susceptible of improvement by exercise, as our judgement or our memory; ad so long as such fictions only are presented to the young mind as do not interfere with the important department of moral education, a beneficial effect must be produced by the pleasurable employment of a faculty in which so much of our happiness in every period of life consists.'
(preface to German popular stories...collected by M.M. Grimm, 1823, translated by Edgar Taylor)

Curiously enough, fairy tales and fantasy in verse always remained generally acceptable.  It was at exactly this period that John Harris was achieving success with his picture book versions of Old Mother Hubbard, Cinderella  , The Butterfly's Ball, The Lion's Masquerade and numerous other titles.  Edmund Gosse, who was later allowed to read Scott's verse but not his Waverley Novels, supposed the distinction was made on the grounds that the artificiality of verse made it less realistic and so less credible than prose.
(Edmund Goss, Father and Son, 1907 Penguin Modern Classics ed. 1949 p.162)

(M. Roscoe,  The Butterfly's Ball, 1806
British Library)

Verse was, for whatever reason, enormously popular.  Isaac Watts had produced perhaps the most popular collection of children's poems ever published in 1715.  His Divine and Moral Songs for Children was written for a friend who wanted some hymns to accompany catechisms, and many of them are still in regular use.  His poem The Sluggard was parodied by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland:

'  'Tis the voice of the Lobster; I hear him declare
You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair...'
(The Annotated Alice, introduction and notes by Martin Gardner, 1960, Penguin ed. p. 139)

Watt's reasons for encouraging children to learn poetry by heart are given in his preface:
'There is something so amusing and entertaining in rhymes and metre, that will incline children to make this part of their business a diversion...What is learnt in Verse, is longer retained in memory, and sooner recollected...'
(Watts Divine Songs, 1st ed. 1715, preface)

Original poems for infant minds, 1834 ed.
1st ed. is 1804-5
(British Library)

Many collections of verse for children were produced around the turn of the century, including several well known collections by the Taylors, a family of Nonconformists.  'Twinkle, twinkle little star' has taken its place as a nursery rhyme, while My Mother was admired and imitated throughout the 19th century, appealing, as it did, even more to the Victorian cult of womanhood than to the Georgians:

'Who taught my infant lips to pray,

To love God's holy book and day,

And walk in wisdom's pleasant way?

  My mother.

Who ran to help me when I fell,

And would some pretty story tell,

Or kiss the place to make it well?

   My mother.'

(Jane and Ann Taylor, and others, 

Original poems for infant minds, 

1804-5.  Facsimile ed. 1976, p.76)

Little pretty picture books for children in Georgian Britain and America

"Ev'ry lady in this land

Has twenty nails upon each hand

Five and twenty on hands and feet

And this is is true without deceit"'

(Punctuation Personified, 1824)

The 18th century saw great developments in the use of pictures in books for children.  Generally these were crude but vigorous black and white woodcuts; many children's chapbooks in particular had these on every little page, with a short verse underneath.

Chapbooks, c.1800-1815
(Parker Collection Library of Birmingham)

However probably the most notable children's picture books produced in the 18th century were the type known as harlequinades, which are really early versions of movable or toy books.  Home-made lift up or flap books are known to have been popular as early as the mid 17th century in both Britain and America. The earliest were called Metamorphosis and show Adam and Eve, who for no known reason changes into a mermaid on lifting the lower flap.  Cain and Abel follow, then a lion, which becomes a griffin, which becomes a great bird carrying off a baby.  The last two flaps show a miser hoarding wealth and a memento mori. The text was adapted from Benjamin Sands The Beginning, Progress and End of Man, 1650.

From an American Metamorphosis, Samuel Wood & Sons, 1814,
reprinted from a 17th century original
(University of Delaware)

 In the 1760s a London map and print seller, Robert Sayer, adapted this traditional flap book to show scenes from the story of Harlequin and Columbine.  The flap books he printed were sold either plain or delicately hand-coloured.   Elizabeth Newbery (wife to John Newbery's nephew Francis), John Wallis and other publishers quickly followed his lead, and harlequinades were popular in Britain and America until the 1820s.  There is an American version of the traditional Adam and Eve flap book published as late as the 1860s.

Two variations on these flap books was published by Stacey Grimaldi in the 1820s;  The Toilet, and A Suit of Armour for Youth.  These show pictures of toilet articles or pieces of armour with titles such as 'An universal and genuine Beautifier' .  Lift the flap picture and the moral is revealed:  'Good Humour'.  Each picture is followed by an improving poem from Nathaniel Cotton's Visions in Verse.

Grimaldi's Toilet, showing The Enchanting Mirror:  Humility
(Copy: Philadelphia Rare Books, Pinterest)








However the true for-runners of modern children's picture books first appeared n the early 1800s, published by John Newbery's equally adventurous successor, John Harris. The earliest, Old Mother Hubbard and her Dog, a verse rendering by Sarah Martin of a traditional tale was published in 1805 and its success encouraged the publisher to commission other little books to follow.  These picture books were tales in verse about 15cm high, illustrated with copperplates or wood engravings and sold either in plain black and white or, more usually, hand coloured, often quite beautifully, in delicate watercolours. There was a whole cottage industry, employing children in poor families, working from home hand-colouring these and other illustrations.
The stories were versions of traditional tales such as Cock Robin and Cinderella or fantasies such as The Butterfly's Ball,  written by a well known scholar, Mr. Roscoe, for his own children, and first published in The Gentlemen's Magazine.  Other popular titles were The Adventures of Seven Wonderful Old Women, Dame Trot and her Cat, and The Peacock's Party, one of the numerous imitations of The Butterfly's Ball.

Old Dame Trot and her Comical Cat c.1820
(Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Some of the most delightful of those early picture books are the educational ones; rhyming versions of the rules of punctuation such as Punctuation Personified, or Pointing made Easy, by Mr. Stops which begins:

'Young Robert could read, but he gabbled so fast

And ran on with such speed,that all meaning he lost.

Till one morning he met Mr. Stops, by the way:

Who advised him to listen to what he should say.

Then ent'ring the house, he a riddle repeated,

To show, WITHOUT STOPS, how the ear may be cheated.

"Ev'ry lady in this land

Has twenty nails upon each hand

Five and twenty on hands and feet

And this is is true without deceit"'

(Punctuation Personified, 1824,

Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Marmaduke Multiply's Mirthful Method of Making Minor Mathematicians was published shortly after the defeat of Napoleon, and for 'Twice 11 are 22' shows a tiny child on father's knee, brandishing a large glass full of something unsuitable, crying:  'We'll drink to the hero of Waterloo!'  He is probably pleased that nurse will no longer be able to terrify him at bedtime with threats of Old Boney.  (Marmaduke Multiply, 1816, Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

Marmaduke Multiply, 1816,
(Parker Collection, Library of Birmingham)

The series of toy books published by S&J Fuller at the Temple of Fancy, Rathbone Place, London around 1810 combined an improving moral story with cut-out figures.  The most well known are the History of Little Fanny, the History of Little Henry and Ellen or The Naughty Girl Reclaimed.  There are appropriate outfits for each episode in the character's life with a moveable head, and hats,  to slot into the costumes.  

The History of Little Fanny, 1810
(Theriaults The Dollmasters.com)

John Newbery: Instruction and Delight in the 18th century

'Giles Gingerbread, he lov'd Cream, Custard and Curds,

And Good Books so well, that he eat up his Words'.

(The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, Newbery, 1764

John Newbery was the most influential publisher of children's books in mid to late 18th century.
Catherine Hutton of Birmingham, born in 1756, remembered his little books with delight:
'I read all of Mr. Newbery's gilt books, as they were called...Christmas box, New Year's Gift, Goody Two Shoes & etc...I trembled for Bluebeard's wife when she was so naughty as to open the forbidden closet; and when I came to her kneeling at her husband's feet, he with his uplifted scimitar ready to strike, and sister Anne looking out from the window I could read no more.  I burst into tears, laid down the book, and exclaimed "Mama I never will be married."...it was many years before I dared venture to resume the tale, or know that Bluebeard's wife was saved.'
   (Catherine Hutton, Reminiscences of a gentlewoman of the last century...Letters of Catherine Hutton, ed. C.H. Beale, Birmingham 1891)

 Newbery was not the first to publish amusing yet instructive children's books but he was the first to make them a large enough part of his business for many copies to have survived and so he may be considered the first to make a commercial success of his publishing venture.  By the turn of the century he had been joined by others. One of Newbery's most important rivals was  John Marshall of 4 Aldermary Churchyard.  He published quite a range of work, from flimsy chapbook collections of nursery rhymes to attractive little stories like The Christmas Present by 'Solomon Sobersides'.  He also published 'infant libraries', complete sets of matching miniature books in little wooden bookcases.

Newbery knew well that the way to a child's heart is through its stomach and was a great believer in the reward system:
'As (Tommy Trip) rides through the town, he frequently stops at the doors to know how the little children do within; and if they are good and learn their book? and then leaves an apple, an orange, or a plumb-cake at the door, and away he gallops, again, tantivy, tantivy, tantivy.'
(The Lilliputian Magazine, Newbery, 1752, British Library 1387.9.5)
He also used the edible alphabet with great success in the story of Giles Gingerbread, 'the little boy who lived upon learning' :

'Giles Gingerbread, he lov'd Cream, Custard and Curds,

And Good Books so well, that he eat up his Words'.

The little boy's letters were cut out of gingerbread for him, and he learned them as he ate.
(The Renowned history of Giles Gingerbread, Newbery, 1764, S. Roscoe, John Newbery and his successors, 1973)

Giles Gingerbread. From a later, 1820 ed.pub. J. Kendrew, York,
(Osborn Collection, UCLA)

 Andrew Tuer says in The History of the Hornbook that gingerbread letters and gingerbread hornbooks became popular some time in the 18th century.  He quotes Matthew Prior's  poem Alma, Canto II, from Poems upon several occasions, 1721:

'To Master John the English maid

A Horn-book gives of Ginger-bread;

And that the Child may learn the better,

As he can name, he eats the letter...'

(Andrew Tuer, The History of the Hornbook, 1897 vol. 2)

Since Janeway's Token for Children, 1671,  the emphasis seems to have changed a bit from heavenly to earthly rewards for being a good boy or girl.  Little Goody Two Shoes is recommended as a mentor:

'From a state of rags and care

And having shoes but half a pair

Their fortune and their fame would fix

And gallop in a coach and six'

(The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, Newbery, 1765)

History of Little Goody Two Shoes, 1768 ed. (Wikipedia)

This still represented the just reward of honesty and hard work, rather than the activities of a Fanny Hill or a Moll Flanders. Newbery's exemplary stories were firm supporters of traditional morality; 'She never told a lie in her life.  No, No!  she knew that was a naughty pau-pau Trick

 (Nurse Truelove's New-Year's Gift, Newbery, c.1770)

'See Virtue here, with Wealth and Glory crown'd

And all the busy Crowd admiring round;

While she to Church with pious Zeal reapirs

To hear the Sermon, and to say her prayers'.

(The history of Miss Polly Friendly, Newbery, Nurse Truelove...c.1770)

'All Boys and Girls, who are not dutiful and obedient to their Parents , never come to any Good, but are, as they ought to be, always neglected and despised.' 

(A Pretty Play-thing for Children of all Denominations, Newbery, c.1759, Roscoe op.cit. p.226))

John Newbery also sold other educational aids, and, good salesman that he was, promoted them through his story books:

 'When he has learnt the Roman letters, you may teach him the Italic letters in the same Manner, and then the Figures; Afterwards it will be proper to give him a Sett of the Squares sold at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul's Churchyard, by playing with which he will soon learn to read.'  

(A Little Lottery Book for Children, containing a new Method of playing them into a Knowledge of the letters, Figures etc.  Newbery c. 1765? Roscoe p, 171) 

The Little Lottery Book was an original reading aid with a picture on one side of the page and a letter on the other; the child learned his letters by sticking a pin through the picture into the letter which corresponded to it.  Few copies survived such rough treatment.  

Newbery's little books were just as popular in America.  There numerous pirated editions were published by Isiah Thomas of Worcester (Mass) the founder of the American Antiquarian Society, and by Mahlon Day of New York.  Isiah Thomas adopted Newbery's use of advertising, changing the wording to fit his own business and slightly Americanising the text:
'Why! he got all the little books by rote that are sold by Mr. Thomas in Worcester, when he was but a very little boy.  Then he never missed church...He is chosen Congressman already and yet he is not puffed up...'
(Alice Morse Earle, Child life in Colonial Days 1899)