Children's books in eighteenth-century England

Some resources for Toronto-based research

Local library catalogues & Virtual libraries, E-resource guides & Bibliographies

Online exhibitions & E-books, Historical chronologies & Literary contexts

Local library catalogues

• University of Toronto
• Osborne Collection

E-resource guides

• English literature (Patricia Bellamy, Robart Library)

Virtual libraries

• EEBO (Early English Books online)
• ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections online)
• The Hockliffe Project (De Montfort University)

Children's literature bibliographies

• The Hockliffe Project's (open 'Home' and choose 'Bibliography')
• Recent studies in 18th-century children's literature (compiled by James E. May)
• Bibliography of children's literature criticism (Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reiner)

  Click on "Culture, ideology, and children's literature" for historical sources

Online library links and exhibitions

• The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, Toronto Public Library
• The Hockliffe Project, from the Hockliffe Collection at De Montfort University
• Historical survey of children's literature in the British Library
• Picturing childhood: illustrated books from University of California Collections (Cynthia Burlingham)
• World of the child: two hundred years of children's books, exhibited at the University of Delaware library
• Children's literature, chiefly from the nineteenth century, exhibited at the Thomas Cooper Library, USC
• 4000 years of miniature books, at the Lilly Library, University of Indiana
• Miniature libraries (John Marshall's), from the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert (Emma Laws)
• Perceptions of children: children's literature from the eighteenth century, a website designed by U of Michigan students

Children's literature e-books

• Essays about eighteenth-century children's literature from the Princeton University Library Chronicle, online at the Cotsen Collection's 'Reading Room'
• "Children's Books." Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution. From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
• Zohar Shavit, Poetics of Children's Literature (Athens: U of Georgia Press, 1986)

The historical contexts

There are year-by-year chronologies for the eighteenth century and the Romantic period.

The broader literary contexts

There are some very good websites for the study of eighteenth-century and Romantic literature. These include

• Jack Lynch's eighteenth-century resources
• The Voice of the Shuttle: eighteenth-century resources
• The Voice of the Shuttle: Romantic resources