British Children's Poetry in the Romantic Era - by D Ruwe (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

British Children's Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme is a thorough study of secular children's verse between 1780 and 1835. Donelle Ruwe reveals the formula for Romantic-era children's poetry and considers the creation of a children's poetry canon, the rise of sentimental children's verse, the first verse-novel for children, and the fads for fantasy poems, rhyming puzzles, and versified study guides. Through in-depth historical research, Ruwe challenges the myths behind the significance of the groundbreaking Original Poems for Infant Minds and also explores the breakout hits from this collection, Ann Taylor's 'My Mother' and Adelaide O'Keeffe's 'The Use of Sight'. This book highlights the manuscript poems of Sara Coleridge, the challenging children's verse of Charlotte Smith, and the impact of Madame de Genlis, John Aikin, Elizabeth Turner, Rousseau, Barbauld, Watts, and Blake on the development of a children's poetry aesthetic.

Review Quotes

"The strength of this ambitious monograph lies in the quality of its extensive historical and archival research. In recovering a wealth of children's secular verse forms, this impressive and rich study is an important and much welcomed addition to the fields of both Romanticism and Children's Literature Studies." (Katherine Ingle, Charles Lab Bulletin, Vol. 161, Spring, 2016)

"British Children's Poetry in the Romantic Era is a valuable study of a poetic tradition that has long been rendered invisible by the reigning Romantic aesthetic. ... The book is written in a clear yet exploratory prose style, never straying far from its sources as it allows them to guide its lines of inquiry. ... British Children's Poetry is productively utilitarian, offering teachers and scholars a rich taxonomic vocabulary." (Angela Sorby, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 40 (4), Winter, 2016)

"Ruwe's thorough and thought-provoking formalist study tracks metrical patterns and evaluates the frequency of dramatic, narrative and lyric modes by authors such as Adelaide O'Keeffe and Sara Coleridge. Detailed, perceptive, and crisply written, Ruwe's case studies identify and define an area that, thanks to her scholarship, will attract much more attention in years to come." (SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 55 (4), Autumn, 2015)

'[British Children's Poetry in the Romantic Era] features numerous black-and-white illustrations, and the appendices of chapbooks and the rest of the apparutus all display a thoroughness which reveals the fourteen years it took to complete this pioneering work.' - Times Literary Supplement

'Donelle Ruwe's monograph is an excellent study of secular children's verse between 1780 and 1835. As you would expect from the editor of Culturing the Child: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers(2005) and Co-President of 18th- and 19th-century British Women Writers Association, Ruwe is an erudite scholar and a flag-bearer for women writers of the past. What a delight to have a book devoted to children's poetry covering a relatively short period of history so that insightful in-depth analysis is possible. As the vast majority of Romantic era poetry for children was written by women, what a joy to find the pages full of references to the often neglected Taylors, O'Keeffe, Smith et al. Ruwe has been extremely thorough in her investigation of children's poetry of the Romantic period and has come up with exciting and original new research.' - Morag Styles, IRSCL Journal

About the Author

Donelle Ruwe is Professor of English at Northern Arizona University, USA, and Co-President of the 18th and 19th-Century British Women Writers Association. She has edited Culturing the Child, 1690-1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers (2005) and has published two award-winning poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared in Children's Literature, Eighteenth-Century Life, European Romantic Review, English Journal, and Lion and the Unicorn.