Traditionally research into pre-20th century children’s literature has focused on titles written and consumed in a particular country. However, most 18th- and 19th-century children, parents, and teachers would not have necessarily used a book’s national origin as the chief criterion for selection. In the majority of European countries, children read books in more than one language, so in reality there was a transnational corpus of children’s books crossing language groups, political borders, and the seas, their texts and illustrations translated and transformed. In order to better understand the world of children’s print culture from both the perspectives of the young reader and of the “children’s book business,” its transnational character should be taken into account.

“Books for Children: Transnational Encounters 1750-1850” (Part II) is a continuation of the May 2018 symposium of the same title held at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, where the presentations and discussions made clear that the collaboration ought to continue in order to reach a wider audience.

Organizers

Charlotte Appel
Associate Professor
Head of the PhD-programme for History, Archaeology and Classical Studies
School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University (Denmark)

Nina Christensen
Professor, Head of Centre for Children’s Literature and Media
School of Communication and Culture
Aarhus University (Denmark)

Matthew Grenby
Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies
Dean of Research and Innovation
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Newcastle University (United Kingdom)

Andrea Immel
Curator, Cotsen Children’s Library
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
Princeton University Library

image credit

The Ship that Sailed to Mars by William M. Timlin. New York: F.A. Stokes, 1924. (Cotsen 152103)