Popular Children's Literature in Britain

The astonishing success of J.K. Rowling and other contemporary children's authors has demonstrated how passionately children can commit to the books they love. But this kind of devotion is not new. This timely volume takes up the challenge of assessing the complex interplay of forces that have created the popularity of children's books both today and in the past. The essays collected here ask about the meanings and values that have been ascribed to the term 'popular'. They consider whether popularity can be imposed, or if it must always emerge from children's preferences. And they investigate how the Harry Potter phenomenon fits into a repeated cycle of success and decline within the publishing industry. Whether examining eighteenth-century chapbooks, fairy tales, science schoolbooks, Victorian adventures, waif novels or school stories, these essays show how historical and publishing contexts are vital in determining which books will succeed and which will fail, which bestsellers will endure and which will fade quickly into obscurity. As they considering the fiction of Angela Brazil, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling, the contributors carefully analyse how authorial talent and cultural contexts combine, in often unpredictable ways, to generate a€“ and sometimes even sustain a€“ literary success.

Julia Briggs was, until her death in 2007, Professor of English Literature at De Montfort University, UK. She was the author of many books, including Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (1977), This Stage-Play World: English Literature and Its Background, 1580a€“1625 (1983), A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit (1987) and Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life (2005). Dennis Butts taught children's literature at Reading University, UK. He has written widely about children's books, and edited many scholarly editions and critical studies including Stories and Society: Children's Literature in its Social Context (1992) and From the Dairyman's Daughter to Worrals of the WAAF: The Religious Tract Society (2006). M.O. Grenby is Reader in Children's Literature in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University, UK. He has published extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural history and on children's literature. His books include The Anti-Jacobin Novel: British Conservatism and the French Revolution (2001) and the Edinburgh Critical Guide to Children's Literature (2008).