Children's writers

I enjoy reading many children’s classics – and have noticed that so many of them were written in Late Victorian or Edwardian England, by writers who often seemed to be somewhat eccentric.

In bygone days, children were looked on as young adults, and were expected, once infancy was past, to learn how to be an adult and to conform to adult behavior as much as they possibly could.  Working class children who had no schooling were put to work at a very early age.   Upper and middle class children were educated but were prepared for adult life at a very young age...

But by later Victorian times, there was an increased “softness” about childhood.  Children were less harshly treated though they were still firmly and strictly disciplined by modern standards.   Writers and thinkers were more sentimental about children, seeing them as innocent and charming and novelists and poets began to write about the world of childhood as a special time of fun and innocence.  Middle and upper class parents still did not spend a lot of time with their offspring, who were reared by nannies and governesses and sent off to school… but still parents were a little more inclined to want to enjoy their children’s company... and books about children’s adventures were popular….

Some of the Edwardian writers included E Nesbit, who was a feminist and socialist.. Her most famous novel was The Railway Children.  Another was Kenneth Grahame.  He did not write many novels but his best known work is “The Wind in the Willows” which has elements of “children having fun, without adults around and messing about in boats”.. the sort of works that were later published by Enid Blyton.

I hope to write some short bios of these writers