The Making of Modern Children's Literature in Britain

Publishing and Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s

Lucy Pearson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317024750
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Lucy Pearson's lively and engaging book examines British children's literature during the period widely regarded as a 'second golden age'. Drawing extensively on archival material, Pearson investigates the practical and ideological factors that shaped ideas of 'good' children's literature in Britain, with particular attention to children's book publishing. Pearson begins with a critical overview of the discourse surrounding children's literature during the 1960s and 1970s, summarizing the main critical debates in the context of the broader social conversation that took place around children and childhood. The contributions of publishing houses, large and small, to changing ideas about children's literature become apparent as Pearson explores the careers of two enormously influential children's editors: Kaye Webb of Puffin Books and Aidan Chambers of Topliner Macmillan. Brilliant as an innovator of highly successful marketing strategies, Webb played a key role in defining what were, in her words, 'the best in children's books', while Chambers' work as an editor and critic illustrates the pioneering nature of children's publishing during this period. Pearson shows that social investment was a central factor in the formation of this golden age, and identifies its legacies in the modern publishing industry, both positive and negative.

Chapter 1
The Children’s Literature Scene

The world of children’s literature in the 1960s and 1970s clearly enjoyed the sense of a new golden age in the making. This was generated not only by the appearance of exciting new writing and the increased social and educational interest in children’s reading outlined in the Introduction, but also in the degree to which these factors coalesced to form a coherent cultural phenomenon. The first half of the twentieth century had seen some important developments in British children’s literature, including the appearance of landmark titles such as Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes (1936) and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937), the establishment of the Carnegie Medal (1936), and the launch of Puffin, the first major children’s paperback imprint (1939).¹ A lack of serious critical attention for children’s literature, however, meant that such developments happened in isolation: Geoffrey Trease, who started his career as a children’s writer in 1934, recollects, ‘I myself knew nothing of Emil [and the Detectives]. Nor did I know that in 1930 a man named Arthur Ransome had blazed a new trail with a book called Swallows and Amazons’.² By contrast, the 1960s saw an onslaught of new initiatives which served to fuel progression in a whole range of areas. Some of these developments were interdependent for practical reasons – the social and economic factors explored in the Introduction funded the expansion of children’s publishing – but the sense of interconnection extended beyond these practical exigencies. In the rapidly changing social context of the 1960s and 1970s, childhood became a central focus of British culture, garnering attention both in academia and in popular culture. Due to this broader discourse about children and childhood, developments in separate fields such as education, librarianship and publishing did not take place in isolation but in direct response to one another. Many practitioners in the field of children’s literature operated in several different spheres, carrying ideas and expertise from one to another. Librarians such as Sheila Ray and Elaine Moss became active and influential critics and reviewers, drawing on their experiences with child readers to develop new ideologies about the purpose and nature of children’s literature. Geoffrey Trease and Jill Paton Walsh were among the many children’s authors who also contributed to the field as critics and reviewers; John Rowe Townsend was children’s book editor for the Guardian and published several influential works of criticism in addition to his prolific output of fiction for children and young adults. The activities of children’s editors also extended beyond the world of publishing, and several wrote as well as published children’s books; for example, Philippa Pearce, most famous for her fiction – notably Carnegie Medal winner Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958) – also edited the children’s list at Andre Deutsch.³ Many authors and critics emerged from the world of education: authors Bernard Ashley, Farrukh Dhondy and Jan Mark, and critic Margaret Meek all began their careers as teachers, and in many cases were motivated by a desire for children’s literature which would serve the kind of children they were teaching. Aidan Chambers, who is explored in depth in Chapter 3, is the epitome of this trend for inter-disciplinarity: his career spanned almost every aspect of children’s literature. The endeavour of defining and producing ‘quality’ children’s literature, therefore, was not fragmented or confined to a single discipline, but was part of the dominant social discourse. In order to understand the context within which children’s publishers positioned their books as the ‘best’ in children’s reading, therefore, it is essential to examine the contributions of practitioners from across a range of disciplines. This chapter explores the ways in which writers, critics, librarians and other children’s literature practitioners defined the qualities of this ‘golden age’ of children’s literature.

There is scope for a much more comprehensive survey of the field; however, this chapter examines some of the most significant themes which emerged in the children’s literature and criticism of the 1960s and 1970s. Scholarly attention has hitherto focused upon the children’s books themselves – John Rowe Townsend and Peter Hunt, among others, have published overviews of the children’s literature of the period – and for this reason this chapter does not attempt to represent the full scope of fiction written for children.⁴ Instead, it highlights a few key texts and their relationship to contemporary ideas about the nature and purpose of children’s literature. Particular attention will be paid to books which won awards and therefore were formally identified as meeting some definition of quality; although literary awards are not unproblematic as a barometer of cultural standards, the criteria used to judge such awards and the changing ways in which these were applied do demonstrate changing perceptions of quality children’s literature. Conversely, the critical output of the period has received little attention as a whole: this chapter addresses this neglect, highlighting and considering some of the most prominent debates in children’s literature criticism. The multi-disciplinary nature of the children’s literature field means that very little of the critical work produced can be classed as ‘pure’ literary criticism, since the majority of those who wrote on children’s literature brought the skills and concerns of other disciplines to their work; for brevity’s sake, however, the terms ‘critic’ and ‘criticism’ are used throughout.

The Bigger Picture: Historical and International Trends in Children’s Literature

The concentrated activity across a range of disciplines relating to children’s literature helped to give the 1960s and 1970s a cohesive sense of being a golden age. The seeds of this flowering of children’s literature can be found in the 1950s, supported by the socio-economic circumstances of the post-war years. Indeed, the impact of the two world wars is clearly evident in many of the trends which emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. Alan Sinfield contends that ‘the post-1945 understanding of culture, the arts and education was formed in the same ideological framework as the other main welfare institutions’; the 1960s and 1970s can be seen as the culmination of several decades of change governed by these ideologies, and some post-war initiatives – notably the extension of compulsory education – were not enacted until this period.⁵ It is important to acknowledge, therefore, that the confluence of social policy, creativity and economic prosperity which produced a new and distinctive children’s literature during the 1960s and 1970s did not represent a complete break with the preceding decades. Conversely, the period was more fragmented than the term ‘golden age’ implies. The distinctive character of the 1960s and 1970s partly derived from the rapid and significant change in almost all aspects of British life, which had significant implications for the world of children’s literature. Economic shifts in particular had a direct impact upon children’s books: libraries, schools and publishers were all directly affected by the swing from a buoyant economic climate in the early 1960s to a period of severe recession in the 1970s. The continuity across these two decades, therefore, should not be conflated with stability – on the contrary, in many ways it was the rapidity of social change which helped to create the sense of new possibilities and challenges in children’s literature.

The impact of the war years on children’s literature is particularly evident when the international context is considered. The establishment of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) in 1952 and the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) in 1972 indicate a desire in Britain and elsewhere to forge bonds between nations which had so recently experienced conflict: IBBY’s stated aim was ‘to promote international understanding through children’s books’.⁶ In the field of criticism, the seminal text by French scholar of comparative literature Paul Hazard, Les Livres, les Enfants et les Hommes (1932) – which appeared in English in 1944 as Books, Children and Men – remained an influential text on children’s literature throughout the 1960s.⁷ Hazard emphasised the distinctive qualities of childhood, arguing that the commonalities between children effaced national differences, creating a ‘republic of childhood’. Internationally popular books such as Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (1883), Hazard argued, ‘bear the fruit of peace and scatter seeds of hope’.⁸ A similar ethos is evident in the work of historian Mary Thwaite, who argued that

[…] children everywhere play on a universal stage, and their domain knows nothing of the boundaries made by governments. And so their true literary inheritance will never be found within any one nation or period. It spans nothing less than this great globe itself since books began.⁹

These analyses are indicative of the way in which children’s literature was enlisted in attempts to build a post-war world free of the conflict which had characterised the first half of the twentieth century. In pursuit of this aim, IBBY established the Hans Christian Andersen Award, intended to be an ‘outstanding international award’ in recognition of a writer or illustrator who has made a ‘lasting contribution to children’s literature’.¹⁰ The degree to which this aim is predicated on an idea of quality children’s literature as transcending cultural boundaries is illustrated by Virginia Haviland’s assertion that ‘One of the happiest privileges of serving on the jury is the gaining of an awareness that whatever one’s own country of origin or profession within the children’s book world, we speak a common language in regard to the literary and artistic qualities in children’s books and the child’s understanding’.¹¹ Combined with this belief in the universal qualities both of literature and of childhood was an emphasis on the potential for literature to broaden children’s experience and offer insight into and understanding of other cultures and nations. Translator Patricia Crampton, writing in 1975, argued that one of the primary reasons for selecting a book for translation was that ‘the book provides an interesting, and truthful, picture of some aspect of its country of origin’.¹² The founding of the Bologna children’s books fair in 1963 helped to support a more international outlook for children’s publishing, providing publishers with an opportunity to acquire titles from overseas and to produce international co-editions, a particularly lucrative strategy in the case of picture books. Books from other English-speaking nations became a familiar feature on British children’s lists – in 1971 Australian author Ivan Southall was awarded the Carnegie Medal for his book Josh (1971), one of the few non-British authors ever to receive this award – along with increasing numbers of books in translation. Writers who were awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award – notably Erich Kästner, Tove Jansson and Astrid Lindgren – were particularly successful, but the increasing willingness of British publishers to accept works in translation was also reflected in the publication of less high-profile authors. From the Netherlands came Jan Terlouw, Jaap der Haar and An Rutgers van der Loeff, who found considerable success with her books Children on the Oregon Trail (1949; translated 1961) and Avalanche (1954; translated 1957). Sweden and Germany were an important source of fiction for adolescents, reflecting the fact that – in Patricia Crampton’s words – they were ‘doing something which, at a particular time, our own literature [was] not’: this is particularly evident in Aidan Chambers’ Topliner list, discussed in Chapter 3.¹³

The humanist ideals which characterise international approaches to children’s literature are clearly present in many of the books published during the ‘second golden age’. In Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series (1965–1977), the benevolent Old Ones are drawn from all nations and all periods of time in order to fight against the evil forces of the Dark; when they assemble at the climax of the second book in the series, The Dark is Rising (1973), the hero Will sees ‘an endless variety of faces – gay, sombre, old, young, paper-white, jet black, and every shade and graduation of pink and brown between, vaguely recognizable, or totally strange’, and thinks ‘Every one of us is linked, for the greatest purpose in ...