From the Garden to the Street

Three Hundred Years of Poetry for Children

Morag Styles

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN: 9780304332243
• eBook ISBN: 9781847140579
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

From John Bunyan's 'country rhimes' to rude chants about Manchester United, from Ted Hughes to Edward Lear, and from William Blake to the Taylor sisters, Morag Styles covers three hundred years of poetry with infectious enthusiasm and a keen critical eye. In this scholarly and fascinating book, she provides an informative account of the history of poetry written for children in Britain and America in the last three centuries. She analyses the major poets, genres and developments over this period, and traces the continuities between the past and the present. Styles asks fundamental questions which have often been left unanswered: What do we mean by children's poetry? Why did such a seemingly small number of women write poetry for children until recently? The author subscribes to the widest possible definition of poetry, and so the reader will find in this book hymns, songs, playground rhymes, raps and verse - whether trivial or profound. From the Garden to the Street will provoke, inform and entertain academics of children's literature, those who teach it in the classroom, and all of us who still take pleasure in the poetry of childhood.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: From the 'garden' of childhood to real life on the street in 300 years of poetry for children
• 1 Devotions and Didacticism: Religious verse for children
• 2 Romantic Visions: The influence of Romanticism on children's verse
• 3 'Sweet Flowers I Bring': Nineteenth-century nature poetry for children
• 4 Old Mother Hubbard: And other nursery rhymes, old and new
• 5 The Capacity to Amuse: The history of humour in poetry for children
• 6 Jumblies and Jabberwockies: The nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear
• 7 'Of the Spontaneous Kind'?: Christina Rossetti's Sing-Song and its precursors
• 8 'The Best of Plays' – A Child's Garden of Verses: The poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson
• 9 'From the Best Poets'?: How the canon of poetry for children is constructed
• 10 Song and Story: Narrative and lyric verse for children
• 11 The Travellers: Poetry for children in the first half of the twentieth century
• 12 'What is the Truth?': The poetry of Charles Causeley and Ted Hughes
• 13 The Street and Other Landmarks: In defence of 'urchin verse'
• 14 Epilogue: Caribbean poetry in the late twentieth century
• Index