Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2012
If this chapter were charged with the task of describing twentieth-century English children's fiction, until recently a neglected category in literary histories, novels in trilogies and series would loom large. Imagine a literary history of the children's story without Joan Aiken, the Reverend W. Awdry, Enid Blyton, Susan Cooper, Brian Jacques, Michael de Larrabeiti, C. S. Lewis, Hugh Lofting, A. A. Milne, E. Nesbit, K.M. Peyton, Beatrix Potter, Philip Pullman, Arthur Ransome, J.K. Rowling, Rosemary Sutcliffe, or BarbaraWillard. Imagine never again visiting those countries of the mind where swallows and amazons rove Lakeland; where Harry, Ron, and Hermione attend Hogwarts; where descendants of British Romans witness in the dark ages the coming of a Celtic Arthur; where Mantlemass stands at the heart of Ashdown forest, persisting from the Wars of the Roses through the English CivilWar. Most readers would feel the absence of these dream countries of childhood reading, if they paused to recall the anticipation ignited by the long row of matching covers in a library or bookshop (is this the right summer to begin Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes books?), or the melancholy provoked by the end of a series (still disappointed at Narnia's rolling up like a carpet?), or the bittersweet recognition that they have gotten too grown up to enjoy a series anymore (at least until reading aloud to their own children begins).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.