British children's poetry in the romantic era : verse, riddle, and rhyme

for their invaluable assistance on everything from chapter drafts and grant applications to the book's title. I owe a special thanks to Jan Alberghene at Fitchburg State University and Fern Kory at Eastern Illinois University for fostering my interest in children's literature at early stages of my professorial career. I am grateful to my English Department colleagues at Northern Arizona University for their support, and I thank the Dean of Arts and Letters, Michael Vincent, who has been generous in providing research funds. A special thanks must go to the late Mitzi Myers, whose ground-breaking work on eighteenth-century children's literature blazed the trail that scholars of late Enlightenment children's books follow to this day. This book would not have happened without the support and encouragement of James Leve. He never let me lose sight of the big picture and never gave up on this book even when I did. "British Children's Poetry in the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme" is a thorough study of secular children's verse between 1780 and 1835. Donelle Ruwe reveals the formula for Romantic-era children's poetry and considers the creation of a children's poetry canon, the rise of sentimental children's verse, the first verse-novel for children, and the fads for fantasy poems, rhyming puzzles, and versified study guides. Through in-depth historical research, Ruwe challenges the myths behind the significance of the groundbreaking Original Poems for Infant Minds and also explores the breakout hits from this collection, Ann Taylor's 'My Mother' and Adelaide O'Keeffe's 'The Use of Sight'. This book highlights the manuscript poems of Sara Coleridge, the challenging children's verse of Charlotte Smith, and the impact of Madame de Genlis, John Aikin, Elizabeth Turner, Rousseau, Barbauld, Watts, and Blake on the development of a children's poetry aesthetic Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-17 Reading Romantic-Era Children’s Verse....Pages 18-52 Myths of Origin....Pages 53-83 The Mother Attitudes....Pages 84-107 Teaching Nature and Nationalism....Pages 108-138 Utilitarian Poetry....Pages 139-166 The Limits of the Romantic-Era Children’s Poem....Pages 167-194 Back Matter....Pages 195-253 This important new book is the first monograph on children's poetry written between 1780 and 1830, when non-religious children's poetry publishing came into its own. Introducing some of the era's most significant children's poets, the book shows how the conventions of children's verse and poetics were established during the Romantic era.