:: The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature ::

Annotated Links

Featured Illustration

1484 Caxton, translating from Steinhöwell, prints Subtyl Historyes and Fables of Esop

1485 Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, source of many later romances

1492 Christopher Columbus sails to the Bahamas

ca. 1510-15 Earliest English translation of the Gesta Romanorum (Deeds of the Romans) printed by Wynkyn de Worde; fables are among its many stories

ca. 1553-58 A New Interlude for Children to Play Named Jack Juggler, both Witty and Very Pleasant, first play created in English specifically for children

1558-1603 Reign of Elizabeth I

1563 John Foxe's Actes and Monumentes, popularly known as the Book of Martyrs; used for over three centuries as a source in many books for Protestant children, including the New-England Primer

1570 John Hart's A Method or Comfortable Beginning for All Unlearned, the first known printed pictorial alphabet

1601 John Weever's An Agnus Dei (A Lamb of God), an abridged New Testament in rhymed couplets; a very early example of the miniature books known as Thumb Bibles

1607 Jamestown colony established in Virginia

1630-43 Arrival of English Puritans at the Massachusetts Bay Colony

1659 First English translation of Johann Amos Comenius's Orbis Sensualium Pictus, an educational compendium with a pictorial alphabet arranged according to sounds, under the title Visible World.

1660 Thomas White's A Little Book for Little Children, setting out Puritan ideals for children, published as part of his Manual for Parents

1668 Publication in Paris of the first six books of Jean de La Fontaine's Fables choisies, mises en vers (Selected Fables, Set in Verse); first translated into English in 1734

1678 John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress

ca. 1687-90 Publication in Boston of the New-England Primer; no copy printed before 1727 survives

1692 Roger L'Estrange's Fables of Aesop, and Other Eminent Mythologists; still a popular translation

1693 John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education, a founding philosophical text of modern education; Locke argued against set curricula and for treating children, mainly boys, in a more humane and liberal manner; he also sought to combine instruction with amusement, believing that children could learn to discipline themselves by modeling themselves upon their parents and tutors

1697 Charles Perrault's Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales of Past Times), often considered the first major collection of fairy tales for children, though it was issued for adults. The book was first published in English in 1729; many of the tales were separately published as chapbooks and later as picture books for children. The collection was sometimes given the title "Tales of Mother Goose."

1715 Isaac Watts's Divine Songs, for two centuries an inescapable part of Protestant childhood

1717 Publication in Boston of The Holy Bible in Verse, an abridged rhyming version of the Bible by Benjamin Harris

1719 Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

1720-60 William Dicey was a prolific publisher of chapbooks from 1720 to 1760. He traded first in Northampton, then from ca. 1730 in London, where he issued chapbooks from Bow Churchyard; he was joined in 1736 by his son Cluer. In 1764 Cluer was in partnership with Richard Marshall, with premises in Aldermary Churchyard