Victorian childhood fiction ?

[SkippyjonJones]

My dd is doing Victorians at school and we have been asked to encourage our children to read fiction about Victorian childhood. Can anybody help with ideas ? We have got Mill Girl so far.

The Eleventh Orphan by Joan Lingard is fantastic. Recommended by teachers and tried and tested by my Year 5 Reading Group who all loved it (boys and girls).

What Katy Did
What Katy did Next
Alice in Wonderland
The Secret Garden.
Oliver Twist
David Copperfield.

I haven't read it since I was a child, but IIRC the Water Babies was very readable - and interesting in that it was written partly as a protest against child labour.

(No doubt someone will now come on & tell me that it is in fact completely unreadable! But I remember being very fond of it . . . .)

Fanny and the Monsters by Penelope Lively

It takes place during the Crystal Palace Exhibition. A very fun book.

Though no doubt it's been retitled Franny and the Monsters!

The Water Babies has some great bits, and our version has lots of pictures. You can skip some of the lengthy descriptive bits.

Heidi is another very readable book from that period, though not strictly Victorian as it's not British.
Hans Christian Andersen, e.g. the Little Match Girl.
Treasure Island.

E Nesbit is very late Victorian. Treasure Seekers etc.

Frances Hodgson Burnett? Little Lord Fauntleroy etc.

E Nesbit is the business. The wouldbegoods is very good or Five Children and It.

I love E Nesbit too, not meaning to be a pedant but isn't she Edwardian? I could be wrong, am not sure at all. But if it's something the OP's DD might be pulled up on, prob best check.

If E NEsbit is OK then I heartily recommend The Enchanted Castle as an underappreciated tite :)

Could be, she'd just squeeze in in 1900/1901 wouldn't she? But the Railway Children was later so definitely Edwardian. I have heard her referred to as a late-Victorian author, perhaps because the families in her stories are very firmly Victorian.

I loved The Secret Garden, it is the perfect Victorian novel.

A Christmas Carol and Black Beauty were also well loved.

E Nesbit's early books were very late Victorian, her later books were Edwardian.

She also wrote an autobiography I loved as a child "Long ago when I was young". Set in her childhood, around 1860 I think. I don't know if it's still in print.

We have quite a few of these books on a Puffin audio CDs set from Book people. Black Beauty, Little Princess, Secret Garden were all in there. My 10 and 9yo dds are also currently studying Victorians, we are dragging out all these books at the moment too.

Treasure Island was written I think in the 19th century, but takes place in the 18th, so maybe not right for the period.

Is that right? It's a long time since I read Treasure Island but one of my dds enjoyed it.

Hetty Feather is a new Jacqueline Wilson set in Victorian times, probably very readable for children who aren't patient with the Victorian style.

This may not entirely help your children but might be interesting for you (and it lists authors)? I'm finding it interesting anyway

George MacDonald: At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and Curdie.

Dream Days and The Golden Age- Kenneth Grahame. Stories set in the 1890s about a family of five small children (5-13/14 years)
those books would be perfect- they descibe in detail lots of aspects of family life, toys, pets, treats, school and governesses, aunts and uncles.

Nesbit was Edwardian, I am sure. F Hodgson Burnett too, although her books were more retrospective.

Alison Uttley's book A Country Child is the story of her her growing up at the end of the 19th C - and maybe a bit different from others in that it is rural and fictionalised but 'realistic' IYKWIM

And I have just remembered the London Child books which I loved when I was younger - equivalent to the above but in London. Period Piece is also lovely but probably less suitable for children (style not content).

E Nesbit, according to the (ok, fallible) Wikipedia, published The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1898) and The Wouldbegoods (1899).

(Do I win prize for most boring pedant of the day on Mumsnet?)

I used to find George MacDonald quite traumatic as a child, little children dying, and all the scary goblins.

Children in Victorian ties did not actually have their own genre of books (did my uni dissertation on this).
Books were written for adults and not aimed at children. The very first children's book which was aimed solely at children, without the purpose of educating or teaching morals and purely for enjoyment was Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

If you want a purely authentic Victorian Children's book you are looking at the Bible (which every child was expected to be able to read and copy), and moral stories such as Harriet and the Matchsticks. Fairy tales were considered to be miseading and adult in nature and thus kept away from the innocent children. And although a lot of authors wrote about children (Dickens, Stevenson, Barrie) it was more to do with these authors trying to change the attitudes of adults towards children (children at that time were not seen as pure and innocent, but instead as little adults, born with a sin on their souls which they must work hard to eradicate). It wasn't until Carroll that children's fiction became something that was even thought about. Indeed, children's fiction is a relatively new concept.

Ah!! Nice to feel intellectual for a wee bit :)

Sorry, I notice I say 'innocent children', I mean they were born with sins on souls, but it was considered wrong to tempt them with the devil, which lay in the fairy tales.

I'm sorry, it's early, I'm hugey pg at the moment and am sooo excited to be talking to someone about my passion (children's fiction and it's origins). Hope you get the gist.

Ah wait, you asked for fiction on Victorian childhood.
Sorry sorry sorry.

Again, blaming pg brain and excitedness.

In that case, Dickens (Oliver, Little Dorrit), Jane Eyre, Peter Pan, Stevenson, Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market).....

sorry sorry sorry.

Going back to my hole now.

That is interesting 3littleducks, the Wikipedia entry on E Nesbit credits her as "the first modern writer for children", in terms of realism I think (not sure where psammeads and phoenixes fit in....).

So the OP's daughter really needs to go back and quiz the teacher on whether she should be reading books about children set in Victorian times, books written for children in Victorian times, or fiction that Victorian children would have read.

oh I know a good one, Little Women. Set in the period, written in the period, about children, for children. Just the wrong country to be strictly Victorian.

I was always very impressed that the Little Women had all read Dickens by their early teens.

I loved George Macdonald (and have you read Lilith?) though was hugely disappointed on how moralistic the Princess & Curdie was when I read it to dd.

IMO the Princess & the Goblins still reads very well, especially out loud - but its not really about Victorian childhood!