First published in 1984, Fantasy and Reason (now with a new foreword by Judith Summerfield) retraces the major philosophical, moral and social factors bearing on children’s development in the eighteenth century, leading up to the poetic expression in book V of Wordsworth’s Prelude of a sustained analysis of children’s growth, their mental health, and the life of their imaginations.
Wordsworth’s poem is the starting point for this book, which goes back to examine major reputations in the field—not only publishers such as Newbery but also writers such as Locke, Addison, Steele, Crabbe, Clare, Goldsmith, Sarah Fielding, Watts, Blake, Lamb, Godwin, Maria Edgeworth and Coleridge. In doing so, it uncovers a permanent dialectic—one that recurs in various societies at various times—a tension between the claims of fantasy in childhood and the supervening and denying authority of the moralists; implicitly, it re-affirms the ‘truth’ of the great folktales and fairy tales, and the legitimacy of imaginative freedom. This book will be a valuable read for students and researchers of children’s literature.