SOURCE: "Nineteenth Century (1800-1899)," in Fifteen Centuries of Children's Literature: An Annotated Chronology of British and American Works in Historical Context, Greenwood Press, 1980, pp. 131-258.

In the following excerpt, Bingham and Scholt present both the British and American social contexts in which children's literature changed and developed during the nineteenth century.

In the early part of the [nineteenth] century, the evils of the Industrial Age were not recognized and the Age of Steam was even romanticized. The power of the mercantile classes was not yet threatening to the rich and, as in former times, the poor were largely ignored. The Georgians were in large part innocent of conditions of the world around them; the worst that wealthy children of that period were warned against was the possible sin of "false pride" in extravagant nobles.

Attitudes toward and the treatment of upper-class children of the Georgian period are clearly...