Abstract
'Before there could be children's books, there had to be children', wrote John Rowe Townsend (1990, p. 3) at the very beginning of what was, for many years, the standard popular history of English children's literature. It is a key statement, but one that also encodes the heart of the area's problems. 'Haven't there always been children?' is an obvious response. Townsend elaborates by saying that, while children there were, they weren't recognized in the same way, being seen rather as 'miniature men and women' (Townsend, 1990, p. 3). This, though, doesn't necessarily take the issue much further, for the next question is, how, then, did children come to be recognized? And the answer, of course, is that this could occur only by these miniature beings having increased representation in society's key discourses (e.g. church, education, family), through cultural forms like paintings and literary works, and in various non-discursive ways, too, such as by being given separate spaces (in schools, bedrooms, nurseries), distinctive clothing and other artefacts. With the Industrial Revolution and the growth of capitalism, the child would become a niche market with its own products, including books, illustrations, toys and games. But we then come to a decisive phrase in Townsend's work, one that separates him and other humanists from poststructuralist thinkers. He states that these specialized books were to serve the child's 'own particular needs and interests' (Townsend, 1990, p. 3), whereas later critics would ask, 'In what sense were these "needs" the child's own?' Surely it is predominantly adult depictions that we have of what children require and, not unsurprisingly, these have changed over time (from a need to be saved and instructed to being amused and educated). So, returning to Townsend's opening statement, we might now suggest that it could be reversed, to claim that children's texts helped produce the very beings that we now recognize as children (beings seen as innocent, natural, helpless, pure and so on).