In this guest post, Helen Scott, who has recently completed an MA in Children’s Literature with the NCRCL at Roehampton, shares her presentation on how experiences of WWI found their way into children’s texts.
Back in May Exclamation!, an Exeter University post-grad publication, accepted my abstract submitted for their digital Summer Conference. Their title, Dreams, Visions and Mindscapes seemed an opportunity to address some thoughts on the impact of the First World War on children’s literature arising from my dissertation (on the erosion of British national identity in the period between the Wars). It seemed to me that the scars of the Great War are encoded into children’s books consciously and unconsciously, not only immediately post-War but for many years following. Physical mindscapes fixed in the heads of writers who had been on the front line, such as A A Milne, Henry Williamson and Barbara Euphan Todd. In addition, the proximity of the War to the British mainland left a generation of children scarred by fighting heard – and seen – from home. This childhood trauma, noted by Bowlby, is reflected in the tropes of reassurance found in many of the books written between the Wars, including Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle stories based on letters home from the trenches. Lofting was one of many who tried to create a new way of writing for children, moving away from the warmongering tales of Empire to stories valuing equality and co-operation. Many of the books written between the Wars remain in print 100 years later. More, they are part of today’s popular culture through films, television and even gaming. Whilst some see these books as a yearning for the past, a nostalgic desire for a perception of innocence, they were written at a time of deep despair and trauma, when childhood was being reconsidered, as were the books being written for children.
My presentation, The Impact of the First War on Children’s Literature, is an initial stab at assessing the trauma found beneath these texts which still resonates today.
You can watch the presentation by clicking on the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48np6Y69YXA
Helen Scott completed an MA in Children’s Literature at Roehampton University in the autumn of 2020. Her work focused on landscape, with a dissertation using eco-critical theory to examine how British nationalism eroded in children’s books in the period between the Wars.
Works Cited
Primary Sources:
Lofting, H. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. Jonathan Cape, 1923.
—-. The Story of Doctor Dolittle. Jonathan Cape, 1924.
Milne, A. A. When We Were Very Young. Methuen, 2000.
Todd, B. E. Worzel Gummidge. Puffin, 1941.
Williamson, H. Tarka the Otter. Puffin Books, 1949.
Secondary Sources:
Avery, G. “The Puritans and their heirs” in Avery, G. and Briggs, J. (eds) Children and their Books: A Celebration of the work of Iona and Peter Opie, pp95-118. Clarendon Press,1989. Beauvais, C. The Mighty Child: Time and Power in Children’s Literature. Amsterdam. John Benjamins, 2015.
Bosmajian, H. “Reading the unconscious: Psychoanalytical criticism” in Hunt, Peter. Understanding Children’s Literature. Routledge, 2005.
Cohen, N. The Extraordinary Life of A A Milne. Pen & Sword History, 2017 Ettin, A. V. Literature and the Pastoral. Yale University Press, 1984.
Flothow, D. “Popular Children’s Literature and the Memory of the First World War, 1919-1939” in The Lion and the Unicorn 31, pp147-161. John Hopkins University Press, 2017.
Fussell, P. The Great War and Modern Memory. OUP, 2013.
Grenby, M. Children’s Literature, second edition. Edinburgh Critical Guides, 2014. Hunt, P. “Prophesying War: The Hidden Agendas of Children’s Literature 1900-1914…and 2015” in Paul L, Ross Johnston R, Short E (eds) Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War. Routledge, 2016.
Kinane, I. Didactics and the Modern Robinsonade. Liverpool University Press: 2019.
Leese, P. “Problems Returning Home: The British Psychological Casualties of the Great War.” in The Historical Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 1055–1067. 1997.
Newcomber, N. And Lerner, J. “The historical context of Bowlby’s Attachment Theory” in Psychiatry Vol 45, Feb 1982.
Reynolds, F. The Fight for Beauty: Our path to a better future. Oneworld, 2017.Roper, M. War, conflict and the psychoanalytic turn. British Psychoanalytic Council. http://www.bpc.org.uk, 2014.
Schmidt, G. Hugh Lofting. , Publishers, 1992.
Townsend, J. R. Written for Children. Pelican, 1965.
Williamson, A. Tarka the Otter as an Allegory of War. British Library website. www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature. 2016.
The Henry Williamson Society. http://www.henrywilliamson.co.uk
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