Article published in:
Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 5] 2015
► pp. 17–44

Chapter 1. John Ruskin and the mutual influences of children’s literature and the avant-garde

| Texas State University
This chapter traces some nineteenth-century ideas, here tied to the art critic/social reformer John Ruskin, which connect children’s literature and culture with the future avant-gardes. Ruskin praised the energy of early art in the cultures he loved, celebrated the potential influence of improved nursery books, recognized the positive aspects of the grotesque which, in that era, were a regular feature of children’s literature and entertainment, and contributed his inspiration to the Arts and Crafts movement, a contributor to the development of the picturebook ideal synthesis of image and text.
Published online: 29 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.5.02ols
References

Primary Sources

Busch, Wilhelm
1865 Max and Moritz. Ed. Robert Godwin-Jones http://​germanstories​.vcu​.edu​/mm​/mmmenu​.html (24 May 2015)Google Scholar
Caldecott, Alfred
1883 Some Fables of Aesop with Modern Instances Shewn in Designs by Randolph Caldecott. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Caldecott, Randolph
1885 The Great Panjandrum Himself. London: George Routledge.Google Scholar
Carroll, Lewis
1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Illus. John Tenniell. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
1871 Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. Illus. John Tenniell. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Collier, John Payne
1832 The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy, of Punch and Judy, as Told to John Payne Collier by Giovanni Piccini in 1827. Illus. George Cruikshank. London: S. Prowett (first published 1828).Google Scholar
Crane, Walter
1994 The Decorative Illustration of Books. London: Senate (first published 1896).Google Scholar
The Elegant Girl, or, Virtuous Principles the True Source of Elegant Manners
. 1816 n.p.: S. Inman.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, Oliver
1879 An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog. Illus. Randolph Caldecott. London: George Routledge.Google Scholar
1885 An Elegy on the Glory of Her Sex – Mrs. Mary Blaize. Illus. Randolph Caldecott. London: George Routledge.Google Scholar
Grandville, J.J
1981 Grandville’s Animals: The World’s Vaudeville. Edited by Bryan Holme. New York NY: Thames and Hudson (the metamorphosis pictures first published 1828-29).Google Scholar
Ille, Eduard
1858 # 226 broadside Die Freunde aus der Kinderzeit. München: Braun & Schneider.Google Scholar
Nicholson, Sir William
1926 Clever Bill. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
1849 Mary’s Girlhood [sonnets inscribed on the painting entitled “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin”] www​.rossettiarchive​.org (29 September 2013).
2004  The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti . In Prelude to Crisis, Vol. IV, William Fredeman (ed.), 1868-1870. Cambridge: Brewer.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John
n.d. The Stones of Venice . In The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Vol. II. New York NY: Fred DeFau (first published 1851-53).
1849 The Seven Lamps of Architecture. New York NY: John Wiley.Google Scholar
1883a Fairy Land: Mrs. Allingham and Kate Greenaway, Lecture 4. In The Art of England, 117-160. Orpington: George Allen.Google Scholar
1883b The Fireside: John Leech and John Tenniel, Lecture 5. In The Art of England, 161-200. Orpington: George Allen.Google Scholar
1889 Modern Painters IV. Part 5, Appendix 1 Modern Grotesque. New York NY: Wiley (first published 1856).Google Scholar
1904 Works of John Ruskin. Edited by E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Library edition. London: George Allen.Google Scholar
1976 Fairy Stories. In A Peculiar Gift: Nineteenth Century Writings on Books for Children, Lance Salway (ed.), 127-132. Harmondsworth: Kestral (first published as the introduction to German Popular Stories, illustrated after the original Cruikshank designs, 1868).Google Scholar
1995 The King of the Golden River. Illus. Richard Doyle. Sandwich MA: Chapman Billies (first published 1851).Google Scholar
1996 The Laws of Fésole. Introduction by Bill Beckley. New York NY: Allworth (first published 1877).Google Scholar
1997 The Elements of Drawing. Illustrated edition, edited by Bernard Dunsta. New York NY: Watson Gupthill (first published 1857).Google Scholar
2003 Praeterita, with an introduction by Tim Hilton. New York NY: Knopf (originally written 1885-89).Google Scholar
Turner, Elizabeth
1811 The Cowslip, or More Cautionary Stories in Verse. London: J. Harris.Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Alderson, Brian
1987 Sing a Song for Sixpence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barringer, Tim & Rosenfeld, Jason
2012 Victorian Avant-Garde. In Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, Tim Barringer, Jason Rosenfeld & Alison Smith (eds), 9-23. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Chesterton, G.K
1903 Robert Browning. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
1950 On Pantomime. In The Common Man, 228-232. New York NY: Sheed & Ward (first published in The Strand).Google Scholar
Connally, Frances S
2003 The stones of Venice: John Ruskin’s grotesque history of art. In Modern Art and the Grotesque, Frances S. Connally (ed., with introduction), 156-174. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Durand, Marion & Wormuth, Diana
1969 One hundred years of illustrations in French children’s books. Yale French Studies 43: 85-96. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Engen, Rodney K
1976 Randolph Caldecott: Lord of the Nursery. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Felstiner, John
1972 The Lies of Art: Max Beerbohm’s Parody and Caricature. New York NY: Knopf.Google Scholar
Hancher, Michael
1985 The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books. Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Helsinger, Elizabeth K
2008 Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Herbert, Robert L
(ed.) 1969 The Art Criticism of John Ruskin, selected with introduction by Robert Herbert. Gloucester MA: Peter Smith Publ.Google Scholar
Joseph, Michael
2012 William Morris, modernism and self-concious book making. Ms.
Kayser, Wolfgang
1963 The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Translated by Ulrich Wisstein. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press (first published 1957).Google Scholar
Larson, Barbara
2005 The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon. University Park PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Le Pichon, Yann
1982 The World of Henri Rousseau. New York NY: Viking.Google Scholar
Lundin, Anne
2001 Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway. Lanham MD: Children’s Literature Association and Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome
2000 Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Game that Must Be Lost. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Elizabeth
1985 Tennyson and the Ladies of Shalott. In Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, 4-16. Providence RD: Brown University.Google Scholar
Olson, Marilynn Strasser
2012 Children’s Culture and the Avant-garde: Painting in Paris 1890-1915. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ormiston, Rosalind & Wells, Nicholas Michael
2010 William Morris: Artist, Craftsman, Pioneer. London: Flametree.Google Scholar
Nodelman, Perry & Reimer, Mavis
2003 The Pleasures of Children’s Literature. Boston MA: Allyn and Bacon (first published 1992).Google Scholar
Parton, James
1878 Caricature and Other Comic Art in All Times and Many Lands. New York NY: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Petzold, Dieter
2006 Grotesque. In Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, Vol. 2, Jack Zipes (ed.), 182-183. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Prickett, Stephen
1979 Victorian Fantasy. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sendak, Maurice
1988 Caldecott & Co. New York NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.Google Scholar
Slessor, Catherine
2004 The Art of Aubrey Beardsley. Wigston, Leicester: Silverdale (first published 1989).Google Scholar
Smith, Alison
2012 Medium and method in Pre-Raphaelite painting. In Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, Tim Barringer, Jason Rosenfeld & Alison Smith (eds), 18-23. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Steen, Marguerite
1943 William Nicholson. London: Collins.Google Scholar
Stevenson, Robert Louis
1976 Jules Verne’s Stories. In A Peculiar Gift: Nineteenth Century Writings on Books for Children, Lance Salway (ed.), 397-400. Harmondsworth: Kestrel(review first published 1887).Google Scholar
Swain, Virginia E
2004 Grotesque Figures: Baudelaire, Rousseau, and the Aesthetics of Modernity. Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Tenny, Dana & Shefrin, Jill
1993 A Quick Wit and a Light Hand. Toronto: Toronto Public Library.Google Scholar
Thomson, Philip
1972 The grotesque: Methuen Critical Idiom Series. http://​davidlavery​.net​/grotesque​/major​_artists​_theorists​/thomson​/thomson3​.html (18 July 2011).
Weisberg, Gabriel P. & Becker, Jane R
(eds) 1999 Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian. New York NY: Dehesh Museum and Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar