Lessons for Children

Lessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world. For the first time, the needs of the child reader were seriously considered: the typographically simple texts progress in difficulty as the child learns. In perhaps the first demonstration of experiential pedagogy in Anglo-American children's literature, Barbauld's books use a conversational style, which depicts a mother and her son discussing the natural world. Based on the educational theories of John Locke, Barbauld's books emphasise learning through the senses.

One of the primary morals of Barbauld's lessons is that individuals are part of a community; in this she was part of a tradition of female writing that emphasised the interconnectedness of society. Charles, the hero of the texts, explores his relationship to nature, to animals, to people, and finally to God.

Lessons had a significant effect on the development of children's literature in Britain and the United States. Maria Edgeworth, Sarah Trimmer, Jane Taylor, and Ellenor Fenn, to name a few of the most illustrious, were inspired to become children's authors because of Lessons and their works dominated children's literature for several generations. Lessons itself was reprinted for over a century. However, because of the disrepute that educational writings fell into, largely due to the low esteem awarded Barbauld, Trimmer, and others by contemporary male Romantic writers, Barbauld's Lessons has rarely been studied by scholars. In fact, it has only been analysed in depth since the 1990s.

Lessons depicts a mother teaching her son. Presumably, many of the events were inspired by Barbauld's experiences of teaching her own adopted son, her nephew Charles, as the events correlate with his age and growth. Although there are no surviving first edition copies of the works, children's literature scholar Mitzi Myers has reconstructed the probable publication dates from Barbauld's letters and the books' earliest reviews as follows: Lessons for Children of two to three (1778); Lessons for Children of three, part I (1778); Lessons for Children of three, part II (1778); and Lessons for Children of three to four (1779). After its initial publication, the series was often published as a single volume.

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