The promise of happiness : value and meaning in children's fiction
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The promise of happiness : value and meaning in children's fiction
（Paperback re-issue）
Cambridge University Press, 2010, c1981
- : pbk
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Note
Digitally printed version
First published 1981, 1st pbk. ed. 1982
Includes bibliographical references (p. 312-324) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Originally published in paperback in 1982, this book was written in answer to the question 'which books should our children read, and why?' It is a study of what is, in the author's opinion, the best children's fiction of the previous hundred years, and at the same time a study of the social values which that fiction celebrates and criticises. Fred Inglis concentrates on stories for children aged between nine and thirteen; he contrasts the kinds of delight and profit to be gained from classics ancient and modern, from the novels of Dickens and Lewis Carroll via those of Arthur Ransome and Tolkien to William Mayne, Ursula Leguin, Russell Hoban and Philippa Pearce, situating these books in the social context from which they came and relating them to the audience of adults who are expected to write, publish, judge and choose books for their children.
Table of Contents
- Part I. Theory and Experience: 1. The terms of reference
- 2. Looking back into the blank of my infancy
- 3. The history of children - little innocents and limbs of Satan
- Part II. Texts and Contexts: The Old Books: 4. The lesser great tradition
- 5. Class and classic - the greatness of Arthur Ransome
- 6. Girl or boy: home and away
- 7. Let's be friends
- 8. Cult and culture: a political-psychological excursus
- Part III. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained: The New Work: 9. History absolves nobody - ritual and romance
- 10. Rumours of angels and spells in the suburbs
- 11. Experiments with time and notes on nostalgia
- 12. Love and death in children's novels
- 13. Resolution and independence
- Bibliography
- Index.
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