Fabulous Histories
Encyclopedia
Sarah Trimmer
Sarah Trimmer was a noted writer and critic of British children's literature in the eighteenth century...
. Originally published in 1786
18th century in literature
See also: 18th century in poetry, 17th century in literature, other events of the 18th century, 19th century in literature, list of years in literature.Literature of the 18th century refers to world literature produced during the 18th century....
, it remained in print until the beginning of the twentieth century
20th century in literature
See also: 20th century in poetry, 19th century in literature, other events of the 20th century, 21st century in literature, list of years in literature.Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century...
.
Plot
Fabulous Histories tells the story of two families -- one robinEuropean Robin
The European Robin , most commonly known in Anglophone Europe simply as the Robin, is a small insectivorous passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family , but is now considered to be an Old World flycatcher...
and one human -- who learn to live together congenially. Most importantly, the children and the baby robins learn to adopt virtue
Virtue
Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a positive trait or quality subjectively deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being....
and to shun vice
Vice
Vice is a practice or a behavior or habit considered immoral, depraved, or degrading in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a defect, an infirmity, or merely a bad habit. Synonyms for vice include fault, depravity, sin, iniquity, wickedness, and corruption...
. For Trimmer, practicing kindness to animals as a child would hopefully lead one to "universal benevolence" as an adult. According to Samuel Pickering, Jr., a scholar of eighteenth-century
18th century in literature
See also: 18th century in poetry, 17th century in literature, other events of the 18th century, 19th century in literature, list of years in literature.Literature of the 18th century refers to world literature produced during the 18th century....
children's literature, “in its depiction of eighteenth-century attitudes toward animals, Mrs. Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories was the most representative children’s book of the period."
Thematic elements
The text expresses most of the themesTheme (literature)
A theme is a broad, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character,...
that would come to dominate Trimmer's later works, such as her emphasis on retaining social hierarchies; as Tess Cosslett, a scholar of children's literature
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
explains, “the notion of hierarchy that underpins Fabulous Histories is relatively stable and fixed. Parents are above children in terms of authority, and humans above animals, in terms both of dominion and compassion: poor people should be fed before hungry animals… [but] the hierarchical relation of men and women is not so clearly enforced."
Moira Ferguson, a scholar of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
19th century in literature
See also: 19th century in poetry, 18th century in literature, other events of the 19th century, 20th century in literature, list of years in literature....
, places these themes in a larger historical context, arguing that "the fears of the author and her class about an industrial revolution in ascendancy and its repercussions are evident. Hence, [the] text attacks cruelty to birds and animals while affirming British aggression abroad. …The text subtly opts for conservative solutions: maintenance of order and established values, resignation and compliance from the poor at home, expatriation for foreigners who do not assimilate easily.”
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Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
; Trimmer expresses the common fear of the power of fiction in her preface, explaining to her childish readers that her fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
is not real and that animals cannot really speak. Like many social critics during the eighteenth century, Trimmer was concerned about fiction's potentially damaging impact on young readers. With the rise of the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
and its concomitant private reading, there was a great fear that young people and especially women would read racy and adventurous stories without the knowledge of their parents and, perhaps even more worrisome, interpret the books as they pleased. Trimmer therefore always referred to her text as Fabulous Histories and never as The Story of the Robins in order to emphasize its reality; moreover, she did not allow the book to be illustrated within her lifetime—pictures of talking birds would only have reinforced the paradox of the book (it was fiction parading as a history). Yarde has also speculated that most of the characters in the text are drawn from Trimmer's own acquaintances and family.
Critical evaluation
In Language and Control in Children's Literature, Murray Knowles contends that Trimmer intended the book to be used didactically, which was common in books written for children during the eighteenth century. Edward Salmon, writing in Juvenile Literature As It Is over one hundred years later, found "nothing unusually meritorious" about the book. Yet he also noted that the book "should be praised for its humane sentiments."Sources
- Cosslett, Tess. "Fabulous Histories and Papillonades." Talking Animals in British Children’s Fiction, 1786–1914. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. ISBN 0754636569.
- Ferguson, Moira. "Sarah Trimmer's Warring Worlds." Animal Advocacy and Englishwomen, 1780–1900: Patriots, Nation, and Empire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. ISBN 0472108743.
- Grenby, M.O. “‘A Conservative Woman Doing Radical Things’: Sarah Trimmer and The Guardian of Education.” Culturing the Child, 1690–1914. Ed. Donelle Ruwe. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005. ISBN 0810851822.
- Grenby, Matthew. “Introduction.” The Guardian of Education. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002. ISBN 1843710110.
- Jackson, Mary V. Engines of Instruction, Mischief, and Magic: Children’s Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. ISBN 0803275706.
- Pickering, Jr., Samuel F. John Locke and Children’s Books in Eighteenth-Century England. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981. ISBN 087049290X.
- Yarde, D.M. The Life and Works of Sarah Trimmer, a Lady of Brentford. Middlesex: The Hounslow District Historical Society, 1972. A 1971 printing has the ISBN 090325400X.
- Yarde, D.M. Sarah Trimmer of Brentford and Her Children with Some of Her Early Writings, 1780–1786. Middlesex: Hounslow and District Historical Society, 1990.