Sarah Trimmer - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sarah Trimmer (6 January 1741 – 15 December 1810) was a noted writer and critic of British 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...

in the 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....

. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education
The Guardian of Education
The Guardian of Education was the first successful periodical dedicated to reviewing children's literature in Britain. It was edited by eighteenth-century educationalist, children's author, and Sunday school advocate Sarah Trimmer and was published from June 1802 until September 1806 by J. Hatchard...

, helped to define the emerging genre by seriously reviewing children's literature for the first time; it also provided the first history of children's literature, establishing a canon of the early landmarks of the genre that scholars still use today. Trimmer's most popular children's book, Fabulous Histories
Fabulous Histories
Fabulous Histories , is the best-known work of Sarah Trimmer. Originally published in 1786, it remained in print until the beginning of the twentieth century.-Plot:...

, inspired numerous children's animal stories and remained in print for over a century.

Trimmer was an active philanthropist as well as author; she founded several Sunday school

Sunday school

Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...

s and charity school

Charity school

A charity school, also called Blue Coat School, was significant in the History of education in England. They were erected and maintained in various parishes, by the voluntary contributions of the inhabitants, for teaching poor children to read, write, and other necessary parts of education...

s in her parish. To further these educational projects, she not only wrote textbooks but she also penned manuals for other women interested in starting their own schools. Trimmer's efforts inspired other women, such as Hannah More

Hannah More

Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...

, to establish Sunday school programs and to write for children and the poor.

Trimmer was in many ways dedicated to maintaining the social and political status quo in her works. As a high church

High church

The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...

Anglican, she was intent on promoting the Established Church of Britain and on teaching young children and the poor the doctrines of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

. Her writings outlined the benefits of social hierarchies, arguing that each class should remain in its God-given position. Yet, while supporting many of the traditional political and social ideologies of her time, Trimmer questioned others, such as those surrounding gender and the family.

Early life

Trimmer was born on 6 January 1741 in Ipswich

Ipswich

Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...

to John Joshua Kirby

John Joshua Kirby

John Joshua Kirby , was an 18th century landscape painter, engraver, and writer from the United Kingdom, famed for his pamphlet on linear perspective based on Brook Taylor's math.-Biography:...

and Sarah (née Bell); her father was a noted artist and served as President of the Society of Artists

Society of Artists

The Society of Artists of Great Britain was founded in London in May 1761 by an association of artists in order to provide a venue for the public exhibition of recent work by living artists, such as was having success in the long-established Paris salons....

. Trimmer had one younger brother, William; she was apparently the better writer, for she would sometimes compose his school essays for him. As a young girl, Trimmer attended Mrs. Justiner’s boarding school in Ipswich, an experience she always remembered fondly. In 1755, the family moved to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

when her father, who had written several important works on perspective

Perspective (graphical)

Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...

, became the tutor of perspective to the Prince of Wales. Because of her father's connections within the artistic community, Trimmer was able to meet the painters William Hogarth

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

and Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...

as well as the by-then legendary writer and critic Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

. She made a favorable impression on Johnson when she immediately produced her pocket copy of John Milton's

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

(1667) to help settle a dispute between her father and Johnson over a particular passage. Johnson, delighted that she admired Milton enough to carry his works with her at all times, "subsequently invited her to his house and presented her with a volume of his famous periodical The Rambler
The Rambler
The Rambler was a periodical by Samuel Johnson.-Description:The Rambler was published on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 1750 to 1752 and totals 208 articles. It was Johnson's most consistent and sustained work in the English language...

". In 1759, at the urging of his former pupil the Prince of Wales (soon to be George III

George III of the United Kingdom

George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...

), her father was made Clerk of the Works to the Royal Household at Kew Palace

Kew Palace

Kew Palace is a British Royal Palace in Kew Gardens on the banks of the Thames up river from London. There have been at least four Palaces at Kew, and three have been known as Kew Palace; the first building may not have been known as Kew as no records survive other than the words of another...

and the family moved to Kew

Kew

Kew is a place in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in South West London. Kew is best known for being the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens, now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace...

. There she met James Trimmer, whom she married on 21 September 1762; after their marriage, the couple moved to Old Brentford

Brentford

Brentford is a suburban town in west London, England, and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It is located at the confluence of the River Thames and the River Brent, west-southwest of Charing Cross. Its former ceremonial county was Middlesex.-Toponymy:...

Motherhood and philanthropy

Trimmer was close to her parents; after her marriage, she walked to visit her father every day, later accompanied by her eldest children. She and her husband had twelve children in all—six boys and six girls. Trimmer was responsible for her children's education and it was the combination of her duties as a mother and a teacher that initially sparked her interest in education.

Inspired by Robert Raikes

Robert Raikes

Robert Raikes was an English philanthropist and Anglican layman, noted for his promotion of Sunday schools...

, Trimmer also became active in the Sunday school

Sunday school

movement, founding the first Sunday school for poor children in Old Brentford in 1786. She and two of the ministers in her parish, Charles Sturgess and Charles Coates, organized a fund drive and established several schools for the poor children of the neighborhood. Initially, five hundred boys and girls wanted to attend Trimmer's Sunday school; unable to accommodate such numbers, she decided to exclude those under five years of age and restricted each family to one pupil. The parish set up three schools, each with about thirty students—one for older boys, one for younger boys and one for girls. While some other educational reformers of the period such as Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

argued for co-educational instruction, Trimmer was opposed to such pedagogical changes; she believed in educating the sexes separately. The students were taught to read, with the aim of teaching them to read the Bible. The students were also encouraged to keep clean—"a present of a brush and comb was given to all who desired them". Trimmer's schools became so well-known and admired that Raikes, Trimmer's initial inspiration, recommended those who needed assistance organizing a Sunday school to turn to Trimmer; even Queen Charlotte asked Trimmer's advice on founding a Sunday school at Windsor.

After her visit with the queen, Trimmer was inspired to write The Œconomy of Charity, which describes how readers, specifically women, can establish Sunday schools in their own communities. However, her book accomplished much more than this. While proponents of Sunday schools such as Raikes and Trimmer claimed that the schools would help control the growing social unrest of the poor, critics claimed that these schools would only encourage the social upheaval they were trying to quell. The Hon. John Byng, for example, issued the dire warning that "not only would education 'teach them to read seditious pamphlets, books and publications against Christianity'… but it would render them unfit for 'the laborious employment to which their rank in society had destined them'". Trimmer agreed that the poor were "destined" by God to be poor but would argue that her schools reinforced that divine social hierarchy. The Sunday school debate was waged in churches, in Parliament and in print; in publishing The Œconomy of Charity, Trimmer was entering this vigorous debate. As scholar Deborah Wills has argued:
For example, Trimmer contends that Sunday schools teach their pupils not merely to read the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

but how to draw the proper theological and political conclusions from it. Furthermore, Trimmer argues that the responsibility for educating the poor rests on the shoulders of the middle class alone. By eliminating the aristocracy from an active role in her philanthropic programs, "Trimmer ensures that those who actually regulate the Sunday School curriculum are those who will both embody and perpetuate bourgeois culture”. As Wills points out, this distinguishes her from other philanthropists of the time such as Hannah More

Hannah More

“O Lord, I wish to promote thy holy religion which is dreadfully neglected. I am desirous to save young persons from the vices of the age.”

— Sarah Trimmer

Trimmer also founded and oversaw charity school

Charity school

s in her neighborhood. She directed promising students from her Sunday schools, which met only once a week, to these charity schools, which met several times a week. As she wrote in her journal, these schools seemed to her to "afford a happy prospect of rescuing many poor children from vice and profligacy". While the Sunday schools were funded by subscription, that is, donations from people within the parish, the charity schools were largely funded by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which had funded the first charity schools around a century earlier. Trimmer criticized the rote learning that went on in traditional charity schools and tried to institute a more dynamic catechetical

Catechism

A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...

method in her own schools that would stimulate students to ask questions. She wrote in her journal, “my earnest desire is to compose a course of teaching for Charity Schools, by which the children may learn in reality, and not by rote, the principles of the Christian Religion, as taught in the Scriptures". Trimmer also established schools of industry to which she directed her less promising pupils. These schools would teach girls, for example, how to knit and spin. Initially, Trimmer believed that the schools would turn a profit since the girls would spin and knit all day long; however, the girls were unskilled and turned out poor products that could not be sold. Trimmer viewed this project as a failure.

Wilfried Keutsch, a modern scholar of the eighteenth century, has criticized Trimmer's projects as naive and moralistic:
Although Sunday schools such as the ones established by Trimmer have often been characterized by modern scholars as a repressive device used by the middle class to impose their morality on the lower classes, Thomas Laqueur has argued that the poor embraced this opportunity to obtain literacy and disregarded many of the moral lessons forced upon them.

Literary career

In a literary career that spanned more than a quarter of a century, Trimmer authored somewhere between thirty-three and forty-four texts. She wrote in a wide range of genres: textbooks, teaching manuals, children's literature, political pamphlets and critical periodicals. While many of her texts were for children, some of her works, such as The Œconomy of Charity, were also for specific adult audiences. Still others were written for both children and adults, such as The Servant’s Friend (1786–7), which was meant to instruct servants of all ages.

Throughout her career, Trimmer worked with four different publishers — John Marshall

John Marshall (publisher)

John Marshall was a London publisher who specialized in children's literature, chapbooks, educational games and teaching schemes. He described himself as 'The Children's Printer' and referred to children as his 'young friends' He was the preeminent children's book publisher in England from about...

, T.N. Longman, G. Robinson, and Joseph Johnson

Joseph Johnson (publisher)

Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...

— and, by 1800, she had the most works of any author in the Newbery

John Newbery

John Newbery was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. He also supported and published the works of Christopher Smart, Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson...

catalogue, the catalogue that sold the most children's literature. Eventually, Trimmer stopped publishing with Joseph Johnson, because she disagreed with his politics—he was a supporter of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

and was publishing works that she considered subversive.

An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature

Trimmer's first book was An easy introduction to the knowledge of nature, and reading the holy scriptures, adapted to the capacities of children (1780), which built on the revolution in children's literature begun by Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and children's author.A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare...

. In the "Preface", Trimmer writes that Isaac Watts's

Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts was an English hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymnwriter, he was recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns...

Treatise on Education was the inspiration for the work and that "a book containing a kind of general survey of the works of Nature would be very useful, as a means to open the mind by gradual steps to the knowledge of the SUPREME BEING, preparatory to their reading the holy scriptures". In the text, the reader follows a mother and her two children, Charlotte and Henry (perhaps named after two of Trimmer's own children), on a series of nature walks during which the mother describes the wonders of God's creation. In 1793, a version of this book was added to the catalogue of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge; after 77 years, it had sold over 750,000 copies.

Aileen Fyfe, a historian interested in the relationship between science and religion, has argued that Trimmer's text, although inspired by Barbauld's books, differs dramatically from Barbauld's in its religious orientation. Barbauld was a Dissenter and more inclined, according to Fyfe, to "encourage curiosity, observation, and reasoning". In contrast, Trimmer, as a high church

High church

Anglican

Anglicanism

Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...

, depicted nature as "awe-inspiring" and as a reflection not only of God's divinity but also of his goodness. These beliefs are reflected even in the structure of the text; Trimmer's aim was to convey a sense of the awe, therefore her text does not progress in an orderly fashion through a study of the natural world. Barbauld's texts, however, emphasize the slow accumulation of knowledge as well as logical thinking. Thus Evenings at Home, which she co-wrote with her brother, John Aikin

John Aikin

John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...

, has a "systematic structure". Another difference between the two writers lies in the role of authority: whereas Barbauld's texts and those she wrote with her brother, emphasize dialogues between teacher and pupil, Trimmer's textual conversations, Fyfe notes, were "controlled by the parent".

However, Donelle Ruwe, a scholar of eighteenth-century children's literature, has pointed out that An Easy Introduction is not entirely a conservative text—it challenges eighteenth-century notions of the proper roles for women laid out in conduct manuals such as those written by John Gregory

John Gregory (moralist)

John Gregory , a.k.a. John Gregorie, was an eighteenth-century Scottish physician, medical writer and moralist....

and James Fordyce

James Fordyce

James Fordyce, DD , was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and poet. He is best known for his collection of sermons published in 1766 as Sermons for Young Women, popularly known as Fordyce's Sermons.-Early life:...

. The mother in Trimmer's text acts as a "spiritual leader" and demonstrates that a woman is capable of "theological reasoning". Such depictions challenge Jean-Jacques Rousseau's

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

claims that women are capable only of memorizing religious dogma and not of sophisticated reasoning. Furthermore, Trimmer's mother tries to educate her children in a straightforward manner instead of employing the "manipulative" tricks of the tutor in Rousseau's Emile
Emile: Or, On Education
Émile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. Due to a section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” Émile was be...

.

A few years later, inspired by Madame de Genlis's Adèle et Théodore (1782), Trimmer commissioned sets of illustrations of the Bible for which she provided the commentary; she also published print/commentary sets of ancient history and British history. These various sets were very popular and could be purchased together (commentary and prints) or individually. The prints were usually hung on walls or bound into books.

Books for charity schools

Because, in Trimmer's opinion, there was a dearth of good educational material to use in charity schools, she decided to write her own. The series of books she produced between 1786 and 1798 were used in Britain and its colonies well into the nineteenth century. Trimmer was a savvy promoter of her materials; she knew that her books would not reach large numbers of poor children in charity schools unless they were funded and publicized by the SPCK. She wrote in her journal “my scheme without its aid, will fall to the ground". Thus, she joined the society in 1787. In 1793, she sent twelve copies of her treatise Reflections upon the Education in Charity Schools with the Outlines of a Plan Appropriate Instruction for the Children of the Poor to the subcommittee that chose the books funded by the organization. In the treatise, she argued that the current charity school curriculum was outdated (it was over 100 years old) and needed to be replaced. She suggested a list of seven books that she herself would write:

A Spelling Book in two Parts
Scripture Lessons from the Old Testament
Scripture Lessons from the New Testament
Moral Instructions from the Scriptures
Lessons on the Liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer
Exemplary Tales
The Teacher's Assistant

The committee largely accepted her proposal. The Charity School Spelling Book was printed first and was the most widely-used. It was one of the first children's books for the poor that was small but still had large type and large margins (features often considered appropriate only for books for more privileged readers). The stories themselves were also innovative: they emphasized the ordinary lives of ordinary children—"these children climbed trees, played with fire, threw cricket bats at sheep and begged in the streets". The book was adopted by Andrew Bell

Andrew Bell (educationalist)

Andrew Bell was a Scottish Anglican priest and educationalist who pioneered the Madras System of Education in schools and was the founder of Madras College, a secondary school in St. Andrews.-His life and work:Andrew Bell was born at St. Andrews, in Scotland on 27 March 1753 and attended St...

around 1800 for his Madras

Bell-Lancaster method

The Monitorial System was an education method that became popular on a global scale during the early 19th century. This method was also known as "mutual instruction" or the "Bell-Lancaster method" after the British educators Dr Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster who both independently developed it...

system of education and by various educational societies throughout Britain and its colonies; it was even used to educate adult slaves in Antigua and Jamaica.

The proposed "Scripture Lessons" became Trimmer's An Abridgement of Scripture History, consisting of Lessons selected from the Old Testament, for the Use of Schools and Families which was an anthology of selections from the Bible. Like the Charity School Spelling Book, it was adopted throughout the British educational system and was part of school life well into the mid-nineteenth century. In 1798 SPCK published Scripture Catechisms, Part I and II; these works were intended to aid the teacher while the Abridgements (a short-hand name for the Scripture Histories of both the Old and New Testament that Trimmer eventually published) were intended to aid the pupil. The "Exemplary Tales" seem not to have been written exactly as planned but Trimmer's Servant's Friend and Two Farmers fulfilled the purpose she outlined in her plan of publishing pleasurable moral tales. These two books served as Sunday school prizes as well. The Teacher's Assistant was an instruction aid and was also widely adopted throughout British schools. The only texts not published by the SPCK were Trimmer's adaptations and commentaries on the Book of Common Prayer, which she had printed elsewhere.

Fabulous Histories

Fabulous Histories (later known as The Story of the Robins), Trimmer's most popular work, was first published in 1786, and remained in print until the beginning of the twentieth century. It tells the story of two families, a robin family and a human family, who learn to live together congenially. Most importantly, the human children and the baby robins must learn to adopt virtue and to shun vice. 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 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". The text expresses most of the themes 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 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, places these themes in a larger historical context, arguing that "the fears of the author and her class about an industrial revolution in ascendance 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.” A second overarching theme in the text is rationality; 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.

The Guardian of Education

Later in her life, Trimmer published the influential Guardian of Education (June 1802 – September 1806), which included ideas for instructing children and reviews of contemporary children's books. Although one previous attempt had been made to regularly review children's books in Britain, according to Matthew Grenby, "it was a far less substantial and sustained enterprise than Trimmer’s". The Guardian included not only reviews of children's books but also extracts from texts Trimmer thought would edify her adult readers. She aimed “to assess the current state of educational policy and praxis in Britain and to shape its future direction". To do so, she evaluated the educational theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

, John Locke

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

, Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

, Hannah More

Hannah More

, Madame de Genlis, Joseph Lancaster

Joseph Lancaster

Joseph Lancaster was an English Quaker and public education innovator.-Life:Lancaster was born the son of a shopkeeper in Southwark, south London....

, and Andrew Bell

Andrew Bell (educationalist)

, among others. In her “Essay on Christian Education,” also published separately later, she proposed her own comprehensive educational program.

Trimmer took her reviewing very seriously and her over 400 reviews constitute a set of distinct values. As Grenby puts it, "her initial questions of any children’s books that came before her were always first, was it damaging to religion and second, was it damaging to political loyalty and the established social hierarchy". Religion was always Trimmer's first priority and her emphasis on Biblical inerrancy

Biblical inerrancy

Biblical inerrancy is the doctrinal position that the Bible is accurate and totally free of error, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact." Some equate inerrancy with infallibility; others do not.Conservative Christians generally believe that...

illustrates her fundamentalism. She criticized books that included scenes of death, characters who were insane, and representations of sexuality, as well as books that might frighten children. She typically praised books that encouraged intellectual instruction, such as Anna Barbauld's

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Lessons for Children
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...

(1778–79).

Trimmer's fundamentalism, Grenby argues, does not necessarily mark her as the rigid thinker that many critics have presumed her to be. Grenby points out that Trimmer, like Rousseau, believed children were naturally good; in this, she was arguing against centuries of tradition, particularly Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

ical attitudes towards raising children. She also agreed with "Rousseau’s key idea [while ironically attacking Rousseau's works themselves], later taken up by the Romantics, that children should not be forced to become adults too early".

The Guardian of Education established children's literature

Children's literature

as a genre with her reviews. Moreover, in one of her early essays, “Observations on the Changes which have taken place in Books for Children and Young Persons", Trimmer wrote the first history of children's literature, setting out the first canon of children's literature. Its landmark books are still cited today by scholars as important in the development of the genre.

Fairy tales

Trimmer is perhaps most famous now for her condemnation of fairy tales, such as the various translations of Charles Perrault's

Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , Cendrillon , Le Chat Botté and La Barbe bleue...

Histoires ou contes du temps passé (originally published in 1697), because they endorsed an irrational view of the world and suggested that children could become successful too easily (in other words, they did not have to work). Chapbooks were the literature of the poor and Trimmer was attempting to separate children's literature from texts she associated with the lower classes; she also feared that children might gain access to this cheap literature without their parents' knowledge. Trimmer criticized the values associated with fairy tales, accusing them of perpetuating superstition and unfavorable images of stepparents. Rather than seeing Trimmer as a censor of fairy tales, therefore, Nicholas Tucker has argued, "by considering fairy tales as fair game for criticism rather than unthinking worship, Mrs Trimmer is at one with scholars today who have also written critically about the ideologies found in some individual stories".

One of the reasons Trimmer believed fairy tales were dangerous was because they led child readers into a fantasy world where adults could not follow and control their exposure to harmful experiences. She was just as horrified by the graphic illustrations included with some fairy tale collections, complaining that "little children, whose minds are susceptible of every impression; and who from the liveliness of their imaginations are apt to convert into realities whatever forcibly strikes their fancy" should not be allowed to see such scenes as Blue Beard

Bluebeard

"Bluebeard" is a French literary folktale written by Charles Perrault and is one of eight tales by the author first published by Barbin in Paris in January 1697 in Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the...

hacking his wife's head off.

French revolution and religion

In the pages of The Guardian of Education, Trimmer denounced the French revolution

French Revolution

and the philosophers whose works she believed underpinned it, particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

. She argued that there was a vast conspiracy, organized by the atheistic and democratic revolutionaries of France, to overthrow the legitimate governments of Europe. These conspirators were attempting to overturn traditional society by "endeavouring to infect the minds of the rising generation, through the medium of Books of Education and Children's Books" (emphasis Trimmer's). Her views were shaped by Abbé Barruel's Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism is a book by the French Jesuit, the Abbé Augustin Barruel....

(1797–8) (she extracted large sections from this text into the Guardian itself) but also by her fears of the ongoing wars between France and Britain during the 1790s

French Revolutionary Wars

The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...

. Trimmer emphasized Christianity above all in her writings and maintained that one should to turn to God in times of trial. As M. Nancy Cutt argues in her book on children's literature, Trimmer and writers like her "claimed emphatically that the degree of human happiness was in direct proportion to the degree of submission to the divine Will. Thus they repudiated the moralists’ view that learning should exalt reason and work to the temporal happiness of the individual, which was governed by the best interests of society". Trimmer and her allies contended that French pedagogical theories led to an immoral nation, specifically, "deism, infidelity and revolution".

Bell vs. Lancasterian school system debate

In 1789, Andrew Bell

Andrew Bell (educationalist)

invented the Madras

Bell-Lancaster method

system of education to order to instruct British colonial subjects in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

; it was a disciplinary system which employed a hierarchy of student monitors and very few teachers (economical for the colonies, Bell argued). He published a book, Experiment in Education (1797), in order to explain his system, one that he thought could be adapted for the poor in England (in it he endorsed many of Trimmer's own books). A year after reading the Experiment, an English Quaker, Joseph Lancaster

Joseph Lancaster

Joseph Lancaster was an English Quaker and public education innovator.-Life:Lancaster was born the son of a shopkeeper in Southwark, south London....

, adopted many of its principles for his school in London and then published his own book, Improvements in Education (1803), which repeated many of Bell's ideas. Because of his Quaker sympathies, Lancaster did not encourage the teaching of the doctrines of Britain's Established Church

Anglicanism

. Trimmer, appalled by the suggestion that British children did not need to be brought up within the Established Church, wrote and published her Comparative View of the two systems in 1805, creating a schism between two very similar systems. According to F. J. Harvey Darton, an early scholar of children's literature, “her effect upon English education… was very considerable, even extraordinary. The two rival systems, Bell’s and Lancaster’s, were hotly debated all over the country, and the war between Bell and the Dragon, as a cartoonist labelled it, raged in all the magazines, even in the Edinburgh Review
Edinburgh Review
The Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, was one of the most influential British magazines of the 19th century. It ceased publication in 1929. The magazine took its Latin motto judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur from Publilius Syrus.In 1984, the Scottish cultural magazine New Edinburgh Review,...

." Out of the debate “arose the two great societies – the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Children of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, and the British and Foreign School Society – upon whose work, fundamentally, the whole of [Britain's] later elementary school system was based".

Death

How large the debt of gratitude I owe,

How was I counsell’d, aided, prais’d and lov’d.

Let others tell, (for as the words of truth

‘Tis told where’er Britannia’s name is known)

Thy apostolic ministry to youth,

Thy faithful service to the Church and Throne.

‘Tis mine, receiv’d within the social hall,

The hidden gems of virtue to record;

A genius pure from envy’s tainting gall,

Meek in reproach, and careless of reward.…

For seventy years thy lamp benignly shone,

And thousands hail’d it as a guiding star.

— Jane West

Jane West

Jane West [née Iliffe] , who published as "Prudentia Homespun" and "Mrs. West," was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and writer of conduct literature and educational tracts.- Life :...

Trimmer's husband died in 1792; this affected her quite deeply, as is evidenced in her journal. In 1800, she and some of her daughters were forced to move to another house in Brentford

Brentford

. This was painful for Trimmer, who wrote in her diary:
She died there on 15 December 1810. She was buried at St Mary's, Ealing. There is a plaque memorializing her at St. George's, Brentford:

Reception and legacy

Trimmer's most popular book, Fabulous Histories, was reprinted for at least 133 years and had a profound impact on generations of readers and writers. In 1877, when the firm of Griffith and Farran published it as part of their "Original Juvenile Library," they advertised it as "the delicious story of Dicksy, Flapsy, and Pecksy, who can have forgotten it? It is as fresh today as it was half a century ago." Tess Cosslett has also suggested that the names of Trimmer's birds—Dicksy, Pecksy, Flapsy and Robin—bear a striking resemblance to the rabbits—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter—in Beatrix Potter's

Beatrix Potter

Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...

children's books. Trimmer also influenced the children's writers of her own age; William Godwin's

William Godwin

William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...

Fables, Ancient and Modern (1805), for example, imitates Trimmer's Ladder to Learning.

While Trimmer was highly respected for her charity work during her lifetime and for her books long after her death, her reputation began to wane at the end of the nineteenth century and plummeted during the twentieth century. One reason for this is that her textbooks, so widely used during the first half of the century, were replaced by secular books in the second half of the century. The tone of her books was no longer seen as consonant with British society. An early scholar of children's literature, Geoffrey Summerfield, describes her this way: “Of all the morally shrill women active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, she was probably the shrillest. Unbalanced, frenetic, paranoid, she may have been, but no one could deny her energy and perseverance in defending the souls of the children of England from the assaults of the devil.” Recently, however, children's literature scholars have attempted to view eighteenth-century children's literature within its historical context rather than judge it against modern tastes; scholars such as Grenby, Ruwe, Ferguson, Fyfe and Cosslett have reassessed Trimmer's work. Because Trimmer does not fit the mold of twentieth-century feminism — that is, since she did not rebel against the social mores of her society as did Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

— she did not attract the attention of early feminist scholars. However, as Ruwe points out, “by the confluence of political, historical, and pedagogical events at the turn of the century, a woman such as Trimmer was able to gain a greater visibility in the realm of public letters than was perhaps typical before or after"; Trimmer was a "role model for other women authors", and these later authors often acknowledged their debt explicitly, as did the author of The Footsteps to Mrs. Trimmer’s Sacred History.

Trimmer's children

Trimmer and her husband had twelve children.

Name	Birth date	Death date	Brief biography
Charlotte	27 August 1763	1836	Charlotte married the widower Richard Moore, great-grandson of Sir Thomas Moore, who was himself a great-nephew of the poet John Milton John Milton John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell... ; they had one daughter, Charlotte Selina (1793–867). Charlotte Trimmer Moore died from heart failure and gangrene Gangrene Gangrene is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that arises when a considerable mass of body tissue dies . This may occur after an injury or infection, or in people suffering from any chronic health problem affecting blood circulation. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood... in 1836.
Sarah (Selina)	16 August 1764	1829	Selina was governess Governess A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs... to the children of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
Juliana Lydia	4 May 1766	1844	Juliana Lydia may have assisted her sister Selina in caring for the children of the Duchess of Devonshire. She continued her mother's philanthropic projects in Brentford Brentford Brentford is a suburban town in west London, England, and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It is located at the confluence of the River Thames and the River Brent, west-southwest of Charing Cross. Its former ceremonial county was Middlesex.-Toponymy:... .
Joshua Kirby	18 August 1767	17 September 1829	Joshua Kirby married Eliza Willett Thompson in 1794, with whom he had seven children. He held several local offices in Brentford and invested in brick Brick A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:... fields, a copper mine and a slate quarry Open-pit mining Open-pit mining or opencast mining refers to a method of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit or borrow.... . He also built up a flock of merino sheep and exported them to Australia Australia Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... as part of a project initiated by Joseph Banks Joseph Banks Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,... . His son, Joshua Trimmer Joshua Trimmer Joshua Trimmer was an English geologist born at North Cray in Kent. He was the son of Joshua Kirby Trimmer of Brentford, and grandson of Sarah Trimmer , author of the Story of the Robins .... (1795–857), became a geologist Geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using... of some note. See Greg Finch 'Joshua Kirby Trimmer 1767-1829', Brentford and Chiswick Local History Journal, Vol 19 (2010) pp. 4–7
Elizabeth	21 February 1769	24 April 1816	Elizabeth was frequently ill throughout her life, possibly with consumption Tuberculosis Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body... . She cared for her nephew James as he was dying and died just a few days before him.
William Kirby	20 June 1770	February 1811	William Kirby married Jane Bayne in 1794, with whom he had seven children. He owned a successful brickmaking business and collected fossil Fossil Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past... s. He suffered a stroke in 1810 and died four months later. One of his sons, Spencer, helped export Joshua Kirby Trimmer's merino sheep to Australia.
Lucy	1 February 1772	1813	Lucy married James Harris in 1799, with whom she had six children. William (1807–48) became a successful soldier with the British East India Company British East India Company The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China... and was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1844; he was also an artist, author, engineer, diplomat, naturalist Natural history Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study... , geographer and sculptor. Robert (1810–65) became a successful captain in the Royal Navy Royal Navy The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service... and designed a curriculum for educating new officers. John (1808–29) joined the army British Army The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England... and was killed at age 21 in India India India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world... . Their daughter Lucy (1802–79) continued her grandmother's philanthropic work for the poor, establishing and running several Sunday school Sunday school Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in... s.
James Rustat	31 July 1773	1843	James Rustat married Sarah Cornwallis in 1802; they had one son, James Cornwallis Trimmer (1803–16). James' wife died a month after giving birth to their son and Sarah Trimmer's daughter, Elizabeth, cared for him. James Rustat Trimmer invested in his family's merino sheep business and was described as "a brick manufacturer, of Clerkenwell Clerkenwell Clerkenwell is an area of central London in the London Borough of Islington. From 1900 to 1965 it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. The well after which it was named was rediscovered in 1924. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance... " on official documents. He died of senile dementia in 1843.
John	26 February 1775	1791	John died of consumption at age fifteen.
Edward Decimus	3 January 1777	1777	Edward lived for only a few days.
Henry Scott	1 August 1778	25 November 1859	Henry Scott was ill with consumption in 1792–3. He married Mary Driver Syer in 1805; together they had three sons. He was close friends with several artists, including J. M. W. Turner J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting... and Henry Howard (who painted his mother's portrait) and was vicar at Heston Heston Heston is a place in the London Borough of Hounslow, west London. It is a suburban development area, based on a former farming village west south-west of Charing Cross.-History:... from 1804 until his death in 1859. He prompted an investigation into the death of Private Frederick John White who had been court-martialed and flogged for insubordination. His son Barrington (1809–60) became his curate Curate A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish. In this sense "curate" correctly means a parish priest but in English-speaking countries a curate is an assistant to the parish priest... at Heston for 27 years and eventually domestic chaplain to the Duke of Sutherland George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland George Granville Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland KG , styled Viscount Trentham until 1803, Earl Gower between 1803 and 1833 and Marquess of Stafford in 1833, was a British peer.... , who was connected to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire's family; he was also a writer. His son Frederick (1813–83) became a wealth landowner in Heston and served as justice of the peace Justice of the Peace A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions... .
Annabella	26 December 1780	1785

List of works

This list of works has been taken from Deborah Wills' entry on Trimmer in the Dictionary of Literary Biography
Dictionary of Literary Biography
The Dictionary of Literary Biography is a specialist encyclopedia dedicated to literature. Published by Gale, the 375-volumes set covers a wide variety of literary topics, periods, and genres, with a focus on American and British literature....

. Other entries have been added if they appear in other academic articles or database collections under Trimmer's name.

An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature, and Reading the Holy Scriptures, adapted to the Capacities of Children (1780)
Sacred History (1782–5) (6 volumes)
The Œconomy of Charity (1786)
Fabulous Histories; Designed for the Instruction of Children, Respecting their Treatment of Animals (1786)
A Description of a Set of Prints of Scripture History: Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons (1786)
A Description of a Set of Prints of Ancient History: Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons. In Two Parts (1786)
The Servant’s Friend (1786)
The Two Farmers (1787)
The Œconomy of Charity (1787)
The Sunday-School Catechist, Consisting of Familiar Lectures, with Questions (1788)
The Sunday-scholar's Manual (1788)
The Family Magazine (1788–9) (periodical)
A Comment on Dr. Watts’s Divine Songs for Children with Questions (1789)
A Description of a Set of Prints of Roman History, Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons (1789)
The Ladder of Learning, Step the First (1789)
A Description of a Set of Prints Taken from the New Testament, Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons (1790)
Easy Lessons for Young Children (c.1790) [not on Wills' list]
Sunday School Dialogues (1790) (edited by Trimmer)
A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (1791)
An Explanation of the Office for the Public Baptism of Infants (1791)
An Attempt to Familiarize the Catechism of the Church of England (1791)
The Little Spelling Book for Young Children (4th ed., 1791) [not on Wills' list]
Reflections upon the Education of Children in Charity Schools (1792)
A Friendly Remonstrance, concerning the Christian Covenant and the Sabbath Day; Intended for the Good of the Poor (1792)
The Ladder of Learning, Step the Second (1792)
A Description of a Set of Prints of English History, Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons (1792)
An Abridgement of Scripture History; Consisting of Lessons Selected from the Old Testament (1792)
A Scriptures Catechism (1797) (2 parts) [not on Wills' list]
A Description of a Set of Prints Taken from the Old Testament (c.1797) [not on Willis' list]
The Silver Thimble (1799)
An Address to Heads of Schools and Families (1799?)
The Charity School Spelling Book (c.1799) (2 parts)
The Teacher's Assistant: Consisting of Lectures in the Catechised Form (1800)
A Geographical Companion to Mrs. Trimmer's Scripture, Antient, and English Abridged Histories, with Prints (1802)
A Help to the Unlearned in the Study of the Holy Scriptures (1805)
An Abridgement of the New Testament (1805?)
A Comparative View of the New Plan of Education Promulgated by Mr. Joseph Lancaster (1805)
The Guardian of Education
The Guardian of Education
The Guardian of Education was the first successful periodical dedicated to reviewing children's literature in Britain. It was edited by eighteenth-century educationalist, children's author, and Sunday school advocate Sarah Trimmer and was published from June 1802 until September 1806 by J. Hatchard...

(1802–6) (periodical)
A New Series of Prints, Accompanied by Easy Lessons; Being an Improved Edition of the First Set of Scripture Prints from the Old Testament (1808)
A Concise History of England (1808)
Instructive Tales: Collected from the Family Magazine (1810)
An Essay on Christian Education (1812) (posthumous)
Sermons, for Family Reading (1814) (posthumous)
Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Trimmer (1814) (posthumous)
A Description of a Set of Prints of the History of France, Contained in a Set of Easy Lessons (1815) (posthumous)
A Selection from Mrs. Trimmer's Instructive Tales; The Good Nurse... (1815) (posthumous)
Miscellaneous Pieces, Selected from the Family Magazine (1818) (posthumous)
Prayers and Meditations Extracted from the Journal of the Late Mrs. Trimmer (1818) (posthumous)
A Selection from Mrs. Trimmer's Instructive Tales; The Rural Economists... (1819) (posthumous)

External links

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