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Learning from Animals: Natural History for Children in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

1985; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chl.0.0198

1543-3374

Harriet Ritvo,

Socioeconomics of Resources and Conservation

Learning from Animals:Natural History for Children in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Harriet Ritvo (bio) The first zoological book intended for English children, A Description of Three Hundred Animals, appeared in 1730. Published by Thomas Boreman, it was part of a mid-eighteenth century boom in juvenile literature, created by publishers rushing to cater to a market that had been virtually nonexistent before 1700. Because both the authors and the purchasers of children's books understood them primarily as educational tools, not as instruments of entertainment, it is not surprising that the natural world, especially animate nature, was quickly recognized as a source of useful information and instructive moral precepts.1 By 1800, according to one bibliographer's count, at least fifty children's books about animals, vegetables, and minerals had been published.2 In the middle of the eighteenth century, knowledge about nature was accumulating rapidly. Natural history had become both a prestigious scientific discipline and a popular avocation.3 An eager adult public awaited the dissemination of information collected by Enlightenment naturalists. Some had the training, patience, and money to appreciate such focused and elaborate treatments as William Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall (1758) or Thomas Pennant's Arctic Zoology (1784 -87). But most awaited the popular distillations of such works. The versatile Oliver Goldsmith provided one of the most successful, an eight-volume compilation entitled An History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1774). He was plundered in his turn by several generations of literary naturalists eager to supply the popular demand, including many authors who targeted the growing juvenile audience. Although natural history was a new literary genre in the eighteenth century, animals were hardly new literary subjects. They [End Page 72] figured prominently in Aesop's fables, which were frequently used as school texts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fables, however, were not really about animals. As Thomas Bewick, a distinguished illustrator and publisher of animal books, explained in the preface to his 1818 edition of The Fables of Aesop, they "delineate the characters and passions of men under the semblance of Lions, Tigers, Wolves and Foxes."4 Nevertheless, because the animals were supposed to bear some temperamental resemblance to the human characters they represented, the fables have always been perceived as animal stories as well as moral tales. But fables exerted only an oblique influence on natural history writing. The impact of the bestiary tradition, which also had classical roots, was more direct and definitive. Bestiaries were illustrated catalogues or compendia of actual and fabulous animals. They can be regarded as forerunners of natural histories, sharing the same purpose—to describe the animal world—but adumbrating a different point of view. In Latin versions they were widely disseminated across Europe in the Middle Ages.5 The fruits of this tradition has been distilled for English readers early in the seventeenth century. Edward Topsell's massive, densely printed The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes (based on Konrad von Gesner's five-volume Historia Animalium, which had been published half a century earlier) described each animal emblematically, detailing its "venues (both naturall and medicinall)" and its "love and hate to Mankind."6 The information, which was miscellaneously gathered from ancient authorities, modern travelers' tales, and unattributed hearsay, could better be characterized as lore than scientific data. Nevertheless, Topsell's collection exerted a strong influence on at least the form of natural history books well into the eighteenth century. Like its manuscript predecessors, Topsell's Historie was intended for adults, but its bizarre stories and illustrations must also have been attractive to children. Perhaps on this account the authors of the first natural history books for children mined it especially heavily. In so doing, however, they transformed the traditional genre of the bestiary in ways that reflected the concerns of their own age. Thomas Boreman's A Description of Three Hundred Animals has been recognized as the first animal book aimed at children, because [End Page 73] the preface announced that it was intended to "introduce Children into a Habit of Reading."7 Without this clue, it might have been difficult to tell. In many cases, the material presented in animal books written...