Golden Age of Children's Literature

Though not as famous as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, (which was roughly the first half of the twentieth century & was remarkable for the many feminine practitioners of the genre), the Golden Age of Children's Literature, also occupied the same time frame, may be starting a little bit earlier.

Humphrey Carpenter, who compiled the authoritative Oxford Companion to Children's Literature with his wife, felt the need of a more comprehensive study of the key authors of this genre & prepared the scholarly "Secret Gardens - A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature." He started with Charles Kingsley's "The Water Babies" & Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." Incidentally both authors were clergymen.

He also thought George McDonald & Bevis as influential, but both are now not very popular. Louisa Alcott with her "Little Women" was a pioneer, still relevant as evinced by the recent film. Kenneth Grahame, with his evergreen "Wind in the Willows" never allows us to forget his animals, anthropomorphized as Edwardian gentlemen.

Edith Nesbit, with her Kafkaesque vanished father of "The Railway Children" was a unique voice, as was Beatrix Potter, with her self-drawn beautiful animal pictures of Peter Rabbit & other endearing animals. James Barrie, with his age-defying Peter Pan & A. A. Milne with his two prose volumes of Winnie the Pooh are still alive through their never aging works.

Meanwhile, Carpenter's "Oxford Companion" has been updated by Daniel Hahn to include Tolkien & Rowling. The book fittingly contains notable illustrators also, with the surprising omission of Inga Moore, who in addition to being an author of children's books herself, is an outstanding illustrator in the transcendent impressionist style, having produced best-selling magnificent editions of "Wind in the Willows" & "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett.