Early Children’s Literature: Religion, Morality, and the Puritan Influence

Prior to the nineteenth century, according to Steinfirst (1976), most children’s literature was “written to instruct – to teach religion, to teach morality, and to teach manners.” Given the long history of the association of morality and religion with learning, it is hardly surprising that early alphabet books would focus on teaching children how to live moral, pious lives (Steinfirst, 1976). In fact, the earliest form of the alphabet book, the horn book, a “convenient and relatively indestructible form of presenting the alphabet,” was typically followed by a syllabary, invocation to the Trinity, and the Lord’s Prayer (Avery, 1995). That one of the first things children would learn along with the alphabet is the Lord’s prayer is fairly indicative of the role of children’s literature.

In both England and America, this focus on religion, as well as morality, is the result of the far-reaching influence of Puritanism, which held that children, by nature, were born “evil and in need of salvation,” which could be secured through the acquisition of knowledge” (Steinfirst, 1976). As Kinnell (1995) explains, in the 18th century, Puritans considered children “an expression of God’s blessing on the faithful and their care and education was a sacred trust,” so much so that “the first words read by the child were…permeated with religious significance.” Early children’s publishing at the time essentially served to fulfill a need to teach children their religious and social obligations. The high child mortality rates of the period and the Puritans’ interest in “educating children for an early death” had the effect of concentrating “the minds of publishers and booksellers in the production of ‘plain holy’ books,” tapping into a growing market for child-centered texts with heavy religious and moral overtones (Kinnell, 1995). The primary aim of early children’s literature, then, was to teach children how to behave morally and piously, lest they succumb to an early death. Examples of this focus on morality, religion, and social obligations can be seen in two alphabet books on this site, The Infant’s Illustrated Primer ABC Book and The Galloping Guide to the ABC.

It was not until the middle of the 19th century that this focus on religion and morality would give way to a greater focus on amusing children while they learned their letters.