The Secularization of Children’s Literature and Alphabet Books in the 19th Century

The connection between children’s literature and trends in religious and cultural attitudes toward children is most important in explaining the secularization of alphabet books that occurred in the middle of the 19th century. During this time, children’s literature that taught moral or religious lessons was gradually displaced by children’s literature that was intended to amuse. As Steinfirst (1976) asserts, “the movement away from the intense religious temperament” of earlier centuries toward “the late nineteenth century period of secularization” is the reason for this. The growing secularization of society in the 19th century had an “immediate impact on education, on texts, on children’s literature, and…on the alphabet book,” with moralistic, didactic children’s literature giving way to a literature of pure amusement (Steinfirst, 1976). Alphabet books, then, started to focus on entertaining children, which is reflected in many of the digitized alphabet books on this site, especially those published in the latter half of the 19th century.

The change in the content of alphabet books in the 19th century was also influenced by changing attitudes toward reading theory and educational theory for children. The old method of rote learning, where children merely memorized the letters of the alphabet, usually through association with a single word and an illustration, was replaced by a method of having children “learn whole words in meaningful context,” with the content often consisting of amusing narratives in rhyming verse (Steinfirst, 1976). Examples of alphabet books with this type of narrative are The History of A, Apple-pie and Aunt Lely’s Picture Alphabet, both of which can be found on this site. Additionally, educational theorists in the nineteenth century also started to embrace a “child-centered, natural education which stressed play and natural development,” ultimately liberating children’s literature and leading to new approaches to alphabet books (Steinfirst, 1976). For example, play and games that children play features heavily in the alphabet books The Illuminated ABC and The Toy Shop Alphabet, reflecting this greater acceptance of play as a vital part of a child’s development. Finally, given the greater freedom of children’s literature in the latter half of the 19th century, a new trend developed in which alphabet books started to depict trades, with the illustrations containing much information about middle-class life in Victorian England (Steinfirst, 1976). An example of this type of “alphabet of trades” book is the Railway A.B.C., which depicts the railway as it existed in the 1870s.