Chapter 1 explores one of the most enduring popular works for children, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Charles Dodgson wrote it at a time when the very conception of childhood as a distinctive and cherished stage of human development was being explored and, through the popularity of Dodgson’s penmanship, being promulgated. Dodgson’s interest in children is also apparent from his (now controversial) photographs of children and from his obsessively detailed exchanges with his publisher, Frederick Macmillan, over the presentation of Alice and other works for children. Dodgson sought to curate the way young readers entered into and experienced the fantasy realm. He appeared to draw the line at ventures he judged could dilute the fantasy, such as mass-manufactured goods produced outside of Victorian artistic creative industries. Dodgson wrote at a time when authors could and did control the terms of engagement with their fantasy through the exercise of copyright. Management, agency and legal relations would supersede this authorial power and authority in the following century.

In this chapter we ask: What is children’s literature? We aim to challenge the traditional idea that children’s literature is simply print-based stories for learners. To do this, we look at what Australia’s English curriculum says about literature and literary texts. Then, we reflect deeply on practical ways we can aid learners to find joy in literature and use different literary texts to: read silently, read aloud and read with friends; talk about plot, characters and settings; examine word choices; reflect on visual elements in images; see different perspectives; perform readers theatre; and sing. But this is no easy feat. Therefore, to help teachers, the bulk of the chapter offers practical ways to do what evidence-based research tells us, which is to put our trust in literature, and submerge and soak learners in quality literature to best support their efforts to lead literate lives.

This chapter examines the interpenetration of Gothic and heritage discourses in literary works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at the impact of heritage issues on Gothic texts and the irruption of Gothic tropes into heritage romances and time-slip narratives. It argues that issues of protection, ownership and custodianship of monuments, artefacts and landscapes, all so central to the heritage movement, re-inflect Gothic tropes in stories by M. R. James (where the Gothic object is a heritage artefact and issues of custodianship become central) and in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) (where the Gothic house is presented as an endangered heritage object). Conversely, in Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time (1938), Gothic tropes express the dangers of heritage sensibilities. Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger (2009), which pathologises heritage sensibilities, is read as a twisted heritage romance. Discussing Penelope Lively’s The Whispering Knights (1971) and David Rudkin’s Penda’s Fen (1974) as texts responding to the new discipline of landscape history, the chapter argues that W G Hoskins's The Making of the English Landscape (1955) is a key text in the development of Folk Horror.

This introduction provides an overview and brief history of New Thought and Christian Science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly not only in America but also in Britain and Canada. The introduction also describes how popular literature written for and about children circa 1900 helped spread New Thought ideas while simultaneously critiquing them. As I explain, New Thought proved especially popular with female novelists and readers seeking escape from domestic duties and greater opportunities outside of the domestic sphere. Finally, the introduction includes a chapter breakdown outlining which works and concepts will be discussed later in the book.

Chapter Five explores the spatial dimensions of Children’s Fiction, arguing that the explicit presence of the map in many canonical texts signals the importance of place and space for the genre and that a specific form of bounded space between adult and child (playspace) emerges. This space is essential for the literary representation of childhood to function positively. The spatial play that this enables is exemplified in Arthur Ransome’s Lake District Series whilst the – equally powerful – negation of playspace is embodied in Peter Pan. (84)