Children’s Adaptations of Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote in Eighteenth-Century England
Anne-Fooke Schlatmann by S2168693
Supervisor: Dr John Flood Master’s Dissertation Literary Studies Programme: Writing, Editing and Mediating
University of Groningen 25 March 2017
15242 words
Contents
Abstract 3
Introduction 4
Chapter 1: The Eighteenth Century and the Idea(l) of Pleasurable Instruction 8 Chapter 2: The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: Familiarising the Unfamiliar 20 Chapter 3: The Ingeniously Versatile Lessons of Cervantes’ Don Quixote 36
Conclusion 49
Works Cited 53
Appendix: Frontispieces 58
Fig. 1 Frontispiece of the first edition of Robinson Crusoe Fig. 2 Frontispiece of Robinson der Jüngere
Fig. 3 Frontispiece of Le Nouveau Robinson
Fig 4 Frontispiece of the Jarvis translation of Don Quixote Fig. 5 Frontispiece of the Newbery adaptation of Don Quixote
Abstract
This thesis explores children’s adaptations of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe in eighteenth- century England. During the eighteenth century a new market for children’s literature emerged.
While books for children existed before 1700, new ideas about childhood resulted in an unprecedented popularity in the production and consumption of children’s books. These new publications, influenced by Locke and other contemporary educationalists, combined (moral) instruction with entertainment. Adaptations of famous novels followed this formula. The New Robinson restructures the story of Crusoe within a frame tale, and adds emphasis to the moral lessons that can be distilled from Defoe’s original. The Newbery adaptation of Don Quixote shortens the complex novel, introducing a simplified episodic chapter structure, and
highlighting the comical appeal, while Cervantes’ satire of romance stays intact. In order for children’s adaptations to appeal to a young audience, ‘adult’ editions were shortened and simplified, and overlong digressions from the plot were omitted. Instead, the adaptations focus on adventurous episodes to entertain their young readers, while still foregrounding or even adding (moral) lessons that promote the eighteenth-century educational ideals of rationality, politeness, and good conduct. Eighteenth-century children’s literature forms the foundation of modern children’s literature, and with the research field still developing, many studies can follow in the footsteps of this thesis in exploring adaptations of famous eighteenth-century novels up until modern times.
Key words: children’s literature, education, adaptations, eighteenth century, Locke, Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote
Introduction
‘The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. … [the child] will [then] also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvellously through the tangles of his later years.’
- Roald Dahl, BBC TV Interview (1988)
From Harry Potter to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, nowadays every bookstore has a special section catering to a specific audience: children. The modern perception of children’s literature is that it will contain life lessons, or other valuable insights for later years—as Roald Dahl describes it. At the same time a book for children should be ‘absorbing’, ‘exciting’, and ‘funny’.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines modern children’s literature as ‘the body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain or instruct young
people’ (Fadiman §1). It is this idea of entertainment and instruction that can be traced back to eighteenth-century England.
While the date of origin with regards to literature for children is still a point of debate among scholars (Grenby, ‘Origins’ 5), it was in the eighteenth century that a profitable market for children’s books emerged and new concept of children’s literature came to fruition, marking the birth of the modern-day children’s book. This concept consisted of the combination of
entertainment and instruction in children’s books, qualities that are still considered to be of prime importance today.
Research into children’s literature in the eighteenth century has so far focused primarily on books published by John Newbery, a publisher who established a thriving trade in books that offered children and their guardians ‘instruction with delight’. However, this thesis
introduces and investigates a different aspect of children’s literature. Apart from a rapidly increasing demand in books written for children, the novel also became increasingly popular in the eighteenth century, developing ’in tandem’ with children’s literature (Douthwaite 463).
This thesis explores juvenile adaptations of famous novels in eighteenth-century
England. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and eighteenth-century translations of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (originally published in 1605) were both highly popular in the eighteenth century, and consequently tailored or even rewritten to suit a young audience. This was not only to make the novels easier to read for children, but also to incorporate the educational ideals of the
eighteenth century: the idea of instruction with delight. Entertainment had to be paired with (moral) instruction. Thus, children’s adaptations of Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote shorten and simplify ‘adult’ editions and focus on adventurous episodes to appeal to their younger audience, yet at the same time foreground the stories’ moral purpose and the consequences of the characters’ behaviour in order to infuse the tales of adventure with popular eighteenth- century educational ideals of rationality, politeness, and good conduct.
The novels Don Quixote (1605) and Robinson Crusoe (1719) were popular in the eighteenth century, and enjoy a continued legacy today. Moreover, although they were
originally published as novels for adults, the countless adaptations for children that they inspired secured Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote a place as true classics in children’s literature as well.
This thesis compares the first edition of Robinson Crusoe with The New Robinson, a retelling of the famous story designed for children and published in English in 1789, promising ‘innocent entertainment and moral instruction (preface viii). The Jarvis translation—written by Charles Jervas (but often referred to as Jarvis) in 1749— forms the foundation for the chapter focusing on Don Quixote. This edition was popular in the eighteenth century and enjoyed critical esteem from contemporaries. Consequently, Francis Newbery also used it for the abridged version of
Don Quixote that he published in 1798. The Newbery empire for children’s literature was well- established by this time, and this adaptation was reprinted frequently in the first half of the nineteenth century.
We have come to think of both Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote as children’s classics.
However, they have appeared in many different forms over the last few centuries, and it is therefore very worthwhile to go back to their ‘inception’ and analyse the first adaptions for children. These edition cannot, however, be seen outside the context of eighteenth-century ideas about education and literature for children. The first chapter will therefore focus on the background of eighteenth-century children’s literature, starting with Locke’s influential Thoughts Concerning Education (1693).
The second chapter looks into the transformation of Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe from a work with an adult audience to a story considered suitable for the eighteenth- century child. Robinson Crusoe has often been a topic of research, as a contender for one of the first novels in England, and for presenting eighteenth-century ideas about individualism and perhaps even proto-capitalism. This thesis moves the spotlight to a popular eighteenth-century children’s adaptation, to explore what elements of the story contemporaries kept in the
children’s versions of events, and which elements were tweaked. The thrill of adventure remains, although much contained, and the focus is no longer on individualism or capitalism, but on Crusoe’s domestic life and personal transformation to proper (moral) conduct.
The third and final chapter is a similar comparison between a famous novel for adults, and its adaptation. The chapter centres around Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which is arguably the actual first novel in literary history (Cascardi 58). The first part of Don Quixote was originally published in 1605, and English translations appeared in the seventeenth century as well.
However, the novel was increasingly popular from the start of the eighteenth century, sparked
by new popular translations (Knowles 109). The Newbery adaptation considerably shortens the lengthy novel, and strips many layers to focus on the comical appeal and create a simplified story suitable for a younger audience. The next chapter discusses the concept of children as an audience, or a considerable part of the readership of a book. From the start of the eighteenth century, new constructions of childhood meant that renewed attention was devoted to the wellbeing of children and—most of all—their education.
CHAPTER 1
The Eighteenth Century and the Idea(l) of Pleasurable Instruction
‘I think I may say, that of all the Men we meet with, Nine parts of Ten are what they are, Good or Evil, useful or not, by their Education. ’Tis that which makes the great difference in Mankind.’
- John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, p. 2 (1693)
‘Education’, says John Locke in his famous 1693 treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ’tis that which makes the great difference in Mankind’ (2). Education too, for
eighteenth-century society, seemed to rapidly become a ‘buzzword’—to use an apt twenty-first- century term. It first appeared as a topic of discussion, as Locke’s Some Thoughts demonstrates, but quickly became a cornerstone of eighteenth-century society, one that in turn has reshaped the landscape of children’s literature up until modern times. The ‘great difference’ was not only in fostering the creation or expansion of the ideals of polite society and social citizenship that Locke advocated. It was also the highly emphasised notion of education merged with the turmoil of other social, economical, and technological advancements that have left a lasting stamp on the emerging market of books for children.
New ideas about childhood emerged in the eighteenth century. The eighteenth-century child was an investment, to be raised with the ideals of rational and polite conduct that the social elite advocated. The eighteenth century brought to the foreground existing ideas about
education in England, which together with new ideas about childhood and the rise of the bourgeoisie, led to a surge of new material for children. The start of the eighteenth century saw a gradual change from austere Puritan literature for children, to a surge of new ‘pleasurable instruction’ material, and finally towards a diversification of the market and a shift to the romantic spirit of the innocent child.
Any researcher delving into the topic of eighteenth-century children’s literature must first set out to define ‘children’s literature’, and although the term itself seems relatively self-
explanatory, the reality is far from straightforward. A sudden increase of interest in children’s literature from the seventies onwards has led to a proliferation of different interpretations of the term ‘children’s literature’. Moreover, the eighteenth century itself is already a complex field of study with its climate of change in almost every aspect of society. Consequently, a clear and concordant definition seems unattainable.
One major obstacle is its elusive audience. Do we mean texts read only by children? Are we trying to capture an audience of children only? In a contemporary environment, the popular Harry Potter series would then not fit the bill. If the term is to indicate texts specifically designed for children, we forget to acknowledge the possibilities—and probabilities—of many texts that might have purposely enjoyed dual audiences. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, for instance, is a good example of how a dark satire with a supposedly adult audience at first (Levy & Mendlesohn 25) has—over three centuries—morphed into what is now considered to be a classic staple of children’s literature.
For the eighteenth century, the surviving evidence—the partial peek we can take into domestic life—cannot rule out a dual audience for the majority of books in circulation. As such, researchers have not been able to answer the question of which books children could access and might have read in different social spheres. Children might have been able to read more than what studies can pinpoint as ‘children’s literature’. However, the fragile consensus can be that within that large grey area, the eighteenth century started publishing books with as the intended reader ‘the young gentleman or lady’—the eighteenth-century child.
Finally, childhood comes with certain age borders that need to be clarified. At the time, children started to learn how to read at a young age, sometimes as young as two or three years
old. The youngest children were provided with ‘alphabet’ books and books that included visual stimuli in the form of pictures (Brown 353) . As Locke mentions in Some Thoughts, ‘as soon as he begins to Spell, as many Pictures of Animals should be got him as can be found’, also with the idea that it will ‘encourage him [the young reader] to read’ (184). As soon as children had learned the basics of spelling, they were given books for children. One of such popular books came from the publisher Thomas Cooper in 1742, and was aptly named the Child’s New Play- Thing. It included as frontispiece a foldable ‘alphabet grid designed to be cut up and used as cards in a learning game’ (Alderson 38). The title of the book also promises that the rest of the volume includes ‘Stories … adapted to the Capacities of Children’ (Cooper, title page). Thus, the age at which children’s started learning their first letters coincides with the first literature
designated for children.
On the other end of eighteenth-century childhood—and with it children’s literature—is the concept of coming of age. The idea of childhood as a separate stage in the development towards adulthood was not legally explained until the end of the seventeenth century. The argument that childhood is an eighteenth-century concept can at least find a base in legal documents of the time. It was only then—at the turn of the century—that civil law introduced the idea of maturity in the legal system, a girl reaching maturity at twelve, and boys at fourteen (Giovanopoulos 47). This line cannot of course establish a hard divide between the moment a youngster will turn to adult literature, but it can give an indication. Another clue can be found in readership or membership lists found in the back of some children’s books and magazines from the 1740s onwards. These included lists with names and locations. Grenby suggests most readers of John Newbery’s The Lilliputian Magazine were probably between four and twelve, although anecdotal evidence suggests a few adults enjoyed reading the juvenile magazine as well (Shoes 27). The ‘young gentleman or lady’ that represented the ‘child’ in eighteenth-century
children’s literature could therefore have been anywhere between the ages of four and twelve to fourteen, with grey areas on both ends that are hard to confirm or disprove.
Before books began to cater to the ‘capacities of children’ and include educative ‘play- things’ in the early forties of the eighteenth century, the late seventeenth-century books for children took a significantly different approach. Many books that aimed for a young audience were rooted in religion, and could hardly be considered entertaining from a more modern perspective. A Token for Children, written by Jane Janeway and first published in 1671 or 1672, promises in its title to include an account of the ‘joyful deaths of several young children’. A total of thirteen children find their ‘joyful’ death in this children’s book (‘Token’ §1). Before Locke made his case that good and evil were mostly decided through education, and before books were steering children to behave properly through positive example, children’s books were designed to warn them ‘against worldly temptations and point out the hard path towards salvation’ (Grenby, ‘Origins’ 5). Even though Token for Children remained in print until far into the nineteenth century (‘Token’ §3), with the dawn of the age of Enlightenment a new shift in children’s education moved the emphasis on ‘Puritan piety’ in children’s literature away towards a more ‘secular morality’ and a worldly education (Douthwaite 464)—swiftly gaining popularity after the 1693 publication of Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
John Locke’s Some Thoughts did not vocalise radically new educational beliefs. Instead, his arguments concerning the education and upbringing of a child were part of a movement already underway in the last decade of the seventeenth century. Sir Roger L’Estrange had—a year before Locke’s educational treatise was published—already argued that lessons could be
‘Sweeten’d’ by presenting them within amusing ‘Little Stories’ (Grenby, ‘Origins’ 7). Nevertheless, it was Locke whose practical advice concerning education was taken up and who enjoyed
lasting popularity throughout the century. It might have been, as Summerfield claims, ‘the book [original emphasis]’—‘the most influential English book on child-rearing (2).
Some Thoughts contains a wide variety of thoughts and views about all aspects of childrearing, but the one that was most enthusiastically embraced from the start of the
eighteenth century and still is closely associated with Locke is the idea of combining learning with play. ‘Learning anything’, he states, ‘…might be made as much a Recreation to [the
children’s] Play, as their Play is to their Learning (77). This idea set the tone for new approaches in teaching children how to learn their letters, as well as new developments in children’s book publishing. As mentioned above, Locke’s contemporaries had also already commended learning through entertaining reads. Ironically, in his 262 pages long work, Locke himself only briefly touches on the topic of children’s books: he mentions the allegorical story Raynard the Fox, and that a pupil might find out himself that there is both ‘use and pleasure in it’ (185). After Reynard, he cannot recall another book that might prove similarly useful ‘to engage the liking of Children, and tempt them to read’. He only concurs that that the useful Books have so far ‘had the fate to be neglected’ (185-186). And that was exactly the call the commercial book business had been waiting for.
A few books that echoed the idea of learning combined with play had been circulating long before Locke and his contemporaries started voicing their ideas about educational reform.
In fact, it was the Roman poet Horace that already coined the phrase ‘utile et dulce’—usually translated as ‘useful and pleasant’—as an ideal form of tuition (Immel, ‘Constructions’ 28). Mid- seventeenth century, in 1658, Orbis Pictus was published in Germany, an illustrated book for children full of scenes of daily life with the corresponding terms alongside it. Its preface promises to ‘imbibe knowledge about the world’ all the while ‘enticing children through
pictures’ (Brown 421). Then, months before the turn of the century, Les Avantures de Télémaque
fils d’Ulysse was published in France, and translated into English within a year, written as an instruction in politics and morality ‘through an exciting narrative’ (Grenby, ‘Origins’ 5). It became a popular book among schoolboys, and Bottigheimer even claims it was the ‘single most
frequently published children’s book in the eighteenth century’ (‘Fairy Tales’ 171). That claim is difficult to substantiate when recalling the difficulties establishing a presumed children’s book as being solely or even predominantly designed for children. However, the popularity of this single book falls short compared to the momentous change in the amount of pleasurable instruction books published for children a few decades into the eighteenth century.
The concept of playing-learning—or ‘utile et dulce’—worked its way into the English book business in the thirties, and truly gained momentum in the 1740s. Thomas Boreman took Locke’s advice to publish a list of animals and their pictures (Locke 185) to heart with his 1730
publication of A Description of Three Hundred Animals … to Allure Children to Read. In 1742, Mary and Thomas Cooper followed suit with their Child’s New Play-Thing (Grenby, ‘Origins’ 4).
Then John Newbery published his first book for children: A Pretty Little Pocket-Book—the first of many similar children’s books to come. Although a few authors preceded John Newbery, it is he who has since become synonymous with the eighteenth-century children’s book trade. He printed at least fifty original books for children during his life. The History of Little Goody Two- Shoes (1765) was nearly continuously reprinted and may have gone through as many as 174 editions—English and American—by the nineteenth century (Bator 48).
Newbery, in the book business already, as well as a his fellow printers and authors
around 1740 England, saw a gap in the book market, and capitalised on it to great success. Their success in establishing a flourishing children’s book trade from the forties onwards was not only due to their commercial instincts but rather the the result of several changes in eighteenth- century society that came together to create the right atmosphere for this venture. ‘Evolving
views on the family and social class, the place of religion in daily life, the interest in science, the rise of consumerism, [and] the growth in literacy’ were of great importance, as Brown contends, as well as the voices asking for educational reform (419). This educational reform that had started in the late seventeenth century led to parents and guardians showing more involvement in the education of their children. The child became a commodity, and educationalists urged parents to invest in education. Merchants such as Newbery saw this gap in the market and decided to profit from it. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, an eighteenth-century best-selling author and educationalist remarks in an observation about an acquaintance that he and his wife agreed to
‘spare neither pains nor expense in making their child all that was great and good’ (Barbauld 306). Brown adds that the young were ‘seen as vulnerable creatures to be safeguarded and moulded’ (420). A turn-around from the seventeenth-century’s austere approach to literature for children such as Jane Janeway and her account of the harsh path towards salvation.
The new commercial children’s books that began circulating in earnest in the 1740s combined the ‘Lockean’ ideas of learning while playing, and brought them together in books crafted to appeal to both parties involved—parents, and their children. First, the books had to appeal to their target audience: children. The new educationalists recommended to combine learning with entertainment, and thus the merchants went to considerable lengths to entertain the young. The child was to ‘beguiled’ (Plumb 81). Book titles showcased almost everything one would find in the volume—a common occurrence in eighteenth-century literature (Shevlin 55). A Pretty Little Pocket-Book for example introduced relatable characters, such as Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly, and even characters borrowed from fairy tales, such as Jack the Giant Killer, and promises its young audience ‘Amusement’—all in the title. The book even came with a pincushion or a ball for a few extra pence. However, the entertaining characters and stories also served a second function—to be educational. The ball and pincushion were part of
the instruction, and presented as material awards for good behaviour (Douthwaite 465). The didactic content validated the book as useful in the eyes of parental guardians and educators.
Thus, every book offered stories children were supposed to want to read at leisure, but which all included as an ‘underlay’ didactic content—moral lessons, and examples of proper conduct.
These crafty combinations of instruction and delight also were part of a struggle of the eighteenth-century educationalists that opposed the corrupting influence of older and widely spread ’fairy foolishness’, such as folk tales and chivalric romance. As the Age of Reason progressed, and the scientific view of the world became increasingly important, Summerfield argues the ‘old pre-empirical, pre-rational versions of ‘reality’’ became increasingly the ‘preserve of uneducated ‘superstitious’ adults, and of children’ (xii). Education, through new books for children, were the means to prevent ‘pollution by fantasy’ in the tender child’s mind (xiv).
This struggle was mostly due to the prevailing popularity of the chapbook. Away from the realm of lengthy novels, moral essays, and children’s literature filled with moral tales and
didactic content, the chapbook industry also flourished in the eighteenth century. Chapbooks were still sought by children, as for example Richard Steele reports in an issue of Tatler in 1709, naming his young godson to be an authority on chapbook heroes such as Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton (Brockman 13). Furthermore, children were reading them for fun (Grenby
‘Chapbooks’ 285).
Educationalists, tightening their grip in the second half of the eighteenth century, promoted moral stories for children to read. If the principle was that children learned best through example, than the material children (were allowed to) read had to reflect their ideals for moral conduct and social citizenry. In fact, an argument can be made that the approved leisure reading material for children had to be everything the chapbook was not. Children’s books were
‘socially and morally edifying’, promoting the core ideals of eighteenth-century society:
‘respectability and politeness’. Chapbooks were seen as the opposite: ‘amoral, unruly,
unedifying, and vulgar’ (Grenby, ‘Chapbooks’ 296). Thus, Grenby argues, ‘shrewd publishers like Newbery and sincerely moral ‘mentorias’’ might have been ‘carefully shaping their texts to repudiate the chaotic, fantastical, and abandoned amorality’ that represented the chapbook (296).
Despite their best efforts, the moralists were unable to expel or replace the eighteenth- century chapbook. Their appeal was that they were readable, affordable, and entertaining. Their content ranged from retellings of famous folk heroes such as Guy of Warwick, fairy tales with characters such as Jack the Giant Killer, and they could focus fully on what captivated children to read these stories in the first place—elements of travel and adventure (Bottigheimer 171).
O’Malley argues in his study of eighteenth-century chapbooks that they did not diminish in production with the rise of the new children’s literature, not even during the hype in the 1740s (‘Chapbook’). He even suggests that the moralists may have opposed to the corrupting
influence of chapbooks, publishers such as Newbery were focused on the commercial boost new children’s books might generate. The best sources available to model his new type of books on at the time were chapbooks. He only needed to remodel them to ‘espouse the kinds of virtues and ideology middle-class parents were increasingly wanting to hear’, according to O’Malley (26). As such, the history of the chapbook and that of the commercial children’s book remained intertwined from inception of the latter onwards. Moreover, in the second half of the eighteenth century the lines between ‘instruction with delight’ books and chapbooks became even blurrier. Refurbished chapbooks made the same educational promises as Newbery’s Juveniles had done, presenting their content to be both entertaining and instructive (Brockman 13). Meanwhile the late eighteenth-century children’s book market was also showing signs of change.
Towards the end of the eighteenth-century, the children’s book trade had boomed and showed signs of stabilisation and diversification. New books were still being published as well as new editions of popular volumes, but the publishing frenzy from the mid forties to the mid sixties had settled down. The Newbery publishing empire continued to publish books after John Newbery passed away. The chapbook trade had moved closer towards the now established children’s literature, and was slowly merging with it altogether—although this process would take until far into the nineteenth century. Whereas children’s literature was still ‘very novel’ in 1750, by the eighties contemporaries had started to complain about the ‘profusion of books’ available (Grenby, ‘Origins’ 6-7).
In addition, the market for publishing children’s books became increasingly mercantile.
When fairy tales such as Perrault’s began to sell, Newbery himself joined with new English editions, proving that market profitability was more important than the educational ideology Locke had championed (Bottigheimer 15). Everything educationalists had argued against previously—the corrupting influence of fairy tales and folk tales—seemed to lose priority when the market for fairy tales grew again.
Yet, seemed has to be the operative word. While Newbery started publishing Perrault’s fairy tales, at the time time a new breed of educationalists lashed back with renewed vigour.
‘Mentorias’, as Mitzi Myers named them: Sarah Trimmer, Anna-Laetitia Barbauld, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maria Edgeworth were publishing even more ‘moral tales and books of instruction’ (Grenby, ‘Chapbooks’ 294). This new group of censors, ‘self-appointed guardians of children’s literature’, was trying to battle with one last bout of publications full of moral
instruction for the child. For instance, Edgeworth’s The Parent’s Assistant (1796) and Moral Tales for Young People (1800) moved even further away from entertainment, and wrote the first ‘truly literary moral tales’ (Douthwaite 475).
However, the age of reason and polite society was making way for the spirit of
romanticism. From the start of the nineteenth century, the idea of eighteenth-century childhood as ‘using childhood years productively and … equipping infants for adulthood as quickly as possible’ was criticised by the Romantics (Grenby, ‘Chapbooks’ 293). The educational approach of adding education in reading material was considered overly didactic and stifling (294).
Instead, childhood became an inspiration for the Romantics. Innocence was a virtue that was not corruptible through fairy foolishness. At the dawn of the eighteenth century, Locke had
‘excoriated’ gnomes and fairies, according to Bottigheimer (‘Perceptions’ 12). in Some Thoughts he advises to ‘preserve the Tender Mind’ from ‘Sprites and Goblins’, and to keep the child away from ‘Wrong Fancies, until he is ripe for that sort of Knowledge’ (Locke 159-162). Contrastingly, Coleridge argues children should be able to read ‘Romances & Relations of Giants and
Magicians & Genii (Coleridge qtd. in Summerfield 51). Fairy tales and folk tales without a
didactic twist had been censured throughout the eighteenth century in all but the underbelly of literature—chapbooks—but they made a successful comeback with the new zeitgeist of the early nineteenth century. And so came an end to the era that had been the inception of the new children’s book, of the idea that moral education—that Goody Two-Shoes’ countless examples of proper polite conduct—could make the difference (nine parts out of ten).
To conclude, the ideas and ideals about children’s education morphed in the
seventeenth century from the religious (Puritan) ideas that children had to be corrected into proper behaviour towards an ideal of tabula rasa. The child is empty and can be taught to be virtuous by example, and by combining education with recreation. A combination of changes in eighteenth-century society enabled merchants such as John Newbery to capitalise on a gap in the market for children’s books, and published many books that combined ‘instruction with delight’ from the 1740s onwards. Towards the end of the century the market diversified, and
despite a stronger emphasis on morality and didacticism towards the end of the eighteenth century, the spirit of Romanticism finally permeated through to children’s literature and introduced the era of innocence. The books produced for children—designed for children—
throughout the eighteenth century reflected these changes. These were not clear-cut changes, but rather movements that gradually dispersed and overlapped, a characteristic of the
eighteenth century itself. Every more radical claim is softened by the simultaneous existence of some counter evidence, which makes the eighteenth century both fascinating and difficult for researchers to put their mark on.
The adaptations for children of Daniel Defoe’s popular novel Robinson Crusoe are no exception. The first edition was instantaneously successful as a novel, and quickly adapted into abridged versions, chapbook versions, and even rewritten thoroughly to fit a young audience. In this jungle of abridgements and newer editions the problem in pinpointing the targeted
audience rises again. However, amidst the many editions that cannot be confidently categorised Joachim Heinrich Campe published an adaptation that promises to be an entertaining ‘history for the use of children of both sexes’. The Campe edition structures the story of the shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe within a didactic frame for children. The next chapter explores how Crusoe’s adventures were adapted to incorporate eighteenth-century educational ideas.
CHAPTER 2
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: Familiarising the Unfamiliar
“The story is told with Modesty, with Seriousness, and with a religious Application of Events to the Uses to which wise Men always apply (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this Example…”
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, preface p. 3 (1719)
The noun ‘Robinsonade’, meaning a novel with a similar subject to Robinson Crusoe, appeared in English literature as early as 1837 (‘Robinsonade’). The concept of a story in which the main character is marooned on a desert island had become so popular that a label was given to the host of books that followed in the footsteps of the marooned Crusoe, little more than a hundred years after the original Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe had been published in 1719. The novel combined many elements that attracted a wide eighteenth-century readership, such as ‘Protestant devotional traditions, colonial fantasies, capitalist ideals, Lockean epistemology, and picaresque adventure’, and became instantly popular after it was published (Michals, ‘Rewriting’ 25). The novel continued to be popular throughout the centuries, up until modern times, inspiring numerous film adaptations.
That the appeal of adventure was not just for the upperclass reading public is evident by the number of new editions and adaptations published in the eighteenth century alone.
Because of the novel’s popularity, hundreds of editions of Robinson Crusoe were published, but the majority of those—three-quarters even—were not full editions, but abridgements (Howell 295). They outnumbered the number of complete editions. At the time, abridgements were not
‘low-brow substitutes’ for the original texts. Howell argues they were a ‘valued literary practice that improved upon source texts’ (293). Robinson Crusoe was an example of a story that was very suitable for adaptation. The trend was not to ‘preserve the original style and rhythm of
Defoe’s prose’. Instead, by trimming the lengthy original, and simplifying or ‘updating’ the language, these abridgement made the story available to a broader audience (293).
The first chapter of this study discussed the introduction of a new audience into the eighteenth-century book market, and the commercial impulses behind it. This new audience—
children—were part of that broader audience that the adaptations were aimed at. Literature written for children at the time lacked ‘entertaining and imaginative stories’, leading children to
‘appropriate adult text’ in their search for adventure narratives, Lathey argues (198). Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was indeed published twenty years before the “new wave” of commercial children’s literature truly gained momentum. Two key examples of these adults texts that were
‘appropriated’ by children are Don Quixote (see chapter 3) and Robinson Crusoe (Hazard qtd. in Lathey 198). For the latter, the story of the marooned man and his adventure held such
adventurous and exotic appeal that it was ‘eagerly snapped up by children’ (Banjeree, Preface xviii).
However, Robinson Crusoe proved it could be more than an adventure story. As Michals mentioned, it came with ‘Lockean epistemology’ (25), and a clear moral for the young. The novel also exemplifies ‘nothing comes easy’, and shows how Crusoe does succeed in the end through exercising ‘perseverance, application, and a panoply of associated values’ (Banjeree 2-3). These qualities in the original novel were reason for Rousseau—whose thoughts on the education of his protégée Émile became highly influential in the second half of the eighteenth century—to allow his Émile to read Robinson Crusoe—and only that. Rousseau argues that, in terms of educational value, Robinson Crusoe trumps none. It offers the ‘most felicitous treatise on natural
education’ (184; bk. 3). The use of the word ‘treatise’ is interesting as well. To Rousseau, the education of a child through reading could simply consist of the study of Robinson Crusoe.
Yet despite Rousseau’s adherence to the original novel, it was the many adapted versions Robinson Crusoe inspired that were more popular (Michals ‘Rewriting’ 35). These chapbook editions offered the appeal of adventure in a shorter and more digestible format. For these chapbook editions, it is very difficult and most of the time impossible to find out whether the audience included children. They most likely had access to the original novel and to numerous abridgements in chapbook form. Chapbook audiences were not targeted in terms of ‘numerical age’, and enjoyed a varied mixed-age audience. Instead, the different adaptations and their choices of length, content, and style demonstrate what the London printers wanted to print and what the audience was willing to buy (35).
Nevertheless, there are some adaptations of Robinson Crusoe that can be labelled as designated for children. In an era where children’s literature came with didactic purpose, famous books that had been appropriated by children, either simply because of their popularity or their exotic appeal, were subject to revision. Revised editions could increase the didactic purpose educationalists had in mind, and fit with the ideals they were eager to promote. Robinson Crusoe provided them with a story with a clear moral, but the adventurous appeal some considered a danger (O’Malley, ‘Domesticity’ 336). It might inspire wanderlust in its young readers, which was not promoted in eighteenth-century education. A very famous adaptation, and the one this chapter will explore, is Joachim Heinrich Campe’s The New Robinson. Campe published his Robinson Der Jüngere in 1779 (‘Joachim’), and before long translations—not always crediting him as the original author—had popped up in French and English. The first English edition was published in 1788 by John Stockdale. This version was adapted from a French adaptation of the German original by Mary Jane Godwin, who produced children’s literature together with her family (Perkins §2) . The New Robinson became even more popular
than Defoe’s original novel (Michals, ‘Rewriting’ 43), reviving the story of Robinson Crusoe by revising it extensively and infusing the novel with more didactic content.
This retelling of Robinson Crusoe’s classic story of shipwreck and living on an desert island deviates on several points significantly from Defoe’s original novel. In order to be of ‘use for children of both sexes’ as promised in the title, the story’s narrative style is turned upside down, the novel is both shortened and simplified, and the emphasis is turned to lessons Robinson learns from each escapade. In addition, a frame narrative in a domestic setting
provides a perfect vehicle for dialogue and reflection in between adventures. The exotic appeal of the adventure is constrained through the voice of the father retelling and ‘framing’ each story, transforming the exciting unfamiliar into familiar and easily digestible stories with a didactic tinge.
The Campe edition follows Locke’s formula of learning while playing, otherwise known as pleasurable instruction. This intention is overtly communicated with its audience, already in the title: ‘The New Robinson Crusoe; An Instructive and Entertaining History, for the Use of Children of Both Sexes’. Whereas other adaptations of Robinson Crusoe are more difficult to pinpoint as meant for children, and simply pose as abridged versions, the Campe edition is clearly aimed at a young audience. It even repeats the motto John Newbery picked up from Locke and other educationalists—‘instructive and entertaining’. In addition, this title promises to be more than just prose fiction, it indicates children will find something useful within. From the outset on, this adaptation of Robinson Crusoe will fuse the familiar adventure story with useful instruction.
The frontispiece of the Nouveau Robinson, the French translation, reinforces the idea that Campe’s adaptation is a ‘new’ Robinson. The first and subsequent editions of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719 often include the frontispiece image of Robinson standing alone on the island, wearing clothes that seem to be made out of hide, and armed with a sword and two guns.
Behind him a stormy sea rises, the faint outline of a ship, and dark clouds are gathering ominously (See appendix, Fig. 1). The image emphasises the turbulent surroundings in which Robinson had to survive, and himself as the ultimate survivor with his outfit and his casual stance.
Frontispiece for various editions of The New Robinson paint a completely different scene. In the French translation for instance, as accompaniment to the title page, a father is depicted
surrounded by his children showing them a rural scenery, a hill in the background, a solitary cloud in the sky (See appendix, Fig. 2). This, and other similar woodcuts spread throughout the story, foreground his role as mentor (P. Brown 439). The German edition has the father sitting on a hill with the children around him, a book on his lap, a map pinned to the tree behind them (See appendix, Fig. 3). It is the father that has taken on the role of narrator, and pointing out useful observations in the landscape for his young audience. Instead of the unfamiliar and exotic glimpse of the island, the frontispieces depict familiar and tranquil countryside. Instead of introducing the character of Robinson, they show the domestic scene of the father narrating and instructing.
Moving from the title page and accompanying frontispiece to the introductory text, the preface demonstrates again that this is not a covert attempt to add a didactic layer to Robinson Crusoe. The translator, Mary Jane Godwin, who was a notable writer and editor of children’s literature at the time and second wife of the famous William Godwin (Perkins §2-3), discusses the re-arranging of Crusoe’s story in the preface. A quote from Campe himself explains the three simple focal points concerning Crusoe’s adventures on the island, and their educational purpose for the ‘young reader’:
In the first [part] he is all alone and destitute of any European tool or
instrument …; in order to show, on the one hand, how helpless a man is in a state of solitude, and, on the other, how much reflection and persevering
efforts can contribute to the improvement of our condition. In the second period, I give him a companion [Friday], on purpose to show how much a man’s situation might be bettered by taking even this single step towards society. Lastly, a vessel from Europe is shipwrecked on his island, and gives him an opportunity thereby of providing himself with tools and most other articles necessary in common life, in order that the young reader may see how valuable many things are of which we are accustomed to make very little account, because we have never experienced the want of them. (New Robinson, preface vii)
Campe furthermore notes that the ‘old History of Robinson Crusoe’ was erroneous in providing Robinson Crusoe with all the European tools and instruments, and therefore has purposely revised the story here in order to teach ‘the young reader … the wants of man in a state of solitude’, and, by then adding a companion (Friday) to show ‘the multiplied happiness of a social life’. Thus the preface is a clear indicator of what is to follow, and why decisions to deviate from the story have been made—all in the name of moulding the story into a more educational experience for the young reader.
Finally, the addition of woodcuts, Godwin argues, will make the most lasting impression on the intended audience (viii). The New Robinson includes 32 illustrations that add an extra dimension to the story. Locke himself also recommended the use of illustrations, arguing they entertain and ‘encourage [the child] to read, when it carries the increase of knowledge with it’.
They will improve learning in the sense that ‘visible objects [that] children hear talked of’ carry no meaning—‘ideas [are] not to be had from sounds, but either the things themselves, or their pictures’ (184). The use of pictures in children’s literature was not a particularly novel practice, or an innovation that Locke introduced in the eighteenth century. It can be traced back to one of
the earliest books for children that promised to be entertaining and useful, the Orbis Pictus (1658). However, Godwin’s specific comment about adding illustrations is yet another indication that the ‘new’ Robinson was essentially the ‘old’ Robinson but optimised for ‘the use of children’
through the eyes of eighteenth-century educationalists such as Rousseau, Campe himself, and the translator Mary Jane Godwin.
Eighteenth-century educationalists did voice their concerns about the appeal of adventure that Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe inherently embodies. Young readers were not supposed to be allured with adventures abroad. As O’Malley notes in his study of Robinson Crusoe abridgements, paradoxically, educationalists at the time ‘regarded Crusoe as admirably independent, yet the children whom they would have become like him had … to be dissuaded from aspiring to an independence that threatened parental authority and social order (O’Malley,
‘Acting Out’ 131). Therefore, children’s abridgements made ‘negotiations between the
ideological demands of colonial adventure and domesticity’s requirement that children stay at home (O’Malley, ‘Domesticity’ 337-338). The story of Robinson Crusoe was in need of parental supervision to contain the note of exciting adventures within a layer of moral education that promoted prudence.
For the Campe edition, the frame tale offered a solution. Instead of journaling Robinson Crusoe’s adventures directly, Mr. Billingsley is introduced as reliable narrator. The book is
structured in ‘evenings’, thirty-one in total, in which Mr. Billingsley recounts the story of Robinson Crusoe to his children. He acts as a supervisor and negotiator between Crusoe’s adventures and his audience—his children. The structure of a frame narrative could lessen the danger of fanciful ideas filling the heads of the young audience—both in Mr. Billingsley’s fictional domain, and the New Robinson readers. His account of the story offers interpretations in line with the example pedagogues wanted Robinson Crusoe to be. This framework reinforces the story’s identity as a
‘moral tale’, offering entertaining yet instructive readings as a reward for good behaviour, a narrative ‘device’ popularised by eighteenth-century educationalists John Aikin and Anna Barbauld (Grenby, ‘Chapbooks’ 298).
Finally, it can also be seen as a vehicle to direct the emphasis of certain episodes. Apart from the New Robinson, O’Malley reveals many other children’s abridgements of Robinson Crusoe also devote textual space to the idea that ‘home is best’. For an abridgement with limited room, plenty of attention is paid to Crusoe's ‘various efforts at homemaking’ (‘Domesticity’ 342).
Campe’s New Robinson goes a step further and in several instances the reader finds Mr.
Billingsley follow Robinson Crusoe’s more domestic accounts with exercises for the children, who try to follow Crusoe's efforts at homemaking with for example basket weaving. These little games are not just for play, they also teach the children self-discipline in the manner of Crusoe's perseverance.
The Campe adaptation of Robinson Crusoe is shorter in total length than Defoe’s original.
The edition this study investigates contains approximately eighty thousand words less than Defoe’s original two hundred thousand words, and that is just the first part of Robinson Crusoe.
Additionally, a significant percentage of those words are devoted to the frame story of Mr.
Billingsley and his family—leaving even less room for Crusoe's own adventures. However, Campe certainly did not make the most radical cuts. Where the New Robinson still consists of 256
pages, abridgements after 1750 reduced the amount of pages to between 108 to 140 pages, and usually included in their denser versions episodes from Robinson Crusoe’s sequels, Farther Adventures and Serious Reflections (1719, 1720), which in their original form took over a 1000 pages (Howell 299). These redactions meant that some episodes that were deemed the most entertaining, or the most useful for educative purposes, were given emphasis, whereas others were cut altogether. Crusoe's first encounter with a human footstep on his deserted island is
often left out of reduced editions (O’Malley, ‘At Home’ 339-340). Other episodes are kept, but adapted to match a more educational framework.
Crusoe's first meeting with Friday is an example of an episode where the emphasis shifts to focus on a moral lesson and setting an example for the young reader. He has spotted the
‘savages’ before, and from then on is cautious in exploring the island, but has also decided he wants to meet one or two of them. In Defoe’s edition he plans to turn them into his servants, an observation that is left out of the Campe adaptation, which focuses on the search for
companionship. Upon meeting the savage he will name Friday, in both versions, the ‘savage’
approaches and falls to the ground. He then proceeds to take up Crusoe’s foot and place himself under it, which Crusoe interprets as a sign that the savage is ‘swearing to be [his] Slave forever’ (Defoe 147). The New Robinson repeats this scene almost word for word, but whereas Defoe’s Crusoe seems to accept his new servant, the New Robinson takes a different
perspective. He looks at the savage ‘with a mild, humane, and friendly air’, and immediately following the slave-gesture knows he has ‘more occasion for a friend than a slave’, and extends
‘his hand to him [the savage] in a friendly manner, raise[s] him up, and endeavour[s], by all the means imaginable, to convince him that he should be well used’ (149). The focus is no longer on making a servant out of Friday, but on education, and companionship. The new Robinson
Crusoe intends to teach and befriend Friday.
The character of Robinson Crusoe is another element that is subject to revising, and perhaps condensing. Eighteenth-century educationalists considered the idea of this particular central character as problematic within their ideal of children’s literature that provides moral instruction. Their argument was that children learn from example, and therefore the example should demonstrate the proper qualities of an eighteenth-century citizen. The character of Robinson Crusoe posed a problem in the sense that he might ‘allure young readers with
adventure abroad’, which would ‘threaten the centrality of the home as the ‘natural’ space in which the moral and practical education of children takes place (O’Malley, ‘Domesticity’
337-338). On the other hand they might also praise Crusoe's attention for domestic activities, especially in the otherwise isolated and exotic setting of the novel. It was therefore not Robinson Crusoe himself that was considered unfit as a main character in a didactic tale, but the idea of him, and the wanderlust that it might inspire.
As the protagonist, the original narrator Robinson Crusoe offers the majority of
information he shares with his readers in the form of practical and elaborate descriptions of his actions and activities, especially once he is marooned on the island. However, at times he digresses from the action and shares with his reader a lengthy reflection, usually of an almost philosophical nature. It is these contemplations that are most heavily abridged or even cut completely. Howell, investigating eighteenth-century abridgements of Robinson Crusoe through the division of linguistic code, discovered that a large amount of ‘derivatives’—as he categorises them-had a ‘minimal focus’ on the reflection of part three of Robinson Crusoe (300). It would appear that they are perhaps redundant in a story that strives to outline a simple moral example.
It could also have been the case that these reflections were more suited for a slightly older, and more mature readership.
In the Campe abridgement, an interesting transferral has taken place, and of Robinson Crusoe’s own philosophical reflections little is left. This is of course because the narrator is no longer Crusoe himself. It is Mr. Billingsley, the father who has taken it upon himself to educate his children, to watch them gradually ‘advance … towards the perfection of reason and
virtue’ (9). Mr. Billingsley reiterates the story of Robinson Crusoe through his parental filter, and consequently adds a new layer of reflection to the original story. He controls the pace of the story, sometimes denying the children an evening of storytelling, because he ‘had a mind to
teach [the children] patience, as the girl Harriet concludes (95). Not only is the reader of the New Robinson given Crusoe's reflections and sometimes dreams—which are nearly always about his parents—but the reader is part of the circle Mr. Billingsley has created. He pauses the story to ask the children their interpretation of Crusoe's trials, and then offers his interpretation as a lesson.
For example, in one instance, Robinson is shaken after a volcanic eruption and stormy weather nearly kill him and his domesticated llamas (goats in Defoe’s original—an interesting modification that remains unexplained). Mr. Billingsley pauses, in which the children reflect on the situation, and Mr. Billingsley provides moral guidance:
Geo. (to Mr. Meredith) I see now that my papa was right.
Mr. Mered. In what?
[children elaborate]
Mr. Bill. Your observation, my dear children, is perfectly just. It is true, we see plainly that Robinson has not that firm, unalterable filial confidence in his Maker which he naturally ought to have after so many proofs of his wisdom and goodness as he had experienced; but, before we condemn him on his head, let us first put ourselves in his place for a moment, and ask our own hearts if we should have acted better under the circumstances.
(New Robinson 94)
Through Mr. Billingsley distanced ‘retelling’ of Crusoe's adventure and the addition of his own reflection, the children in his audience, as well as the reader that through dialogue feels present in the reading circle, receive the optimal version of the story for the didactic impact versus its entertainment value. The adventure story still appeals, but is now readdressed through a safe medium.
Adding to the filter of the frame narrative, the emphasis on domestic scenes, the changes in key episodes, and Mr. Billingsley as the ‘curator’ of the character of Robinson Crusoe, even the plot deviates from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, placing a different emphasis on the start of
Crusoe's journey, and even invents a different ending. First of all, the scenes in which Robinson sets out on his sea-faring adventures are altered to emphasise Crusoe's act of disobedience against his parents. In the original Robinson Crusoe, Robinson becomes seasick in the middle of a storm just after leaving the river Humber for open water, and contemplates his ‘wicked
leaving’:
I was overtaken by the Judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my
Father’s house, and abandoning my Duty; all the good Counsel of my Parents, my Father’s tears and my Mother’s Entreaties came now fresh into my mind (Defoe 7).
He is distressed, but his tone remains as steady as throughout the rest of the novel, ever
steadfast, ever meticulously noting his own behaviour and moving on. The New Robinson takes a different approach, and turns the scene into a semi-performance. The children have their judgment of his wicked leaving ready, and immediately note the consequence of Crusoe's bad behaviour towards his parents:
Richard “That is what he has gained by running away,”
Mr. Bill. “Oh! my poor parents! my poor father and mother !" cried he
incessantly ; “they will never see me more! O miserable fool that I am to have brought this affliction on them!” (New Robinson 14)
Mr. Billingsley performs the scene of the storm, exclaiming as Robinson Crusoe ‘Oh! My poor parents’! The style and tone of writing is much more direct than in the original scene. It is also much more dramatic. The old Crusoe's observations of ‘the Judgment of Heaven’ are taken a
step further. The new character Robinson Crusoe resents his filial disobedience openly and at regular intervals. To the audience of the New Robinson, the act of disobedience is the clear cause of his suffering. This scene—together with his departure from home—is often only
mentioned only briefly in chapbook versions of Robinson Crusoe, but, O’Malley states, receives
‘disproportionate’ attention in versions for children, especially since they are shorter than the original novel (‘Domesticity’ 245). His future trials and tribulations are often also linked back to this ‘wicked’ decision (O’Malley, ‘Acting Out’ 138), a feature also very present in the Campe abridgement. The new Robinson dreams of his parents constantly, and from the scenes at the end of the novel it is even more evident that the lessons he has learned started with parental obedience.
The dominant educational idea of the time was that children learned through example.
The New Robinson strives to create that example. As such, Robinson starts his story ‘wicked’ and misfortunate, but through attaining key eighteenth-century qualities—becoming diligent, sober, kind of heart, and pious—he triumphs and returns to England a successful individual. It was often the case for moral tales of the time to expose character flaws and correct them, but the
characters learn through experience (P. Brown 440). Robinson returns having cultivated the ideal character properties that have helped him survive.
The ending to Robinson Crusoe is where the New Robinson has chosen a different route, in order to tie the story together for its educational purpose. In the Campe abridgement
Robinson is reunited with his father, and spends his life on English soil. In the original version there is no happy reunion with his family, and he travels away again, to Lisbon, and then to Brazil: ‘I went down afterwards into Yorkshire, but my Father was dead, and my Mother, and all the Family extinct…I had been long ago given for dead, there had been no Provision made for me …’ (Defoe 201). The narrative focus when he returns is on the ‘Provision’ that had not been
