The Margins of Instruction: Educating Children through Narrative in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain

Since the nineteenth century, educators and writers have debated how to encourage children and adolescents
not only to read, but also to read the "right" books. In 2023, the DfE declares a need "to make sure that the
right books support all children to thrive ... ", while in 1848, Harriet Martineau is representative of her time as
she appeals to her reader to "Let the reading of good fiction be permitted, where the desire is strong." This
project will examine the techniques by which texts written for children by British women between 1830-1850
employ teaching strategies for developing skilled readers that are still used today, in particular metacognition
and reciprocal teaching (where students are encouraged to think about how they engage with the text, as they
question, summarise, predict, and clarify). The project will explore what collaborative, socially mediated
learning looks like in under-researched nineteenth-century texts by Elizabeth Sewell, Dinah Craik, Jane
Marcet, Mary Botham Howitt, and Harriet Martineau. I will use close stylistic comparative analysis to examine
the extent to which footnotes, prefaces, and epigraphs disrupt the narrative progression of the texts. I will
analyse how these textual features embody a form of reciprocal teaching as they encourage instructional and
guided reading strategies, by prompting the child reader to re-examine the fictional work. This project will
argue that these previously neglected writings mark a transitional point in the history of children's literature, as
they marry the instructional and the entertaining. An examination of these works within their contexts will
highlight the importance of these under-explored texts to our understanding of children's literature as a genre,
and help to illuminate contemporary concerns about how to nurture children's and adolescents' desire to read
the "right books".