A Little History

The End of an Era in England

The 1820s were part of the Georgian Era in England, which covered the reigns of King George I through King George IV, from 1714 to around 1830 (some consider it to go a little longer, through King William IV, who died in 1837, because he was the last king before Queen Victoria). King George IV assumed the throne in 1820, after the death of his father, George III (the king who had reigned during the American Revolution). Technically, when George IV became king, it ended his regency for his father, ending the period called the Regency Era in English history, but some people consider the Regency to go up to the beginning of the Victorian Era, because of the continuance of cultural trends.

Society was becoming more industrialized and urban. Populations had already started shifting from the countryside to the big cities, and factories were increasing production of consumer goods. New technological developments were changing people’s lives.

Continued Development of the United States

The United States was a relatively new country, and it was still continuing to develop politically during this time. This was part of the Era of Good Feelings in the United States. The Federalist Party, which was the oldest American political party, had collapsed in 1815. Far from causing turmoil, the collapse actually produced a period when there was less partisanship in American politics. President James Monroe hoped that this might lead to an end of political parties

Developments in Literature

Some of the most famous works of classic literature were written and published during this decade:

  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) by Washington Irving – A famous example of early American gothic literature. A schoolteacher is frightened by the legendary headless ghost of a Hessian soldier who was killed in the American Revolution, but it remains ambiguous what he really saw. I like this story because it shows something of the development of folklore and culture in the United States while the country was still fairly young. There are indications of the folklore and superstitions of people based on the cultural origins of their families, but they are also starting to develop a new, shared sense of folklore and even ghost stories based on familiar, shared events in the states/former colonies. During the course of the story, they reference Cotton Mather and colonial witchcraft trials, and the main ghost story comes directly from the Revolutionary War, a major event that cost many lives and formed the young country as a whole. As time went on, and the country went through more internal events, such as the Civil War, new stories, legends, and pieces of folklore would continue to evolve in the US and shape its literature. This story shows part of the beginning, where events in the US gave US citizens unique pieces of folklore that were distinct from those of their ancestors or people living in the countries that their ancestors came from.
  • Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) – Percy Byssche Shelley, although not a famous poet in his lifetime, became more famous after his early death in a boating accident in 1822. His wife, Mary Shelley, had already published her famous novel, Frankenstein, and she continued writing after his death as well as publishing this book of her husband’s final works.
  • The Last of the Mohicans (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper
  • Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827) by Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Mummy! (1827) by Jane C. (Webb) Loudon – This was the first story written in English to feature a mummy that had been brought back to life. The Egyptian mummy is restored to life in the year 2126, three hundred years after the story was written. The author speculates about future technological developments, and unlike in Frankenstein, the mummy restored to life is not a monster or treated as one but has thoughtful discussions about life and politics.

You’ll notice that some of the books I’ve mentioned above are read by children, particularly teenagers, in schools today. Sometimes, with older literature, the lines between children’s literature and adult literature are blurred, partly because some books that were originally intended for adults eventually became considered children’s literature through their use in schools, the appearance of child characters in the stories, their popularity with children, and the fact that the concept of teen and young adult literature did not really exist prior to the 20th century, evolving more in the mid to late-20th century. Just as 19th century children were expected to work and behave like small adults when not playing or in school, older children and teens who had finished their education and learned to read would simply have moved on straight to adult literature when they were done with children’s books and school readers (you can actually read some of the school readers here). This is something to remember with children’s literature throughout the 19th century.

Many of the books for children during this period, and even many through the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th century, were intended more for improving their minds and behavior than for providing entertainment. Even adventure and fantasy stories had morals to teach children.

Fiction Books

General Fiction

Series

Scary

Adventure

Series

Peter Parley Series

Peter Parley was a very popular character in American children’s literature during the early 19th century. In fact, he was so popular that there was a children’s magazine dedicated to him in the 1830s. He was an old man with gout who had traveled extensively and told stories of his adventures and things that he’d learned to children. The stories were meant to be educational and teach subjects like history and geography. By Samuel Goodrich, although he credited the stories to Peter Parley, the character. 1827- c. 1842.

Historical Fiction

Fantasy

Series

Picture Books

Children’s Non-Fiction

The Boy’s Own Book (1828, 1829)

Full title: The Boy’s Own Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of all the Diversions, Athletic, Scientific, and Recreative, of Boyhood and Youth. An encyclopedia of fun activities for boys. By William Clarke.

The Riddle Book (1826)

A short book of rhyming riddles published and sold in Charleston, South Carolina. The solutions to the riddles are in the illustrations. You can read the book for free online here.

A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka The Night Before Christmas) (1823)

This classic Christmas poem was first published in a newspaper in Troy, New York. Over the years, it has been made into picture books for children.

Children of the Decade

Children born in this decade in the United States:

Would have been in their 30s or 40s during the American Civil War (1861-1865). All of them would remember life before the war began. By then, many of them would have been married and had children of their own. Some may have been soldiers during the Civil War. Slavery would have been legal in the United States during their earliest years and into their adulthood.

Would have been in their 70s or 80s around the time the Wright brothers built and flew their first airplanes during the early 1900s. Probably none or almost none of them would get the chance to fly in a plane themselves.

Would have been in their 80s through their 90s during World War I (1914-1918), if they lived to see the event.  Some of their grandchildren or great-grandchildren may have take part in the war.  None of them would live to see World War II, and it’s unlikely that any would have even lived to see the Great Depression because they would have to be well over 100 years old.

Were born before women in the United States could vote.  None of their mothers had the right to vote at the time of their births or for their entire childhoods.  They would have to have lived to age 100 or more to be alive when women’s suffrage was granted after the ratification of the 19th Amendment (although some western states did have women voting even before that).

Lived during a time when people not only did not have television but also did not have home radios (which were invented and popularized in the 1920s).  If you wanted music at home, you had to either learn to sing or play an instrument yourself, listen to a family member who could, or use a phonograph (early record player) to play a record.  Phonographs, developed in 1877 by Thomas Edison, commonly were of the wind-up variety, so no electricity was needed.  Few would survive long enough to witness the popularization home radios, and would have to live to be around age 100.

Children born in this decade would also have read books from the following decade, the 1830s, in their youth. However, children who were old enough to read some of the books published in the early part of this decade when they were first sold would have been born in the preceding decade, the 1810s.

Children’s Authors Were Children, Too!

Everyone was young once, and I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind readers that authors born around this time would have grown up like other children of their time, witnessing the same events and reading the same books as they grew up.

Children’s authors born in this decade:

Anna Sewell – March 30, 1820 – Author of Black Beauty (1877)

Johanna Spyri – June 12, 1827 – Author of Heidi (1881)

Other Resources

Documentary Films

CrashCourse

CrashCourse is a YouTube channel with fun educational videos on a variety of topics and different periods of history. The videos are fairly short for educational lectures. Most are less than 15 minutes long. These videos are intended for teenagers and older, so be aware that there may be topics and language inappropriate for younger children.

Getting Dressed for a Ball in 1820

Shows American women getting dressed for a ball. The reenactors don’t speak, and you have have to turn on the captions to see the commentary. The only sound is music. By the YouTube channel Early American.

Children’s Early 19th Century Morning Routine

By the YouTube channel Early American.

For more about 1820s culture:

Lists of 1820s children’s books:

Nineteenth-Century American Children & What They Read

Explains about the lives of children in the 19th century and books and magazines that they read. The focus seems to be on the 1870s and earlier.

Books By Decade

Leave a comment