In the eyes of many scholars, the moment Alice falls down the rabbit hole does not merely inaugurate her adventures in Wonderland: it also inaugurates a new period in the history of children’s literature. With its opening invocation of child-adult collaborative authorship, complex child-character, relish for nonsense, mockery of didactic precursors, escape to a fantastical landscape, and final vision of an ever-childlike protagonist, Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(1865) exemplifies many of the characteristics that have come to define the Golden Age of children’s literature. The term, drawn from the title of Kenneth Grahame’s collection of childhood reminiscences (1895), was first applied by scholars Roger Lancelyn Green and Humphrey Carpenter to describe…
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Citation: Speicher, Allison. "The Golden Age of Children’s Literature". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 February 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19729, accessed 09 February 2025.]