Sarah Trimmer

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Sarah Trimmer
Sarah Trimmer painted by Henry Howard in 1798
Born:	January 6, 1741 Ipswich, England
Died:	December 15, 1810 Brentford, England
Occupation:	writer
Nationality:	British
Writing period:	1780–1808?
Subjects:	education, poverty, Christianity
Debut works:	An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature
Influenced:	children's literature, education

Sarah Trimmer (January 6, 1741-December 15, 1810) was a noted writer and critic of children's literature in the eighteenth century. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education, helped to establish the parameters of children's literature and her most popular book, Fabulous Histories, was reprinted for over a century.

[edit] Early life

Trimmer was born on January 6, 1741 in Ipswich to Joshua and Sarah (Bell) Kirby; she had one younger brother, William. There she attended Mrs. Justiner’s boarding school, an experience she always fondly remembered.^[1] In 1755 the family moved to London when her father, a noted artist who had written "several major books on perspective," was made tutor of perspective to the Prince of Wales.^[2] Through her father's connections, Trimmer was able to meet the famous artists William Hogarth and Thomas Gainsborough and the legendary writer Samuel Johnson. She made a marked impression on Johnson when she immediately produced her pocket copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost during a debate between her father and Johnson. Johnson, delighted that she admired Milton enough to carry his works with her at all times, "subsequently invited her to his house and presented her with a volume of his famous periodical—The Rambler.^[3] In 1759, at the urging of his former, pupil, the Prince of Wales, soon to be George III, Trimmer's father was given the position of Clerk of the Works to the Royal Household at Kew Palace and the family moved to Kew.^[4] There Trimmer met James Trimmer whom she married on September 21, 1762. The couple subsequently moved to Old Brentford.^[5]

[edit] Motherhood and philanthropy

Title page from The Œconomy of Charity

After her marriage, Trimmer visited her father every day, later accompanied by eldest children. Trimmer and her husband had twelve children—six boys and six girls—and Trimmer was responsible for their education.^[6] It was from her own experience that she drew many of her ideas on education. She was also active in the Sunday School movement, establishing the first Sunday school for poor children in Old Brentford in 1786. Inspired by Robert Raikes, she and two of the ministers in her parish, Charles Sturgess and Charles Coates, organized a fund drive and established the Sunday Schools.^[7] During the late eighteenth century, Sunday Schools were attended only by the poor; although often characterized by modern scholars as a repressive device used by the middle-class to impose their morality on the lower classes, Thomas Laqueur has argued that the poor embraced this opportunity to learn and disregarded many of the other lessons forced upon them.^[8] Five hundred boys and girls wanted to attend Trimmer's Sunday School initially; unable to accommodate such a number, she decided to exclude those under five years of age and restricted each family to sending one child.^[9] Trimmer started with three schools, each with about thirty students, "one for the older boys, two for girls and younger boys." ^[10] While some other educational reformers of the period like Mary Wollstonecraft advocated co-educational schools, Trimmer did not; she believed in educating the sexes separately.^[11] The students were taught to read, with the aim of teaching them to read the Bible, and were especially encouraged to keep clean—“a present of a brush and comb was given to all who desired them."^[12] Trimmer's schools became so well-known that Queen Charlotte even asked her advice on founding a Sunday School.^[13] After this visit, Trimmer was inspired to write The Oeconomy of Charity so that other women could also establish Sunday schools.^[14]

Trimmer also founded and oversaw charity schools in her neighborhood. She directed particularly promising students from her Sunday Schools to these charity schools which met every day. The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge helped fund many of these charity schools.^[15] Trimmer criticized the rote learning that went on in traditional charity schools and tried to institute a more rigorous catechetical method that would inspire students to ask questions in her own schools.^[16] Trimmer also established schools of industry to which she directed her less promising pupils. These "schools" would teach girls, for example, how to knit and spin. Initially, it was thought that the schools themselves would turn a profit since the girls would spin and knit all day long, but the girls were unskilled and turned out poor products that could not be sold. Trimmer viewed this project as a failure.^[17]

[edit] Literary career

In her twenty-five year career, Trimmer produced around thirty-three additional texts.^[18] While the bulk of her output was for children, some were also for specific adults audiences. For example, The Oeconomy of Charity (1786, revised 1801) "advised on the institution of Sunday schools and on how best to distribute charity. She also wrote books aimed at the poor; The Servant’s Friend (1786-7), for example, was written to teach the duty of a servant to both young and old."^[19]

Trimmer also produced sets of illustrations and commentary on the Bible, ancient history and modern history that were wildly popular. “These came in various forms. The early editions were designed so that the prints could be pasted onto boards and hung on the wall; later they were bound into books. They were sold either together with, or separate from, Trimmer’s text.”^[20]

Trimmer worked with four different publishers—John Marshall, T.N. Longman, G. Robinson, Joseph Johnson—and by 1800 no author had more works in the Newbery catalogue than Trimmer.^[21] Eventually, though, Trimmer stopped publishing with Joseph Johnson because she disagreed with his politics (he was a supporter of the French Revolution) and he published many works which she considered subversive.^[22]

[edit] An easy introduction to the knowlege of nature

Trimmer's first book was An easy introduction to the knowledge of nature, and reading the holy scriptures, adapted to the capacities of children (1780), which built on the revolution in children's literature begun by Anna Laetitia Barbauld. A version of this book was added to the catalogue of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in 1793. After 77 years, it had sold over 750,000 copies.^[23]

Title page from the first edition of Trimmer's Fabulous Histories (1786)

[edit] Fabulous Histories

Fabulous Histories, her most popular work, also known as The History of the Robins, remained in print "well into the twentieth century."^[24] Fabulous Histories is the stories of two families: a robin family and a human family. Both families must learn to live together without damaging each other and the members of each family, specifically the children, learn to adopt virtue and shun vice. In this book, Trimmer expresses most of the themes that would come to dominate her work. For example, as Tess Cosslett, a scholar of children's literature explains, “the notion of hierarchy that underpins Fabulous Histories is relatively stable and fixed. Parents are above children in terms of authority, and humans above animals, in terms both of dominion and compassion: poor people should be fed before hungry animals . . . [but] the hierarchical relation of men and women is not so clearly enforced in Fabulous Histories."^[25] Moira Ferguson places Trimmer's book in a larger historical context, arguing that "the fears of the author and her class about an industrial revolution in ascendance and its repercussions are evident. Hence, Sarah Trimmer’s text attacks cruelty to birds and animals while affirming British aggression abroad. . . . The text subtly opts for conservative solutions: maintenance of order and established values, resignation and compliance from the poor at home, expatriation for foreigners who do not assimilate easily.”^[26]

From Trimmer's A Description of a Set of Prints Taken from the New Testament: "Jesus spake unto them, saying, It is I, be not afraid. And Peter answered and said Lord, if it be thou, bid me come to thee on the water: and he said, Come. And when Peter was come out of the ship, he (through the power of CHRIST) walked on the water likewise; but when he saw the wind boisterous, his faith or belief in CHRIST'S power, failed, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me! And immediately JESUS stretched forth his hand and caught him, saying, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"

[edit] The Guardian of Education

Later in her life Trimmer published the influential Guardian of Education (June 1802-September 1806) which included ideas for instructing children and reviews of various contemporary children's books^[27] Matthew Grenby, the current expert on Trimmer, estimates that the Guardian's circulation was around 1500 and 3500 copies per issue.^[28] Although there had been a previous attempt to review children's books,^[29] according to Grenby “it was a far less substantial and sustained enterprise than Trimmer’s.”^[30] Each issue of the Guardian was divided into three sections: extracts from texts that Trimmer thought would be edifying to her adult readers, an essay by Trimmer herself commenting on an issue related to education, and reviews of children's books. Trimmer undertook no small task in her periodical. According to Grenby, she aimed “to assess the current state of educational policy and praxis in Britain and to shape its future direction.^[31] To do so, she critiqued the educational theories of, among others, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Madame de Genlis, Joseph Lancaster, and Andrew Bell. In her “Essay on Christian Education,” later also published separately, she proposed her own educational program.

Trimmer took her reviews very seriously. Her over 400 reviews consitute a set of distinct values.^[32] As a high-church Anglican, she was intent on protecting Christianity from evangelicalism as well as secularism. She was also a stauch supporter of the conservative government and an opponent of the French Revolution. As Grenby puts it, "her initial questions of any children’s books that came before her were always first, was it damaging to religion and second, was it damaging to political loyalty and the established social hierarchy.”^[33] It was religion that most important to Trimmer and her emphasis on the inerrancy and the literal truth of the Bible make her a Christian fundamentalist in many ways.^[34]

But Trimmer's fundamentalism, Grenby argues, did not necessarily make her the rigid a thinker that she has been described as in the past by critics such as Geofffey Summerfield.^[35] He points out that she, like Rousseau, believed children were naturally good; in this, she was arguing against centuries of tradition, particularly the tradition of original sin and the Puritanical attitudes towards raising children (exemplified by John Wesley).^[36] She also agreed with "Rousseau’s key idea, later taken up by the Romantics, that children should not be forced to become adults too early," in particular that they should not be exposed to political issues too soon.^[37] Trimmer also argued that mothers should not be solely responsible for the care of children; she described "partnership-parenting" in which both the mother and the father contributed.^[38]Such an arrangement is reflected in the robin family in Fabulous Histories.

While Trimmer has often been described as a shrill critic, as Grenby points out “fewer than 50 were chiefly negative, and of these only 18 were thoroughly excoriating. These were easily outweighed by the positive notices, although most of her reviews were mixed or – more surprisingly given her reputation for always impassioned appraisal – ambivalent.”^[39] Her primary objections were to texts that challenged or altered the Bible or to books that promoted the ideas associated with the French Revolution. She also criticized books that included death scenes, insane characters and representations of sexuality as well as those that may frighten children. ^[40] She typically praises books which encourage intellectual instruction, such as Anna Barbauld's Lessons for children series, which teaches children how to read and write. Other notable children's authors that she reviews in her journal include Sarah Fielding, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Dorothy Kilner. Trimmer's reviews were very influential. After she criticized the ending to John Newbery's Tom Telescope and the Philosophy of Tops and Balls, publishers removed the offensive material.^[41]

With its 400 reviews, The Guardian of Education established children's literature as a genre. It decided, by what it included as a children's book (novels, chapbooks, tracts, ballads, and fairy tales were excluded), what counted as children's literature and what did not. Moreover, in one of her early essays, “Observations on the Changes which have taken place in Books for Children and Young Persons," Trimmer wrote the first history of children's literature, thereby setting out the first canon of children's literature. Its landmark books, such as Sarah Fielding’s The Governess or The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, are still books we cite today as important in the development of the genre.^[42]

[edit] Fairy tales

Trimmer condemned fairy tales in The Guardian of Education, such as translations of Charles Perrault's Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé (1697) (a collection which includes Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots), because they suggested that children could too easily become successful (they did not have to work, in other words) and because they endorsed an irrational view of the world.^[43] Trimmer's view of fairy tales has since been ridiculed; Charles Lamb, a Romantic poet criticized Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her "curs'd crew" for draining the imagination out of children's literature and Trimmer's views on fairy tales, which were widespread at the end of the eighteenth century, have become rather foreign now. Nicholas Tucker explains that at the time, fairy tales were association with chapbooks, cheap, disposable literature which often contained sensational stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk and other lewder stories. Chapbooks were the literature of the poor and Trimmer was attempting to separate children's literature from a literature she associated with the lower classes. Furthermore, she argued that fairy tales were full of superstition, rather than Christianity, and they encouraged irrationality in children.^[44]

[edit] Death

Trimmer's husband died in 1792. A few years later, in 1800, she and some of her daughters moved to another house in Brentford. She died there on December 15, 1810 and was buried at St Mary's, Ealing. There is a plaque memorializing her at St. George's, Brentford:

To the memory of SARAH relict of James Trimmer, resident in this parish nearly 50 years, during which she adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things, by her practice a constant attendant in God’s House of Prayer. In her own house an example to Christian Matrons, in her neighbourhood ministering to the necessities of all; the destitute, the afflicted and the ignorant, seeking their moral improvement by imparting Christian instruction both in private and also in the Church School raised by her exertions and fostered by her care. By her writings, edifying the members of that branch of Christ’s Holy Church in which she was born and which she loved with an ardent but well tempered zeal. She obtained rest from her labours on the 15th December 1810 in the seventieth year of her age.^[45]

[edit] Reception and legacy

Trimmer's most popular book was Fabulous Histories; it was reprinted for at least 133 years.^[46] In 1877, when the firm of Griffith and Farran published it as part of their "Original Juvenile Library," they puffed it as "the delicious story of Dicksy, Flapsy, and Pecksy, who can have forgotten it? It is as fresh today as it was half a century ago."^[47] Tess Cosslett, a children's literature, has also suggested that the names of Trimmer's birds—Dicksy, Pecksy, Flapsy and Robin—bear a striking resemblance to the rabbits—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter—in Beatrix Potter's children's books.^[48]

But while Trimmer was highly respected during and after her lifetime, her reputation waned at the end of the nineteenth century and plummeted during the twentieth century. As Donelle Ruwe, a scholar of eighteenth-century children's literature, explains, “authors who 'instruct' children are aligned with an oppressive hegemony in contrast to an ongoing celebration of texts considered imaginative, pleasurable, delightful, or playful.”^[49] Moreover, “the child, 'trailing clouds of glory,' [as Wordsworth wrote] comes from God into nature but is gradually corrupted by a feminized and feminizing culture. Subsequently, when the history of romanticism or of children’s literature is constructed, authors such as Trimmer (I could add Hannah More, Anna Barbauld, and Maria Edgeworth) who openly educate children into this feminizing culture are criticized, demonized, belittled, or ignored.”^[50] And because Trimmer does not fit the mold of twentieth-century feminism, she has not drawn the attention of feminist scholars. But, as Ruwe points out, “by the confluence of political, historical, and pedagogical events at the turn of the century, a woman such as Trimmer was able to gain a greater visibility in the realm of public letters than was perhaps typical before or after.”^[51] William Godwin's Fables, Ancient and Modern (1805) imitates Trimmer's Ladder to Learning^[52] and “she served as a role model for other women authors of the romantic and Victorian periods who followed in her footsteps, who published children’s books and primers such as The Footsteps to Mrs. Trimmer’s Sacred History."^[53]

[edit] Trimmer's children

Trimmer and her husband had twelve children.^[54]

• Charlotte, born 27 August 1763
• Sarah (Selina), born 16 August 1764
• Juliana Lydia, born 4 May 1766
• Joshua Kirby, born 18 August 1767
• Elizabeth, born 21 February 1769
• William Kirby, born 20 June 1770
• Lucy, born 1 February 1772
• James Rustal, born 31 July 1773
• John, born 26 February 1775
• Edward Deciums, born 3 January 1777
• Henry Scott, born 1 August 1778
• Annabella, born 26 December 1780

[edit] Partial list of works

• An easy introduction to the knowledge of nature, and reading the holy scriptures, adapted to the capacities of children (1780)
• Sacred History (1782–5) (6 volumes)
• The Œconomy of Charity (1786)
• Fabulous Histories; Designed for the Instruction of Children, Respecting their Treatment of Animals (1786)
• The Servant’s Friend (1786-7)
• A description of a set of prints of scripture history: contained in a set of easy lessons (1786)
• A Description of a Set of Prints of Ancient History (1786)
• The Sunday-School Catechist, Consisting of Familiar Lectures, with Questions, for the Use of Visiters [sic] and Teachers (1788)
• The Family Magazine (1788-9) (periodical)
• A Comment on Dr. Watts’s Divine Songs for Children with Questions (1789)
• A Description of a Set of Prints of Roman History (1789)
• The Ladder of Learning (1789, 1792)
• A Description of a Set of Prints Taken from the New Testament (1790)
• Easy Lessons for Young Children (c.1790)
• A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (1791)
• Reflections upon the Education of Children in Charity Schools (1792)
• A Friendly Remonstrance (1792)
• A Description of a Set of Prints of English History (1792)
• The Silver Thimble (1799)
• An Address to Heads of Schools and Families (1799)
• The Charity Spelling Book (c.1799) (2 parts)
• The Teacher's Assistant (1800)
• A Comparative View of the New Plan of Education Promulgated by Mr. Joseph Lancaster (1805)
• The Guardian of Education (1802-6) (periodical)
• A Concise History of England (1808)

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

There is no good biography of Trimmer. Many of the same details of her life, drawn from her journal and the account of her life attached to it, are repeated in Balfour, Grenby, Rodgers, Schnorrenberg and Yarde.

• Avery, Gillian. Childhood’s Pattern: A study of the heroes and heroines of children’s fiction 1770-1950. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975.
• Balfour, Clara Lucas. "Mrs. Trimmer." Working Women of the Last Half Century: The Lesson of their Lives. London: W. and F. G. Cash, 1856. No ISBN available.
• Cosslett, Tess. "Fabulous Histories and Papillonades." Talking Animals in British Children’s Fiction, 1786-1914. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.
• Darton, F. J. Harvey. Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life. 3rd ed. Revised by Brian Alderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
• Ferguson, Moira. "Sarah Trimmer's Warring Worlds." Animal Advocacy and Englishwomen, 1780-1900: Patriots, Nation, and Empire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
• Fyfe, Aileen. “Reading Children’s Books in Late Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Families.” The Historical Journal 43.2 (2000): 453-473.
• Grenby, M.O. “‘A Conservative Woman Doing Radical Things’: Sarah Trimmer and The Guardian of Education.” Culturing the Child, 1690-1914. Ed. Donelle Ruwe. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005.
• Grenby, Matthew. “Introduction.” The Guardian of Education. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002.
• Immel, Andrea. Revolutionary Reviewing: Sarah Trimmer’s Guardian of Education and the Cultural Political of Juvenile Literature. An Index to The Guardian. Los Angeles: Dept. of Special Collections, UCLA, 1990.
• Jackson, Mary V. Engines of Instruction, Mischief, and Magic: Children’s Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
• Keutsch, Wilfried. "Teaching the Poor: Sarah Trimmer, God's Own Handmaiden." Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 76.3 (1994): 43-57.
• Laqueur, Thomas Walter. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976.
• Pickering, Jr., Samuel F. John Locke and Children’s Books in Eighteenth-Century England. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981.
• Rodgers, Betsy. "Schools of Industry: Mrs. Trimmer." Cloak of Charity: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philanthropy. London: Methuen and Co., 1949. No ISBN available.
• Rowe, Karen E. "Virtue in the Guise of Vice: The Making and Unmaking of Morality from Fairy Tale Fantasy." Culturing the Child, 1690-1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers. Ed. Donelle Ruwe. Lanham, MD: The Children’s Literature Association and the Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005.
• Ruwe, Donelle. "Guarding the British Bible from Rousseau: Sarah Trimmer, William Godwin, and the Pedagogical Periodical." Children's Literature 29 (2001): 1-17.
• Schnorrenberg, Barbara Brandon. "Sarah Trimmer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved on 21 February 2007.
• Trimmer, Sarah. Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Trimmer. London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1816. No ISBN available.
• Tucker, Nicholas. "Tales and Their Early Opponents: In Defence of Mrs Trimmer." Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, writing and childhood 1600-1900. Eds. Mary Hilton, Morag Styles and Victor Watson. London: Routledge, 1997.
• Yarde, D.M. The Life and Works of Sarah Trimmer, a Lady of Brentford. Middlesex: The Hounslow District Historical Society, 1972. No ISBN available.
• Yarde, D.M. Sarah Trimmer of Brentford and Her Children. With Some of Her Early Writings 1780-1786. Middlesex: Hounslow and District Historical Society, 1990.

[edit] External Links

• Fabulous Histories (1798, 6th edition) [1]
• Fabulous Histories (History of the Robins) (1869 edition) [2]
• A Description of a set of prints of Scripture History (c.1790) [3]
• A New Series of Prints ... An Improved Edition of the First Set of Scripture Prints from the Old Testament (1808) [4]
• The Ladder to Learning (1832 edition) [5]