Abstract
This volume of essays is one of several outputs from the National Collection of Children’s Books (NCCB) project. The essays demonstrate the varying ways in which children’s literature collections are literary, educational, cultural, national and international resources, as well as catalysts for contemporary commentary, revision and change. Examining books for children published across five centuries, from the collections in one city (Dublin), this volume advances causes in collecting, librarianship, education, and children’s literature studies more generally. From book histories, through bookselling, information on collectors, and histories of education to close text analyses, it is evident that, even within each essay, there are various approaches to researching collections. In this volume, three dominant approaches emerge: history and canonicity, author and text, ideals and institutions.
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- 1.
Hans-Heino Ewers, ‘Children’s literature research in Germany: a report’ (2002), http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~ewers/links/Untitled-3.7.htm#2, accessed 11 April 2016. For example, see Dorothy Blythe Jones (ed.), Special collections in children’s literature: an international directory, 3rd edn (Chicago, 1995) and Margaret Evans and Juliet Partridge, ‘Collections of children’s books’ in Victor Watson (ed.), The Cambridge guide to children’s books in English (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 162–65. See also The Lion and the Unicorn, 22:3 (1998)—a special edition of collections edited by Louisa Smith.
- 2.
Walter Benjamin, ‘Unpacking my library: a talk about collecting’ in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (eds), Selected writings, vol. 2: 1927–1934, Rodney Livingstone and others (trans.) (1931; Cambridge, 1999), pp. 486–93; Jacques Derrida, Archive fever: a Freudian impression, Eric Prenowitz (trans.) (Chicago, 1995); Michel Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language, A.M. Sheridan Smith (trans.) (New York, 1972).
- 3.
Carrie Smith and Lisa Stead (eds), The boundaries of the literary archive: reclamation and representation (Surrey, 2013); Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan (eds), Beyond the archives: research as a lived process (Carbondale, IL, 2008); Antoinette Burton (ed.), Archive stories: facts, fictions, and the writing of history (Durham, 2005).
- 4.
See Anne H. Lundin, Constructing the canon of children’s literature: beyond library walls and ivory towers (London and New York, 2004).
- 5.
Anne H. Lundin, ‘A “dukedom large enough”: the de Grummond Collection’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 22:3 (1998): 309.
- 6.
Kenneth Kidd, ‘The child, the scholar, and the children’s literature archive’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 35:1 (2011): 2.
- 7.
Kidd, ‘The child, the scholar, and the children’s literature archive’, p. 9; Lundin, ‘Dukedom large enough’, p. 303.
- 8.
Kidd, ‘The child, the scholar, and the children’s literature archive’, p. 6.
Selected Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter, ‘Unpacking my library: a talk about collecting’ in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith (eds), Selected writings, vol. 2: 1927–1934, Rodney Livingstone and others (trans.) (1931; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 486–93.
Burton, Antoinette (ed.), Archive stories: facts, fictions, and the writing of history (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).
Derrida, Jacques, Archive fever: a Freudian impression, Eric Prenowitz (trans.) (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995).
Evans, Margaret and Juliet Partridge, ‘Collections of children’s books’ in Victor Watson (ed.), The Cambridge guide to children’s books in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 162–65.
Ewers, Hans-Heino, ‘Children’s literature research in Germany: a report’ (2002), http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~ewers/links/Untitled-3.7.htm#2, accessed 11 April 2016.
Foucault, Michel, The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language, A.M. Sheridan Smith (trans.) (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).
Jones, Dorothy Blythe (ed.), Special collections in children’s literature: an international directory, 3rd edn (Chicago: American Library Association and Chicago University Press, 1995).
Kidd, Kenneth, ‘The child, the scholar, and the children’s literature archive’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 35:1 (2011): 1–23.
Kirsch, Gesa E. and Liz Rohan (eds), Beyond the archives: research as a lived process (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008).
Lundin, Anne H., ‘A “dukedom large enough”: the de Grummond Collection’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 22:3 (1998): 303–11.
———, Constructing the canon of children’s literature: beyond library walls and ivory towers (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
Smith, Louisa (ed.), ‘Editor’s introduction’ [A special edition on collections], The Lion and the Unicorn, 22:3 (1998).
Smith, Carrie and Lisa Stead (eds), The boundaries of the literary archive: reclamation and representation (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2013).
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Whyte, P., O’Sullivan, K. (2017). Introduction. In: O'Sullivan, K., Whyte, P. (eds) Children's Literature Collections. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59757-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59757-1_1
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