From the Garden to the Street

From John Bunyan's 'country rhimes' to rude chants about Manchester United, from Ted Hughes to Edward Lear, and from William Blake to the Taylor sisters, Morag Styles covers three hundred years of poetry with infectious enthusiasm and a keen critical eye. In this scholarly and fascinating book, she provides an informative account of the history of poetry written for children in Britain and America in the last three centuries. She analyses the major poets, genres and developments over this period, and traces the continuities between the past and the present. Styles asks fundamental questions which have often been left unanswered: What do we mean by children's poetry? Why did such a seemingly small number of women write poetry for children until recently? The author subscribes to the widest possible definition of poetry, and so the reader will find in this book hymns, songs, playground rhymes, raps and verse - whether trivial or profound. From the Garden to the Street will provoke, inform and entertain academics of children's literature, those who teach it in the classroom, and all of us who still take pleasure in the poetry of childhood.

Morag Styles is Language Co-ordinator at Homerton College in Cambridge.