“Doubtful Characters”: Alphabet Books and Battles over Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Print Culture by A. Robin Hoffman B. A. in English, University of Richmond, 2003 M. A. in English, University of Connecticut, 2005 M. A. in History of Art, University College London, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2012 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by A. Robin Hoffman It was defended on May 17, 2012 and approved by Stephen Carr, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of English Troy Boone, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of English Ronald Zboray, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Communications Mary Saracino Zboray, M.A., Lecturer, Department of Communications Dissertation Advisor: Marah J. Gubar, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English ii Copyright © by Amy Robin Hoffman 2012 iii “Doubtful Characters”: Alphabet Books and Battles over Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Print Culture A. Robin Hoffman, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 More than mere tools for reading instruction, alphabet books offered nineteenth-century writers and illustrators a site for contesting dominant versions of literacy. They could address broad audiences in a genre that was uniquely suited to registering shifts in the social and material conditions of publishing, literacy, and education. This historical study recovers these efforts and traces the genre’s co-evolution with Victorian ideas about literacy. It exploits an overlooked material archive in order to refocus attention from the history of rising literacy rates, toward concurrent debates over how visual and oral culture should complement printed text within domestic education and formal schooling. “Doubtful Characters” focuses on figures prominent in Victorian publishing, and reveals how the alphabet books they designed resisted pedagogues’ overweening emphasis on textual decoding. George Cruikshank, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Walter Crane promoted forms of visual literacy, including caricature and holistic book design. Edward Lear revived aspects of oral culture embedded within print. However, after national education reform (ca. 1870), alphabet illustration tended to leverage nostalgia against pedagogy. This is seen in works by Kate Greenaway and Hablot Knight Brown (“Phiz”). The study concludes by exploring satirical interpretations of the alphabet produced by Hilaire Belloc and Rudyard Kipling at the fin de siècle, which reflected growing ambivalence about industrialized print culture. iv While recovering designers’ strategic use of satire and production values in alphabet books, “Doubtful Characters” resists assumptions about the transparent goals of didactic texts, and exposes the fragility of audience conventions. Satirical alphabets most clearly challenged a child-oriented perspective on literacy education and illustration that took hold by the turn of the twentieth century, and provided an effective platform for commenting on the ways that literacy was taught and exercised. But this study also shows how alphabet books deployed aesthetic theory, commercial contexts, and other rhetorical strategies in order to address adult audiences alongside or even instead of children. Through a combination of close reading, analysis of material culture, and historical contextualization of a series of illustrated alphabets, “Doubtful Characters” demonstrate how the form routinely interrogated and promoted a configuration of relationships among media forms and audience categories. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE………………...........................................................................................................................xiii I. INTRODUCTION: THE ALPHABET AND LITERACIES……………………………………...1 II. CHAPTER 1. THE PROBLEM WITH THE ALPHABET: THE EDGEWORTHS, RATIONAL READING INSTRUCTION, AND THE ISSUE OF ILLUSTRATION………………………………………….................................28 A. THE EDGEWORTHS: PRACTICAL EDUCATION AT HOME…………………………........37 B. LOCKE: BRINGING CHILDREN TO TEXTS………………………………………………45 C. CHILD-CENTERED PEDAGOGY AND MIDDLE-CLASS CHILDREN AS TEXTS …….57 D. THE CHAPBOOK AND IMAGES IN PRINT……………………………………………….66 E. CONCLUSION…………………………………….………………………………………….78 III. CHAPTER 2. “FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF CHILDREN SIX FEET HIGH”: ALPHABET BOOKS AND SATIRE AT THE DAWN OF VICTORIAN ENGLAND………..81 A. TWO ALPHABETS, ONE VIEW OF THE PRICE OF LITERACY………………………..89 B. THACKERAY’S ALPHABET……………………………………………………………….106 C. CRUIKSHANK’S COMIC ALPHABET……………………………………………………..118 D. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………137 IV. CHAPTER 3. EDWARD LEAR’S “NONSENSES”: THE PERILS AND PLEASURES OF PRONUNCIATION AND PERSPECTIVE…………...141 A. INVERSION AND THE LEARIAN FORMS OF (ALPHABETICAL) NONSENSE….......147 B. THE PLAYFUL END(S) OF LEAR’S NONSENSE………………………………………..170 C. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………188 V. CHAPTER 4. WALTER CRANE, THE ALPHABET, AND THE VALUE OF “SO-CALLED CHILDREN’S BOOKS”……………………………………191 vi A. “SO-CALLED CHILDREN’S BOOKS” AND THE SHELF LIFE OF LABELS………….197 B. “PRE-DEPARTURE” TOY BOOKS AND THE 1860S…………………………………….207 C. A “REVOLUTION” IN THE ALPHABET BOOK…………………………………………219 D. ART AND THE ALPHABET IN (AND OUT OF) THE NURSERY………………………238 E. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………262 VI. CHAPTER 5. READING THE MARKETPLACE: THE ALPHABET IN THE HANDS OF BRAND-NAME ILLUSTRATORS………………...266 A. THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME: THE BRANDING OF KATE GREENAWAY……………………………………………...271 B. “BY KATE GREENAWAY”: THE BRAND, THE ALPHABET, AND CHILDHOOD…………………………………..288 C. PHIZ: THE BRAND WITH A LIFE OF ITS OWN…………………………………………312 D. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………333 VII. CHAPTER 6. INEVITABLE LITERACY: THE ALPHABET AT THE FIN DE SIÈCLE………………………………………………….335 A. KIPLING’S TECHNOLOGICAL TELEOLOGY AND ITS DISCONTENTS……………..341 B. INDUSTRIALIZED PRINT CULTURE AND BELLOC’S DISCONTENT……………….364 C. CONCLUSION: THE CHILD AS INVOLUNTARY “HEIR TO ALL THE AGES”………375 VIII. CONCLUSION: CONVERGENCE…………………………………………………………….378 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………..385 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. “little d Play” from Newbery’s Little Pretty Pocket-book………….…………………………..72 Figure 2. “W and X” from Newbery’s Little Pretty Pocket-book…………………………………………75 Figure 3. “Royal Rhythmical Alphabet” from Punch; or, the London Charivari (7 August 1841), 62….82 Figure 4. “T” through “Z” from “Royal Rhythmical Alphabet” (detail of Figure 3)…………………….83 Figure 5. “E” from Thackeray’s Alphabet………………………………………………………………..90 Figure 6. Back and front covers of George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet………………………………94 Figure 7. “Y is a Youth” from Thackeray’s Alphabet…………………………………………………..107 Figure 8. “D is a dunce” from Thackeray’s Alphabet……………………………………………………108 Figure 9. “Great A” from Thackeray’s Alphabet………………………………………………………..110 Figure 10. “K is a King” from Thackeray’s Alphabet…………………………………………………...113 Figure 11. “Q from her crown” from Thackeray’s Alphabet…………………………………………….113 Figure 12. “P is a pimple” from Thackeray’s Alphabet………………………………………………….115 Figure 13. “A Alamode” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet…………………………………………...119 Figure 14. “Q Quadrille” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet ………………………………………….120 Figure 15. “V U Very Unpleasant” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet……………………………….123 Figure 16. “A” through “E” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet………………………………………124 Figure 17. “N Nightmare” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet………………………………………..126 Figure 18. “W Waistcoat” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet………………………………………...127 Figure 19. “O Orpheus” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet…………………………………………..129 Figure 20. “C Chimpanzee” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet………………………………………131 viii Figure 21. “E Equality” from Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet…………………………………………...136 Figure 22. “X” from Thackeray’s Alphabet……………………………………………………………..139 Figure 23. “Yonghy-Bonghy-bo” from Lear’s “Twenty-six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures”………...142 Figure 24. “imbibing King Xerxes” from Lear’s “Twenty-Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures”……...154 Figure 25. “A was once an apple pie” from “Nonsense Alphabet No. 2” in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets…………………………………………160 Figure 26. “C was a… Crafty old Cat!” from Lear’s “Nonsense Alphabet No. 1” in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets………………………………………...163 Figure 27. “A was an Ape” from Lear’s “Nonsense Alphabet No. 3” in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets………………………………………..163 Figure 28. “The Dolomphious Duck” from Lear’s “Twenty-Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures”…...164 Figure 29. a whale and King Xerxes from Lear’s “Nonsense Alphabet No. 1”………………………..167 Figure 30. a whale and King Xerxes from Lear’s “Nonsense Alphabet No. 3”………………………..167 Figure 31. “The Zigzag Zealous Zebra” from Lear’s “Twenty-Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures”……………………………......178 Figure 32. “nice little book” from Lear’s “Nonsense Alphabet No. 1” in Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets…………………………………………...184 Figure 33. first page from Crane’s unsigned Railroad Alphabet ………………………………………210 Figure 34. the “Xiphias” in Crane’s unsigned Ark Alphabet…………………………………………...212 Figure 35. the “Xiphias” in Crane’s Noah’s Ark ABC………………………………………………….212 Figure 36. “K” through “R” in Crane’s unsigned Ark Alphabet………………………………………...213 Figure 37. “K” through “P” from Crane’s Noah’s Ark ABC……………………………………………213 Figure 38. inside front cover of Crane’s unsigned Ark Alphabet……………………………………….215