Full Description
Among the earliest novels written about children, for children, The History of Sandford and Merton was enormously popular for a century and a half after its first publication in 1783-9. The novel is Enlightenment for beginners, offering a course of education in class, race, and gender to its six year-old protagonists, the robust farm-boy Harry Sandford and Tommy Merton, the spoiled boy from the big house. Sandford and Merton offers entertaining and practical lessons in manners, masculinity, and class politics.
This Broadview Edition includes the original illustrations, along with contemporary reviews and other material on childhood by John Locke, Thomas Day, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Thomas Day: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
The History of Sandford and Merton
Appendix A: Contemporary Reviews
From The English Review (November 1783)
From The Analytical Review
(September-December 1789)
Appendix B: From John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1752)
Health, the Body, and Gender
Rules and Practice
Pain and Punishment
Skills and Recreation
Appendix C: From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile (1763)
Books. From Book II
Magnetism. From Book III
Astronomy. From Book III
Books. From Book III
Female Education. From Book V
Appendix D: From Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1820)
Meeting with Day
Edgeworth and Day Travel to Ireland Together
The Experiment with the Girls
Day's Letter to Edgeworth from Avignon, 1769
Sabrina and Honora
Day's Death
Appendix E: Thomas Day and John Bicknell,
The Dying Negro (1793)
Appendix F: From Thomas Day, Fragment of an Original Letteron the Slavery of the Negroes (1784)
Select Bibliography
