Selections from the Baldwin Library collection of historical children's literature

These materials, digitized from the University of Florida's outstanding archive of early children's books, the Baldwin Library Collection of Historical Children's Literature, provide students, instructors, and researchers with an exceptional range of nineteenth-century literary and pedagogical texts. This period saw dramatic expansion and transformation in writing for children, and the collection gives ample evidence of the varied reading materials that were becoming available to the young in the period. The Baldwin Collection's acknowledged strengths--in Robinson Crusoe editions and robinsonades, fairy tales, comparative editions of such landmark works as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Pilgrim's Progress, and the noted children's periodical St. Nicholas--are all well represented here. The last of these subcollections warrants special mention; there were many children's periodicals in the period, but what set St. Nicholas apart was that it published contributions from its young readers in a regular feature titled "St. Nicholas League." Juvenilia by several famous authors, including Edna St. Vincent Millay and E.B. White, appeared in the magazine's pages.