Critic J. S. Bratton
calls this book the kind of perversion of well-loved stories which Dickens
and others found so reprehensible. She nevertheless maintains that Tucker tells the tales with some zest.
Bratton, Jacqueline S. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction. Croom Helm, 1981.
75
Margaret Cutt
Literary responses
Charlotte Maria Tucker
The Athenæum proclaimed, a more entertaining and salutary story for merry, scatter-brained, careless children has rarely been put on paper.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1843 (1863): 261
The Dictionary of Literary Biography places this among CMT
's charming and...
Literary responses
Charlotte Maria Tucker
Marshall's prediction proved true: CMT
's audience disappeared as the Victorian age ended. However, the Dictionary of Literary Biography acknowledges that her successful introduction of imaginative richness into didactic literature influenced other authors and established...
Literary responses
Hesba Stretton
Calling the novel an offspring of a bold imagination, the Athenæum comments that it is written without labour or spurious ornament, and that certain scenes are very well described.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2046 (1867): 44
Other reviewers compared...
Literary responses
Hesba Stretton
Though it treats the delicate and (for a children's book) controversial matter of the reclamation of Kitty from prostitution, Little Meg's Children suffered surprisingly little critical remonstrance at the time of its publication.
Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children. Five Owls Press, 1979.
147-8
Margaret Nancy Cutt
Literary responses
Hesba Stretton
The Saturday Review calls this a sad story, well told.
Kirk, John Foster, and S. Austin Allibone, editors. A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. J. B. Lippincott, 1891, 2 vols.
Margaret Nancy Cutt
judges it to be HS
's best novel because it is a prime example of her skill in examining social wrongs and...
Literary responses
Mary Martha Sherwood
MMS
's various short works for children were endlessly reprinted and sometimes re-combined, often without a date, by publishers in various towns and cities in England the the USA. These cheap, ephemeral printings had...
Timeline
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Texts
Cutt, Margaret Nancy. Ministering Angels: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Writing for Children. Five Owls Press, 1979.