''Evenings at Home, or The Juvenile Budget Opened'' (1792–1796) is a collection of six volumes of stories written by
John Aikin
John Aikin (15 January 1747 – 7 December 1822) was an English medical doctor and surgeon. Later in life he devoted himself wholly to biography and writing in periodicals.
Life
He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of ...
and his sister
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (, by herself possibly , as in French, Aikin; 20 June 1743 – 9 March 1825) was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature. A prominent member of the Blue Stockings ...
. It is an early example of
children's literature
Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reade ...
. The
late Victorian children's writer
Mary Louisa Molesworth named it as one of the handful of books that was owned by every family in her childhood and read enthusiastically. In their introduction, the authors explain the title in these words:
The book was translated into French.
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most fam ...
took the title for one of his plays, ''
Eyes and No Eyes
An eye is a sensory organ that allows an organism to perceive visual information. It detects light and converts it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons (neurones). It is part of an organism's visual system.
In higher organisms, the eye ...
'' (1875), from one of the stories in the collection.
[ Aikin, John and ]Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (, by herself possibly , as in French, Aikin; 20 June 1743 – 9 March 1825) was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature. A prominent member of the Blue Stockings ...
"Eyes and No Eyes; or, The Art of Seeing"
The Internet Archive, accessed 24 November 2009 Ichchharam Desai translated these stories in
Gujarati as ''Balkono Anand'' (1895).
Further reading
*
Notes
References
* Carpenter, Humphrey and Mari Prichard. ''Oxford Companion to Children's Literature''. Oxford University Press, 1997.
* Zipes, Jack (ed) et al. ''The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English.'' W. W. Norton, 2005.
* Zipes, Jack (ed.). ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Volumes 1–4''. Oxford University Press, 2006.
* Watson, Victor, ''The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English''. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
* Demmers, Patricia (ed). ''From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of Children's Literature to 1850'', Oxford University Press, 2003.
Table of Contents 384 pages. .
* St. John, Judith. ''The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, 1566–1910, A Catalogue'', Toronto Public Library.
*
External links
* Search publishing histories
Copac: Academic & National Library Catalogueat the University of Manchester.
* Another website
British Library: Integrated Catalogue.
* Search
Library of Congress Online Catalog* Search
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, at the University of Toronto.
{{Authority control
1792 in literature
1792 introductions
Book series introduced in the 1790s
1790s children's books
18th-century British children's literature
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Children's short story collections