Special Collections & Archives

Snapshot from the Archives: Children's Literature

Children's Literature collections at Roehampton

Last weekend, 24th-25th June, the annual Barnes Children's Literature Festival took place just down the road from Roehampton.  As this is one of our specialist subjects, with our pioneering MA programme, this seems like a perfect opportunity to showcase the wealth of children's literature that can be found on our shelves, from the contemporary School Experience Collection to the historic material in the Foyle Special Collections and Archives.

The School Experience Collection (SEC) located on the first floor of the Library was created for Education students to access teaching materials for their school placements and assignments. It is available for all staff and students to use, so feel free to make use of it for the children in your life - or even for your own inner child! As well as picture books, fiction and non-fiction arranged by age group, there are story kits, toys and puppets. In recent years, library and teaching staff have been working together to update and diversify the collection; you can see some of their work in the Diversifying the School Experience Collection resource list. Another curated reading list features the work of each Children's Laureate since 1999. You can find more contemporary children's literature on the third floor, where all the general works of literature are kept, plus academic works on the subject at classmark 808.89282.

The Foyle Special Collections and Archives hold many historical treasures, including the personal archives of author Richmal Crompton. Crompton (1890 - 1969) was most famous as the writer of the Just William books that were hugely popular in the mid to late 20th century. The Library holds not only all of her published works, including adult fiction as well as the Just William stories in various publications and translations, but also Just William memorabilia including games and puzzles, and the author's personal correspondence, family photographs - and even her desk, chair, typewriter, and spectacles, which can be seen in a special display cabinet in the Library Café.

My personal favourite of these collections is our unique Children’s Literature Collection (CLC). As well as specialist material relating to the study and research of children's literature, such as journals and Masters theses, the CLC contains children's books of historical interest and significance, mainly from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These include the Bratt​on Collection, the Street Children Collection and the Hammersmith and Fulham Collection. The CLC also contains copies of most of the winners of the prestigious Kate Greenaway and Carnegie (now known as Yoto Carnegies) medals; titles can be found on this resource list.

I am unable to pass these fragrant bookshelves without pausing to appreciate the Bratton Collection of 900 books dating from the 19th and 20th Centuries, donated by former UR Professor Jacqueline Bratton (listed here: https://www.roehampton.ac.uk/globalassets/documents/research-centres/ncrcl/archives20-20bratton20archive.pdf). I also love the Hammersmith & Fulham Collection of Early Children’s Books, which came from the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham and contains children’s books from the late 18^th to early 20^th centuries. These books are intriguing to browse, with their beautiful ornate covers and old-book scent; but please be prepared for the shock of encountering historical book titles and content that may reflect the white, western colonial attitudes of the time, now deeply offensive but invaluable for researching the history of children's literature. You can watch a video in which former Roehampton Children’s Literature lecturer Jane Carroll introduces the H & F collection and what these books can show us about the development of literature for children: https://library.roehampton.ac.uk/archives/childrensliterature#s-lg-box-15444935

A few historical CLC titles have been digitised and you can read them here, but – CONTENT WARNING! – from today’s perspective, some serve as painful examples of typical British Imperial/colonial attitudes and viewpoints: Children's Literature Digital Collection.

The more modern titles in the CLC also have another appeal for me. As a child in the 1960s, my favourite books were written by an author named Monica Edwards and featured bold independent teenagers having various adventures: thwarting horse thieves and befriending travelling circus people in the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey, or rescuing oiled seabirds, defeating property developers and conspiring with their elderly smuggler friends in Romney Marsh in Kent. I devoured all of Edwards’ books and was always thrilled to find one I hadn’t yet read in the local library. They are long since out of print, so I was delighted to come across several familiar titles in the CLC and renew my childhood acquaintance with the kids of 1950s Punchbowl Farm and Westling Harbour. The stories, despite their inevitable white middle class bias, have stood the test of time surprisingly well compared to many other “pony stories” of that era. Find them in the CLC at 823.914 EDW.

The CLC is mostly on open access for use in the Library only, not for borrowing, and some material is only accessible by appointment.  Books can be found on UR Library Search; for archival material, browse the Archives catalogue. You never know what treasures - and horrors - of children's literature you may find there!