[考古] 青少年写诗,疑似原文求确认！

A rare exception to this rulecan be found in the many books of poetry published by juvenile (under the ageof twenty-one) British authors during the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies. The trend emerged in the 1770s with publications by ThomasChatterton, Michael Bruce, and Hannah More, and continued at a steady paceuntil reaching its peak of popularity between 1800 and 1810. These years sawhigh-profile juvenile publications by such future luminaries as Leigh Hunt,Lord Byron, and Felicia Dorothea Hemans, but there were also scores of otherchild publications that were critically acclaimed and widely purchased duringtheir day, but are now entirely forgotten.  At this point in my research, I have identified 125 booksof poetry that were published between the years 1770 and 1830 by authors underthe age of twenty-one; eighty-nine of these were published between theyears 1790 and 1820.  The average age at which the children composed theirpoetry in the 1790’s was 17.45 years old, from 1800-1810 it was 15.9, and from1810-1820 it was 17.6 years of age.  During the peak years of 1800-1810 ,there were sixteen books containing poems composed before the age of sixteen,and eight containing verse by children younger than twelve. Takentogether, these texts provide a rare opportunity to view the past through theeyes of children and also give us a rare opportunity to hear authenticpre-Victorian children’s voices.

Ibelieve that, in the United Kingdom at the end of the eighteenth century, anumber of factors came together to create an environment in which young writerscould find early recognition and frequent publication.  Three of thosefactors are the role of composition in contemporary education, the increasingnumber of periodicals being published, and the expanding market for poetry bynontraditional writers.

Itgoes without saying that the strange phenomenon of child authors’ achievingsuch prominence [10] must have reflected larger changes in the perception ofchildhood in the society as a whole. On one hand, the end of the eighteenthcentury saw the rise of the Romantic view that children were ‘creatures of deeper wisdom, finer aestheticsensitivity, and a more profound awareness of moral truths’ (Grylls, qtdin Heywood 24); and childhood began to be viewed as a “lost realm that was nonethe less fundamental to the creation of the adult self” (Heywood 25). This philosophy makes it seemonly logical that adults would become increasingly interested in expressions ofa child’s perception of the world. However, at the same time that these views were beingarticulated, the rise of modern industries encouraged full-time employment forchildren as young as seven.  According to historian HughCunningham, “the young [workers] were crucial to the profitability of lateeighteenth- and early nineteenth-century industry”(143).  It was not until1819 that child labor activists were able to pass the Factory Act, which bannedchildren under the age of nine from working in cotton mills or factories andrestricted children under fourteen from working more than eight hours a day(Cunningham 142). Ultimately, we must agree with Cunningham when he speaks ofthe eighteenth century as a time when “Both in attitudes to childhood and inbehavior towards children we are confronted at every turn by ambivalence and contradictions” (59).  It may be this ambivalence which explains the strangemix of childishness and precocity whichsurfaces in the works of the child poets, and the extent to which they were lauded for theirpremature mastery while being condemned for their audacity inappropriating an adult role. Regardless of the many unusual forces which cametogether to create (and preserve) this extensive collection of juvenilia, it isclear that further study of these texts will provide some fascinating insightsinto the many ways in which the children at the end of the eighteenth centurynegotiated (and sometimes exploited) the strange contradictions of their statuswithin western society.