# Why is most classic children's fantasy British? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 25, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713 "2013-04-25T21:50:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/81 "2013-04-29T15:02:24Z")
> [@The\_Librarian](#): > > Who said anything about the UK? So by the British you mean…? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/82 "2013-04-29T15:12:11Z")
From Wikipedia: _By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world’s population at the time.[2] The empire covered more than 33,700,000 km2 (13,012,000 sq mi), almost a quarter of the Earth’s total land area_ Granted; not all of those millions spoke English, but still easily enough for my purpose. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/83 "2013-04-29T15:52:48Z")
> [@The\_Librarian](#): > > From Wikipedia: _By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world’s population at the time.[2] The empire covered more than 33,700,000 km2 (13,012,000 sq mi), almost a quarter of the Earth’s total land area_ > > Granted; not all of those millions spoke English, but still easily enough for my purpose. So all the Indians and South Africans and Nigerians and Sudanese And Rhodesians and Burmese were British? Heck, all the Canadians and Australians and New Zealanders were British too? British subjects, I grant you. But British alone refers to Great Britain and not the vaster Commonwealth. I’m sure you can find some reference somewhere that includes the whole, but it is so contrary to ordinary speech that you need to specify it. And you know what? I’m still not sure you could find the 38,000,000 additional English speakers in the Commonwealth nations to make your statement correct. Canada and Australia combined had less than half that in 1922. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/84 "2013-04-30T01:47:17Z")
Just read the OP. Clearly when it’s claimed that British fantasy was dominant around 1900 or so, what’s meant is the literature produced in the U.K. Perhaps you could throw in the colonists of British ancestry who lived in the British colonies (like Kipling, for instance). That wasn’t actually a very big group. India was ruled by a surprisingly small group of British colonists, for instance. If Hermione had meant to include everyone in the British Empire, she would have said so and mentioned some Indian fantasy, Canadian fantasy, etc. She meant just literature written by residents of the U.K., plus perhaps some British colonists elsewhere in the Empire. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/85 "2013-04-30T07:19:13Z")
_Tom Sawyer Abroad_ is Fantasy, for Kids and American. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/86 "2013-04-30T15:41:01Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > _Tom Sawyer Abroad_ is Fantasy, for Kids and American. Wow. I thought I knew this stuff, but I’ve never heard of _Tom Sawyer Abroad_. For sure, it’s not a classic - way too obscure. One reason I’ve never heard of it may be that it isn’t a fantasy and that it isn’t mentioned in any of the many histories of the field I have. Bleiler, mentioned above, doesn’t list the book at all and he lists everything even tangential from major authors. From online descriptions it appears to be an adventure story with a hot air balloon parodying Jules Verne. Cool stuff, but that would make it a take-off of _Five Weeks in a Balloon_ which is not, technically, a fantasy and not in Bleiler. It’s not in Bailey, or Clarke, or Appel. OK, paydirt. I checked H. Bruce Franklin’s _Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century_. In the chapter on Twain it gets a mention in a listing of works, but there’s no discussion of it. Interesting, but a footnote at best. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/87 "2013-04-30T23:48:35Z")
Go to the Wikipedia entry on _Tom Sawyer Abroad_. It will lead you to online copies of the book. You should also be able to find some summaries of the book online. It appears to me that it was science fiction at least as much as some of the works of Jules Verne. There appears to be some fantastic elements in it too. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713/88 "2013-04-30T23:57:58Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Just read the OP. Clearly when it’s claimed that British fantasy was dominant around 1900 or so, what’s meant is the literature produced in the U.K. Heck, you don’t even have to infer this. In the second sentence of the OP, the same one where she specifies which time period she’s most interested in, she explicitly says “the U.K.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-most-classic-childrens-fantasy-british/656713.md?page=4)