Definitely not children’s lit, but Nabokov is a good example of the issues in identifying the “nationality” of the author. Lolita is a love affair with Americana, in many ways a very American novel, but Nabokov, who was an American citizen, did not grow up here and chose not to die here.
I think the New World opened itself up to more realism in Children’s lit - Little House, Mark Twain, Anne of Green Gables, Maud Hart Lovelace - and later with Judy Blume. Maybe that was originally due to the pace of change in the New World - the authors could see the world of their childhoods disappear before their eyes, and the popularity among children to look back to a world just out of their reach. By the time Judy Blume came along, it was contemporary literature, but the base of realism in American Children’s lit had been fairly well established.
Likewise, a lot of the children’s lit of Britian is escapist post WWI or WWII literature. America has not, since the Civil War, really had to live up close and personal to a war.
If you go back to Fantasy mythology, Britain has a fairly rich history (not as rich as Germanic countries) of fairies and banshees. America doesn’t have that. Our mythology is Paul Bunyan and John Henry. Britians retelling of history is full of Magic - from King Arthur to Anne Boleyn being a witch. That isn’t the history of America.
This would have stunned readers in the 19th century. Most of that era was a long, anguished discussion of whether there would ever be an American literature. The novelists that we pick out today as the creators of that true American literature are the exceptions, writers not representative of their time. They had varying degrees of fame and success in that time, but then as now writers of popular fiction made the most money and sold the most books. (We remember Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a bestseller, but how many think of Ben Hur as the top selling book of the century?) Despite the many predecessors, American literature becomes a distinctive separate beast only after WWI, which can truly be said changed everything.
Oh, I don’t know, genre literature may be pertinent to the discussion. The OP is specifically about it, after all. That might be a clue.
The oversimplified false dichotomy of genre and serious literature is an artifact of modern times. In the time frame the OP asks about - the late 19th/early20th centuries - serious writers could and did write such works. Or earlier. In Blieler’s compendium Science Fiction: The Early Years, the 19th century American author with the most entries is Hawthorne. The separation of serious fiction and genres is almost entirely a post-WWI occurrence. If you claim to know British literature, then you should also known that while categorization of genre did eventually take place, it was and is more respectable for serious writers there to write and sell works that would normally be categorized as genre to top publishers. But we aren’t talking about “serious” literature here, are we?
You can look at Lolita as a very American novel. You can also look at Lolita as a work of anthropological science fiction, a report from a traveler about a very weird and foreign world in which he can never become a true native.
In case this is a serious question, my answer is that I’d have to decide it on a case-by-case basis.
Certainly, some of the authors (or their works) on the list are more “American” in outlook than others.
Another name that possibly belongs on the list is Carl Sandburg, whose Rootabaga Stories were deliberately written as American fairy tales. I haven’t encountered anyone who has a special affection for them, though.
This made me think of Joel Chandler Harris’s “Uncle Remus” stories, which are admittedly more folktale than fantasy but definitely not realism (talking animals and all that). If Beatrix Potter counts as children’s fantasy, I’d say that Uncle Remus does.
And that made me wonder whether changing views of race have been a factor in this issue. Some potential classics may have fallen into obscurity partly because their assumptions about race in American society have been too off-putting to later readers.
I can only compare the English-speaking nations here. American writers were trying to indoctrinate children with American ideals–using legends of the Doughty Pilgrims, the Founding Fathers & the Bold Pioneers. Immigrant children poured into US schools from all over the world–they needed sound & moral instruction on how to become Americans. No time for silliness!
Washington Irving supplied a bit of historical fantasy. Poe gave nightmares to any children who happened upon his arcane volumes. Mark Twain did his bit of time travel–to get his message across; still, not only for the kids. But most of our children’s lit was more straightforward–from Louisa May Alcott’s colorful family tales to the dreck that is the Elsie Dinsmore series…
Writers of the British Isles had their own ancient land as inspiration; our ancient tales were in other languages–mostly lost. Of course, British children’s lit did include moralizing–which Lewis Carroll lampooned. Meanwhile, William Morris translated Norse tales, scholars investigated the Matter of Britain & exotic tales poured in from the Empire. Rich stuff! The Ghosts of the Alamo could not compare…
Now that you’ve mentioned talking animal stories, you’ve reminded me of Thornton W. Burgess’s “Old Mother West Wind” stories. Not to mention the Freddy the Pig books by Walter R. Brooks, whom I’m sure at least one other Doper besides myself has read.
Wales and Scotland (and Ireland) can certainly equal the Germanic countries for their fairy stories; England has remarkably few, and they’re largely borrowed from other cultures.
Reputedly, the dearth of English myth was one of the drivers for Tolkien’s writing.
True, but I think the OP then proceeded to confoozulate many of us to some extent by offering a list of sample UK kidlit fantasy classics that ended with the decidedly post-“golden age” Harry Potter books.
Indisputably, Harry Potter dates from an era when it could no longer be reasonably claimed that children’s fantasy was an overwhelmingly British genre, so I think that may have distracted some readers from the OP’s central point about the earlier period.
None of whom, AFAICT, originally published in English, which I think is a criterion that needs to be assumed to make the OP’s claim valid.
I also question whether, for example, Ende and Franquin, both of whom were born after 1923, properly count as examples of children’s authors from the “early twentieth century”.
Uderzo was born in 1927, Goscinny in 1926. Jules Verne never wrote fantasy or children’s literature. Goscinny, Hergé, and Uderzo wrote comics rather than prose fiction. And most of the names on that list along with their characters are virtually unknown to American audiences. (And it doesn’t even bother to list the sources of classic Disney movies, like Felix Salter or Carlo Collodi. For that matter, it doesn’t list Mickey Mouse. Or Little Nemo. Or Zorro. Or Superman. [movie, comic strip, pulp magazine, comic book])
But let’s not use realistic criteria or keep to the spirit of the OP. That’s almost like cheating.
I read the title of this thread and thought of all the books I read as a child. I am sorry if I hijacked this thread with some fantasy you think doesn’t fit the bill. (Never mind the examples the OP gave). It might be obvious to you the OP was talking about English literature, but somehow it isn’t mentioned anywhere.
If the question is “why are most authors of English children’s fantasy books between 1850 and 1950 British?”,
I will happily concede the premise of the question and answer: Because most English speaking(writing) people where British. It’s noting to do with the water, it’s sheer numbers.
What’s the difference between a detective and a hard-boiled one? I’m trying to figure out if the famous ones from Spanish and Portuguese literature are hard-boiled or not. Would “could easily have been inspired by too many viewings of The Maltese Falcon” be a criterion?
I’m still not sure whether this is what the OP had in mind or not. And I, for one, am curious whether the supposed dominance of the British over children’s fantasy in the time period singled out by the OP is universal or just specific to English-language works.
How much good fantasy was written in other languages, especially during the 19th and early 20th centuries, that English readers don’t know about? And how much, if any, of the fantasy read by children in other countries during this time period was British (in translation)?
> . . . most English speaking(writing) people where British . . .
It is certainly not true that the majority of English speakers were British in that period. The population of the U.S. was 76,212,168 in 1900. The population of the U.K. was 38,237,000 in 1901. And there are several other countries with a majority of English speakers.
And about the West, and the War, and that native American classic: poor boy does well (better than the best of the old country).
Post-war English fantasy came out of a particular cultural and religous situation that had no American equivilant, and was deliberately looking to British cultural memes which America did not share. Our woods were populated with Indians, not tree spirits.
