Charles Dickens, children’s author: Narrative as rhetoric in A Child’s History of England

Abstract

Despite the importance of child characters in the novels of Charles Dickens, his association with children’s literature is often forgotten, and his A Child’s History of England, first published in instalments in his journal Household Words ( January 1851 to December 1853), has frequently been ignored by critics. The aim of this article is to re-evaluate its achievement as an extended piece of story-telling, taking into account the particular context of the writing of juvenile histories in the early 19th century and their likely readership. My approach takes as its starting point Phelan’s (2017) framework which views narrative as a rhetorical action, and which is focused on purpose, resources and audience. I propose two main resources or strategies, interlocutory role-play and dramatization, which contribute to the work’s distinctive style; at the same time as they confirm the narrator’s ethical values as a historian for children.