Analysis |
Introduction: the many facets of Lady Fenn Child-Centered: an approach friendly to and familiar with children Education and Entertainment: stories, games and toys Natural Science: interesting animals and beautiful gardens Mother as Teacher: educating mothers to educate Grammar Lessons: taking on a difficult "men only" subject Marketing: knowing her audience, knowing her market Conclusion: an innovative educator and author |
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Introduction Lady Ellenor Fenn embodies several aspects of eighteenth century women authors’ professional lives. Her marriage of didacticism, moral instruction and entertainment reflects an approach common to these authors. Taking her cues from Locke on the importance of first impressions and of catching the imagination of the child, she strove to educate and entertain at the same time. Like most women authors of the period, Fenn was an astute observer of the children in her life. As both an aunt and an adoptive mother, she developed what we would now refer to as a feminist, child-centered educational approach. Lady Fenn was unusual, however, even among the astute, “commercially driven” (Prunean 186) authors of her time in her marketing acumen. Although, according to David Stoker's biographical entry about her in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, she was not paid for her work, Fenn pursued publication with energy, writing to John Marshall to publish her works. With both of her publishers (Newberry, after Marshall), Fenn produced and brought to market some of the earliest graduated readers and educational toys. . Fenn exemplifies other aspects of the period as well, incorporating natural science into her stories. She ventured beyond many other women educational authors; however, by authoritatively taking on the teaching of what was generally a male only subject: grammar. Fenn set her stories in her own familiar middle class country houses, creating an idealized "mythic norm" family. As an educated woman who became "Lady Fenn" when her husband was knighted for his own literary work, she knew directly the importance of education for both boys and girls. Indeed, in her later life she established a school at her home in Dereham, eventually teaching over 100 children. (Stoker) Fenn wrote for children, but she also wrote for that increasingly important figure, the “mother-teacher” (Myers 34), exhorting them, rather than servants or governesses, to take on the early education of their children and giving them the tools to do so. She thus establishes their authority and helps further the existence of that middle class family she valued so much. She did all this with inventiveness and a lively, casual charm indicative of her love for both her subject matter and her audience.
A Child-Centered Approach Fenn combined ideas prevalent at the time with her own experiences to develop child-centered educational methods. She accepted and applied Locke’s principle of making education accessible and enjoyable, striving to make her works both enticing and easy for children to understand. As Letitia Barbauld had in her Lessons for Children (1778-9), she worked with her publisher John Marshall to implement the use of clearer and larger type, wider margins and spacing for the ease of new readers. Again following Barbauld, and along with Edgeworth, she wrote books aimed at specific age groups and created some of the first graduated readers (Fables in Monosyllables and Cobwebs to Catch Flies 1783). Fables in Monosyllables is particularly impressive, in that it does indeed tell fables entirely in words of one syllable, followed in the same volume by Morals, in Dialogues, between a mother and children in words of two, and then three syllables. With a keen appreciation for what would appeal to children, she greatly increased the number of pictures, or “cuts” (from woodcuts) throughout her books, some of which could legitimately be called picture books. Fables in Monosyllables, for example, contains a woodcut for each fable. She also often uses simple dialogues between siblings, or between a mother and child to make her subject matter more easily accessible. This allows her to cloak a moral or a reading lesson in familiar appealing terms. “She prefers spontaneous conversation to exercises in memorization.” (Immel 219) Fenn was very aware of the need to catch a child’s imagination when the child is interested: “curiosity is the inlet to all knowledge” (Fenn, qtd. in Immel 219) and made it clear that education should be fun, stating that “in making amusement the vehicle of instruction consists the great secret of early education.” (The Rational Dame, 1795 iv) As Immel, Percy, Prunean and others have noted, Fenn created a very modern child-centered educational method for writing and teaching, centered on what children’s natural abilities would allow, and developing according to what both interests and delights them.
Education through Entertainment In delighting children with education, Fenn became an early developer of educational games and toys. In The Art of Teaching in Sport (n.d. 1792?), published anonymously but attributed to Fenn, she explains her purpose precisely in the sub-title: designed as a prelude to a set of toys, for enabling ladies to instill the rudiments of spelling, reading, grammar, and arithmetic under the idea of amusement. This slight book (61 pages) is a manual describing how to use “The Spelling Box” “The Grammar Box” and “The Figure Box”, educational games which Fenn developed. She built on earlier practices involving alphabet cards, using “cuts” of letters, words, and pictures to suggest various learning games mothers could play with their children, even encouraging them to be creative and invent their own games. (Immel 223) She worked on these educational entertainments throughout most of her life, developing and commercializing practices already in use in homes. M.O. Grenby outlines the ways in which the homemade and the commercial intertwine, noting that Fenn took “a commercially available product (the printed letters), stuck them onto card herself and turned them into an educational game.” (11) She then expands on these ideas to teach mothers (and other teachers) how to use them. She engaged in an ongoing development of what we would now term a child-centered pedagogy, complete with toys, games, fables, and instructions to parents.
As noted before, Fenn's stories often employ a "teachable moment" of curiosity from the child, in which she embeds her didactic intent in dialogues between the mother and that child. More unusually for her time, as "The Walk" in Cobwebs shows, Fenn includes fathers. In this chapter, for example, we see "Papa" walking with his little boy, pointing out the names and uses of the plants, taking advantage of the teachable moment the child's curiosity brings. For example, the boy points to a plant, and asks what it is and the father answers: "Wild Rose, its fruit are Hips; they are kept and we take them for coughs." (87) Fenn is here advocating working with a child’s natural imagination and inclinations, as she did throughout her books for mothers. She was part of the Lockean movement away from punishments and rewards to a an education that was full of curiosity, anticipation and fun. In The Art of Teaching in Sport, she states the box containing the games "must be held sacred" and "the little people must not be allowed to touch it" (54). By working with the child's anticipation to build curiosity, the child looks forward to the games, and the lessons they contain, as a special activity to be cherished. Immel characterized her as “the kind, sprightly rational dame" with "her boxes filled with card” that “triumphed over the ignorant schoolmistress and her hornbook, switches, and sweets.” (226) Anyone who has ever used flashcards or enjoyed a game of “concentration” can thank Lady Fenn.
Natural Science In developing educational methods that would be fun for children, Fenn incorporated her time’s fascination with natural science to peak children’s interest, using nature to teach reading and reading to teach nature. Her appealing country houses, gardens and natural woodland images (as inCobwebs, her most famous reader) were familiar, if idealized, settings for her middle class audience. She also often assumed the character of a spider, writing in Fables in Monosyllables: “I weave nets for insects” (xi), and assuring her “Little Readers” in Cobwebs that she means only “to catch you gently, whisper in your ear” (xiv). In keeping with the intermingling of moral and literary didactic purpose common to her time, Fenn used these stories as lessons to develop both reading ability and moral attitudes. The natural world is not only present in these stories as imagery and background but also as its own focus for moral lessons. The characters see and are taught kindness toward animals and proper stewardship for nature. They are taught proper familial relationships at the same time, as Fenn presents the material in dialogues or letters between mother and child (as in Cobwebs) or between the brothers and sisters of a family (as in Lilliputian Spectacle de la nature: or, nature delineated, in conversations and letters passing between the children of a family, in three volumes.) (1790?) In her "To the Purchaser" section of that book, she writes that Natural History "seems calculated to catch the attention of young people" and calls it "a very proper study" for them. (A) Fenn acts not only as a compiler and disseminator of information on natural science but presents that information in ways that model children learning together, for example, as they take turns reading to each other throughout volume 1.
In reflecting her time’s fascination with the natural world, Fenn agreed with Rousseau's focus on nature and "natural", although she greatly disagreed with him in other ways, calling many of his notions “detestable” (Fables in Monosyllables x). It is a mark of her authority as both author and educator that she had the confidence to decide what to accept or reject by writers as esteemed as Locke and Rousseau. Locke found fables too dishonest in depicting nature, and Rousseau thought their morals too difficult for children to understand. Fenn decides for herself, using the format of fables to write graduated readers, keeping them simple, and explaining the morals clearly. She uses the lands, animals and gardens around her country house settings in the same way. She puts everything that a child might see or experience; the whole or their natural environment, to the service of educating through engaging and entertaining stories.
Mother as Teacher Fenn’s Prefaces, Dedications and Advertisements, make it clear that she wrote not only for children, but for the “mother-teacher” (Myers 34) at home. This is a particular focus for Fenn, one which she often writes about in the Prefaces and Dedications of her works, in addition to books strictly for that "teacher education" purpose. In the first volume of Cobwebs, for example, she gives a mini-lesson and justification for the stories, stressing that the words, settings, and situations be “of such exceeding simplicity, as is required in conveying ideas to the infant mind.” (vii) She was teaching the who taught at home, how their children learn. In books specifically directed at mothers such as The Rational Dame; or, hints for supplying prattle for children (1790) Fenn engages in detailed instructions based on her own experiences as a teacher. In The Female Guardian (1784) she tells the "autobiographical" story of a successful school which echoes her own teaching experience. By 1785 she had become instrumental in opening a school in Dereham. She had also taught her adopted children as well as her many nieces and nephews. This gave her the authority to write for mothers. This is Fenn's entry into the hotly debated topic of what was appropriate in female education, to give others the tools to educate, and girls the tools to learn, in her books. These books of teaching instruction were very popular, reaching that market of women who may or may not have had an education adequate enough for them to feel authoritative about teaching their children. Fenn and others justified and authorized expanding women’s education to be the equal of men's, in part because women were the main teachers for their sons before they attended school, pointing to their importance for public life on the basis of their domestic impact. As this was a responsibility generally given to mother, Fenn allowed them the authority to go with it. Mothers could become better teachers through her efforts (and therefore better educated themselves), gaining more confidence and agency.
Grammar Lessons Part of the process of gaining that authority involved teaching women how to teach what was then “a subject that epitomized masculinity” (Percy, 130): grammar. Fenn’s efforts to create spelling and grammar books for boys and girls with instructions on how to teach them for mothers was therefore a foray into the very public territory belonging to the male teachers of boys at public schools. Latin, and by extension English grammar, was considered difficult for boys and far beyond the ability of girls. This was the arena of the truly literate; the best educated. Tellingly, Fenn’s books on grammar were some of her most popular. The Child’s Grammar, The Mother’s Grammar, and Parsing Lessons (all, probably 1798) were published continually, going through over twenty editions by 1820. (Percy 109-110) Women wanted entrance to this arena, even if they still cloaked it in terms of educating their sons.
Fenn’s accomplishments in the area of proper English grammar went even farther, however. Exactly what constituted that grammatical “proper-ness” was still in flux at the time. “Eighteenth-century Grammarians were mainly concerned with fixing the English language.” (Martinez 78) Neither spelling nor the elements and rules of English grammar were completely settled. Fenn was one of the early “grammatical pioneers and innovators” (Cajka qtd. in Martinez 79) who began to solidify what we now think of as the rules of grammar. Her methods of teaching it by breaking it down into its most basic elements not only made it easier to learn but also claimed those basics, establishing them as structural. She then used basic elements to write stories for children to enjoy, learning almost by accident from charming graduated readers such as Cobwebs to Catch Flies and Fables in Monosyllables.
Marketing We tend to think of women authors of this time as pursuing their careers only either out of a desperate economic need or an almost saintly call to educate. Indeed, they often claimed these as their only reasons for publishing. While these claims were neither entirely pro forma (there was often an economic need and a deep involvement with education, especially for girls), they were also not the whole story. Fenn was typical, continually defining her authorship in domestic terms, while being both in control of her career (e.g. changing her publisher from Marhshall to Newberry after many years), and acutely aware of her market. But if she was not paid and was not in economic need, why was she so energized to publish? Both Immel and Prunean have delineated the marketing acumen she revealed in her publishing choices, as well as directly within the Prefaces to her books. Prunean in particular outlines the methods Fenn used to create an imperative for women who wished to be “good mothers” to educate their children themselves, preferably through books like hers. In her Dedication for Cobwebs, for example, she directly refers to Locke as part of her argument for mothers to be in charge of their children’s education: “how often are nurses and common servants allowed to give the first intimations to children? ...Mothers! To you I speak!” (ix) Fenn therefore joined with Locke in his class distinctions of who ought to teach. She worked for mothers be educated and to educate their children in the achievement of the kind of middle class family portrayed in her books. She was expanding the middle class life she and her family enjoyed. She also worked for her own agency and esteem as an author by creating a sense of urgency for mothers to buy her books. Her focus was the responsibility and agency of middle class mothers, and her own professionalism (in the broader sense) as a teacher and author.
Fenn was well aware of the authorial image she projected. She used pseudonyms; a common practice for women authors of the time. She published under the names “Mrs. Teachwell” and “Mrs. Lovechild”. These are partly an advertisement and partly an establishment of her authority – she loves children and she teaches well. They are trait names, common to the time, and often used in character names such as “Miss Lavish”, or “Miss Playful” as in 1789’s The Fairy Guardian. (79) “Mrs. Teachwell” was almost certainly inspired by Fielding’s character “Mrs. Teachum” in The Governess (1749), and served as both a pen name for the author and as a character who exemplified the good teacher. Fenn refers to her directly in The Female Guardian (1784) and indirectly in The Juvenile Tatler, by a society of young ladies, under the tuition of Mrs. Teachwell (1789). As "Mrs. Lovechild" she (or her publisher) created a short list of her own books as recommended reading in 1798 as A Complete Catalogue of Mrs. Teachwell's Books . In today’s market, we would refer to this pen name/character as her “brand”.
Conclusion Once dismissed or trivialized as “didactic” or “domestic”, Lady Ellenor Fenn was an innovative educator and author, engaging children with her stories while creating authority and agency for mothers as teachers. She tackled the male dominated teaching of grammar and taught other women how to conquer it as well. She was an early developer of child-centered pedagogy, educational toys, and an astute marketer of her works. As an author, she gave mothers teaching tools and wrote both spelling books and charming graduated readers of delightful fables and stories with allowed small children to progress easily, She engaged her audiences with familiar images of their surroundings, painting beautiful landscapes for mother and child to walk through through together in learning and in fun.
A Child-Centered Approach Fenn combined ideas prevalent at the time with her own experiences to develop child-centered educational methods. She accepted and applied Locke’s principle of making education accessible and enjoyable, striving to make her works both enticing and easy for children to understand. As Letitia Barbauld had in her Lessons for Children (1778-9), she worked with her publisher John Marshall to implement the use of clearer and larger type, wider margins and spacing for the ease of new readers. Again following Barbauld, and along with Edgeworth, she wrote books aimed at specific age groups and created some of the first graduated readers (Fables in Monosyllables and Cobwebs to Catch Flies 1783). Fables in Monosyllables is particularly impressive, in that it does indeed tell fables entirely in words of one syllable, followed in the same volume by Morals, in Dialogues, between a mother and children in words of two, and then three syllables. With a keen appreciation for what would appeal to children, she greatly increased the number of pictures, or “cuts” (from woodcuts) throughout her books, some of which could legitimately be called picture books. Fables in Monosyllables, for example, contains a woodcut for each fable. She also often uses simple dialogues between siblings, or between a mother and child to make her subject matter more easily accessible. This allows her to cloak a moral or a reading lesson in familiar appealing terms. “She prefers spontaneous conversation to exercises in memorization.” (Immel 219) Fenn was very aware of the need to catch a child’s imagination when the child is interested: “curiosity is the inlet to all knowledge” (Fenn, qtd. in Immel 219) and made it clear that education should be fun, stating that “in making amusement the vehicle of instruction consists the great secret of early education.” (The Rational Dame, 1795 iv) As Immel, Percy, Prunean and others have noted, Fenn created a very modern child-centered educational method for writing and teaching, centered on what children’s natural abilities would allow, and developing according to what both interests and delights them.
Education through Entertainment In delighting children with education, Fenn became an early developer of educational games and toys. In The Art of Teaching in Sport (n.d. 1792?), published anonymously but attributed to Fenn, she explains her purpose precisely in the sub-title: designed as a prelude to a set of toys, for enabling ladies to instill the rudiments of spelling, reading, grammar, and arithmetic under the idea of amusement. This slight book (61 pages) is a manual describing how to use “The Spelling Box” “The Grammar Box” and “The Figure Box”, educational games which Fenn developed. She built on earlier practices involving alphabet cards, using “cuts” of letters, words, and pictures to suggest various learning games mothers could play with their children, even encouraging them to be creative and invent their own games. (Immel 223) She worked on these educational entertainments throughout most of her life, developing and commercializing practices already in use in homes. M.O. Grenby outlines the ways in which the homemade and the commercial intertwine, noting that Fenn took “a commercially available product (the printed letters), stuck them onto card herself and turned them into an educational game.” (11) She then expands on these ideas to teach mothers (and other teachers) how to use them. She engaged in an ongoing development of what we would now term a child-centered pedagogy, complete with toys, games, fables, and instructions to parents.
As noted before, Fenn's stories often employ a "teachable moment" of curiosity from the child, in which she embeds her didactic intent in dialogues between the mother and that child. More unusually for her time, as "The Walk" in Cobwebs shows, Fenn includes fathers. In this chapter, for example, we see "Papa" walking with his little boy, pointing out the names and uses of the plants, taking advantage of the teachable moment the child's curiosity brings. For example, the boy points to a plant, and asks what it is and the father answers: "Wild Rose, its fruit are Hips; they are kept and we take them for coughs." (87) Fenn is here advocating working with a child’s natural imagination and inclinations, as she did throughout her books for mothers. She was part of the Lockean movement away from punishments and rewards to a an education that was full of curiosity, anticipation and fun. In The Art of Teaching in Sport, she states the box containing the games "must be held sacred" and "the little people must not be allowed to touch it" (54). By working with the child's anticipation to build curiosity, the child looks forward to the games, and the lessons they contain, as a special activity to be cherished. Immel characterized her as “the kind, sprightly rational dame" with "her boxes filled with card” that “triumphed over the ignorant schoolmistress and her hornbook, switches, and sweets.” (226) Anyone who has ever used flashcards or enjoyed a game of “concentration” can thank Lady Fenn.
Natural Science In developing educational methods that would be fun for children, Fenn incorporated her time’s fascination with natural science to peak children’s interest, using nature to teach reading and reading to teach nature. Her appealing country houses, gardens and natural woodland images (as inCobwebs, her most famous reader) were familiar, if idealized, settings for her middle class audience. She also often assumed the character of a spider, writing in Fables in Monosyllables: “I weave nets for insects” (xi), and assuring her “Little Readers” in Cobwebs that she means only “to catch you gently, whisper in your ear” (xiv). In keeping with the intermingling of moral and literary didactic purpose common to her time, Fenn used these stories as lessons to develop both reading ability and moral attitudes. The natural world is not only present in these stories as imagery and background but also as its own focus for moral lessons. The characters see and are taught kindness toward animals and proper stewardship for nature. They are taught proper familial relationships at the same time, as Fenn presents the material in dialogues or letters between mother and child (as in Cobwebs) or between the brothers and sisters of a family (as in Lilliputian Spectacle de la nature: or, nature delineated, in conversations and letters passing between the children of a family, in three volumes.) (1790?) In her "To the Purchaser" section of that book, she writes that Natural History "seems calculated to catch the attention of young people" and calls it "a very proper study" for them. (A) Fenn acts not only as a compiler and disseminator of information on natural science but presents that information in ways that model children learning together, for example, as they take turns reading to each other throughout volume 1.
In reflecting her time’s fascination with the natural world, Fenn agreed with Rousseau's focus on nature and "natural", although she greatly disagreed with him in other ways, calling many of his notions “detestable” (Fables in Monosyllables x). It is a mark of her authority as both author and educator that she had the confidence to decide what to accept or reject by writers as esteemed as Locke and Rousseau. Locke found fables too dishonest in depicting nature, and Rousseau thought their morals too difficult for children to understand. Fenn decides for herself, using the format of fables to write graduated readers, keeping them simple, and explaining the morals clearly. She uses the lands, animals and gardens around her country house settings in the same way. She puts everything that a child might see or experience; the whole or their natural environment, to the service of educating through engaging and entertaining stories.
Mother as Teacher Fenn’s Prefaces, Dedications and Advertisements, make it clear that she wrote not only for children, but for the “mother-teacher” (Myers 34) at home. This is a particular focus for Fenn, one which she often writes about in the Prefaces and Dedications of her works, in addition to books strictly for that "teacher education" purpose. In the first volume of Cobwebs, for example, she gives a mini-lesson and justification for the stories, stressing that the words, settings, and situations be “of such exceeding simplicity, as is required in conveying ideas to the infant mind.” (vii) She was teaching the who taught at home, how their children learn. In books specifically directed at mothers such as The Rational Dame; or, hints for supplying prattle for children (1790) Fenn engages in detailed instructions based on her own experiences as a teacher. In The Female Guardian (1784) she tells the "autobiographical" story of a successful school which echoes her own teaching experience. By 1785 she had become instrumental in opening a school in Dereham. She had also taught her adopted children as well as her many nieces and nephews. This gave her the authority to write for mothers. This is Fenn's entry into the hotly debated topic of what was appropriate in female education, to give others the tools to educate, and girls the tools to learn, in her books. These books of teaching instruction were very popular, reaching that market of women who may or may not have had an education adequate enough for them to feel authoritative about teaching their children. Fenn and others justified and authorized expanding women’s education to be the equal of men's, in part because women were the main teachers for their sons before they attended school, pointing to their importance for public life on the basis of their domestic impact. As this was a responsibility generally given to mother, Fenn allowed them the authority to go with it. Mothers could become better teachers through her efforts (and therefore better educated themselves), gaining more confidence and agency.
Grammar Lessons Part of the process of gaining that authority involved teaching women how to teach what was then “a subject that epitomized masculinity” (Percy, 130): grammar. Fenn’s efforts to create spelling and grammar books for boys and girls with instructions on how to teach them for mothers was therefore a foray into the very public territory belonging to the male teachers of boys at public schools. Latin, and by extension English grammar, was considered difficult for boys and far beyond the ability of girls. This was the arena of the truly literate; the best educated. Tellingly, Fenn’s books on grammar were some of her most popular. The Child’s Grammar, The Mother’s Grammar, and Parsing Lessons (all, probably 1798) were published continually, going through over twenty editions by 1820. (Percy 109-110) Women wanted entrance to this arena, even if they still cloaked it in terms of educating their sons.
Fenn’s accomplishments in the area of proper English grammar went even farther, however. Exactly what constituted that grammatical “proper-ness” was still in flux at the time. “Eighteenth-century Grammarians were mainly concerned with fixing the English language.” (Martinez 78) Neither spelling nor the elements and rules of English grammar were completely settled. Fenn was one of the early “grammatical pioneers and innovators” (Cajka qtd. in Martinez 79) who began to solidify what we now think of as the rules of grammar. Her methods of teaching it by breaking it down into its most basic elements not only made it easier to learn but also claimed those basics, establishing them as structural. She then used basic elements to write stories for children to enjoy, learning almost by accident from charming graduated readers such as Cobwebs to Catch Flies and Fables in Monosyllables.
Marketing We tend to think of women authors of this time as pursuing their careers only either out of a desperate economic need or an almost saintly call to educate. Indeed, they often claimed these as their only reasons for publishing. While these claims were neither entirely pro forma (there was often an economic need and a deep involvement with education, especially for girls), they were also not the whole story. Fenn was typical, continually defining her authorship in domestic terms, while being both in control of her career (e.g. changing her publisher from Marhshall to Newberry after many years), and acutely aware of her market. But if she was not paid and was not in economic need, why was she so energized to publish? Both Immel and Prunean have delineated the marketing acumen she revealed in her publishing choices, as well as directly within the Prefaces to her books. Prunean in particular outlines the methods Fenn used to create an imperative for women who wished to be “good mothers” to educate their children themselves, preferably through books like hers. In her Dedication for Cobwebs, for example, she directly refers to Locke as part of her argument for mothers to be in charge of their children’s education: “how often are nurses and common servants allowed to give the first intimations to children? ...Mothers! To you I speak!” (ix) Fenn therefore joined with Locke in his class distinctions of who ought to teach. She worked for mothers be educated and to educate their children in the achievement of the kind of middle class family portrayed in her books. She was expanding the middle class life she and her family enjoyed. She also worked for her own agency and esteem as an author by creating a sense of urgency for mothers to buy her books. Her focus was the responsibility and agency of middle class mothers, and her own professionalism (in the broader sense) as a teacher and author.
Fenn was well aware of the authorial image she projected. She used pseudonyms; a common practice for women authors of the time. She published under the names “Mrs. Teachwell” and “Mrs. Lovechild”. These are partly an advertisement and partly an establishment of her authority – she loves children and she teaches well. They are trait names, common to the time, and often used in character names such as “Miss Lavish”, or “Miss Playful” as in 1789’s The Fairy Guardian. (79) “Mrs. Teachwell” was almost certainly inspired by Fielding’s character “Mrs. Teachum” in The Governess (1749), and served as both a pen name for the author and as a character who exemplified the good teacher. Fenn refers to her directly in The Female Guardian (1784) and indirectly in The Juvenile Tatler, by a society of young ladies, under the tuition of Mrs. Teachwell (1789). As "Mrs. Lovechild" she (or her publisher) created a short list of her own books as recommended reading in 1798 as A Complete Catalogue of Mrs. Teachwell's Books . In today’s market, we would refer to this pen name/character as her “brand”.
Conclusion Once dismissed or trivialized as “didactic” or “domestic”, Lady Ellenor Fenn was an innovative educator and author, engaging children with her stories while creating authority and agency for mothers as teachers. She tackled the male dominated teaching of grammar and taught other women how to conquer it as well. She was an early developer of child-centered pedagogy, educational toys, and an astute marketer of her works. As an author, she gave mothers teaching tools and wrote both spelling books and charming graduated readers of delightful fables and stories with allowed small children to progress easily, She engaged her audiences with familiar images of their surroundings, painting beautiful landscapes for mother and child to walk through through together in learning and in fun.