Sarah Trimmer
![Picture](/uploads/2/6/0/7/26072013/2321909.jpg?250)
Known in her time as an expert in the field of children’s
literature, she used literary criticism as a means of criticizing
society, as Andrea Immel delineated in Revolutionary Reviewing. (1990)
Trimmer was a well-connected devout evagelical Anglican. Her father was a drawing teacher for the future King George III and Queen Charlotte, eventually becoming clerk of the works at Kew. Trimmer grew up in an elite circle, with Gainsborough, Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and William Hogarth among her family’s friends in London.
Trimmer was politically conservative, and worried about the effects of Rousseau on children's literature. He was perceived as an architect of the French Revolution(Grenby, 2) Trimmer believed in the English monarchy and class system as a means of maintaining a calm, peaceful society for all.
She opposed the general trend to secularism in education and the rising tide of a rational basis for morality. In the first issue of The Guardian, she rails against what she calls a “conspiracy against CHRISTIANITYand all SOCIAL ORDER.” (qtd in Richardson, 854)
Trimmer had twelve children of her own and educated them at home (except for the boy’s Greek and Latin lessons, given by a local cleric), which gave her the direct experience she incorporated into her efforts in Sunday and Charity schools. The Sunday and charity school movements were catalysts and precursors to universal education in Britain, Trimmer saw them as a way to maintain the existing social order. Alan Richarson quotes Raikes, one of the founders of the Sunday school movement, as wanting to “take little heathens” off the street to be instructed in “reading, and in the Church catechism.” (855) Part of Trimmer’s production of books was to provide catechisms and spelling books for the schools.
Trimmer was a well-connected devout evagelical Anglican. Her father was a drawing teacher for the future King George III and Queen Charlotte, eventually becoming clerk of the works at Kew. Trimmer grew up in an elite circle, with Gainsborough, Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and William Hogarth among her family’s friends in London.
Trimmer was politically conservative, and worried about the effects of Rousseau on children's literature. He was perceived as an architect of the French Revolution(Grenby, 2) Trimmer believed in the English monarchy and class system as a means of maintaining a calm, peaceful society for all.
She opposed the general trend to secularism in education and the rising tide of a rational basis for morality. In the first issue of The Guardian, she rails against what she calls a “conspiracy against CHRISTIANITYand all SOCIAL ORDER.” (qtd in Richardson, 854)
Trimmer had twelve children of her own and educated them at home (except for the boy’s Greek and Latin lessons, given by a local cleric), which gave her the direct experience she incorporated into her efforts in Sunday and Charity schools. The Sunday and charity school movements were catalysts and precursors to universal education in Britain, Trimmer saw them as a way to maintain the existing social order. Alan Richarson quotes Raikes, one of the founders of the Sunday school movement, as wanting to “take little heathens” off the street to be instructed in “reading, and in the Church catechism.” (855) Part of Trimmer’s production of books was to provide catechisms and spelling books for the schools.