1893, Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's hotsell Dovecot, Juliana Horatia Ewing, Ralph Caldecott, Instructive Moral Tale, Children's Victorian Literature

We are pleased to ofer the following book: Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot, and Other Stories. Authored by Juliana Horatia Ewing. Published in 1893, by Thomas Y Crowell & Co, of Boston. Juliana Horatia Ewing (3 August 1841 – 13 May 1885) was an English writer of children's stories. Her writings display a sympathetic insight into children's lives, an admiration for things military, and a strong religious faith. Daddy Darwin's Dovecot is an pleasant story of hotsell a young orphan who is taken in as a servant, strives to do well through honestly and hard work, and ultimately succeeds, inheriting his master's dovecot and doves. The story achieves its goal of showing material gains resulting from moral behavior, and is an engaging story at the same time. Its success lies both in the simplicity of the story and in the interesting characters, peppered as it is with country accents and quirky characters. The popularity of both Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Jackanapes were undoubtedly augmented by Ralph Caldecott's illustrations, which are sprinkled throughout the stories. Jackanapes is the nickname of young Theodore, son of the “big house” in the village. While the story begins with his birth, and ends with his death, it is much more the story of the whole village, the relationships that develop over the years, and how Jackanape's life is intermingled with all of those around him. (One commentator notes a similarity to Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford (1853), which I think is not inappropriate.) The plot of his life is stereotypic: he leads his less adventurous friend Tony into all sorts of mischief as children; Tony follows him into the military but Jackanapes is by far the better soldier; Jackanapes dies saving Tony on the battlefield; the entire village honors him and Tony is a better man for the sacrifice of his friend. What is engaging about this story is that—unlike young Leonard—Jackanapes is an honorable lad who deserves the respect and love he garners. He is repentant when he is wrong, honest about his activities, and he loves his horse: a better advertisement for the cult of muscular Christianity can only be found in Tom Brown himself. So in the end, when Jackanapes dies, we are saddened, even to tears. Ewing has excelled in this story: her characters are more well-rounded and interesting than in her other two stories included here, and the picture she paints of village life in the mid-Victorian period is rich with pastoral imagery and honest human emotion. The diction is somewhat heavy at times: no more than many other novels of this period, but perhaps more than the average child reader—even then—would want to bear for long. But the story itself pulls the reader through, in a way that justifies Jackanapes's position as one of the minor classics of Victorian children's literature.