Rethinking Romantic Children’s Literature: Charlotte Smith’s Rural Walks and the Feminine Antipastoral

Abstract: Despite the widespread use of “pastoral” and “georgic” in scholarship on British Romantic literature, few scholars have considered nineteenth-century children’s books as a subgenre of the pastoral. This article argues that children’s books from this period specifically written by women for girls navigate an area between the pastoral and georgic: the feminine antipastoral. Focusing on Charlotte Smith’s Rural Walks , this article argues that female-written nineteenth-century children’s literature for girls presents lessons disguised by elements of the pastoral that prepare the reader for a womanhood in which she will have to navigate patriarchal subjugation.