A Child's History of England
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Charles Dickens wrote this book for his own children hoping to help them bye and bye, to read with interest larger and better books on the same subject. The history covers the period between 50 BC and 1689, ending with a chapter summarizing events from then until the accession of Queen Victoria. The book is considered one of the finest English history texts.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth, where his father worked as a clerk. Living in London in 1824, Dickens was sent by his family to work in a blacking-warehouse, and his father was arrested and imprisoned for debt. Fortunes improved and Dickens returned to school, eventually becoming a parliamentary reporter. His first piece of fiction was published by a magazine in December 1832, and by 1836 he had begun his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. He focused his career on writing, completing fourteen highly successful novels, as well as penning journalism, shorter fiction and travel books. He died in 1870.
Read more from Charles Dickens
Legal Loopholes: Credit Repair Tactics Exposed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Children's Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels (Quattro Classics) (The Greatest Writers of All Time) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hard Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Charles Dickens Collection Volume One: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Bleak House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Classic Christmas: A Collection of Timeless Stories and Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Christmas Carol: Level 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDavid Copperfield (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #64] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Christmas Stories of All Time: Timeless Classics That Celebrate the Season Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Notes: For General Circulation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Big Book of Christmas Tales: 250+ Short Stories, Fairytales and Holiday Myths & Legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Ghost Stories Of Charles Dickens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Daily Charles Dickens: A Year of Quotes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharles Dickens: Four Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Charles Dickens Collection Volume Two: Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby, and Our Mutual Friend Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Beautiful Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to A Child's History of England
Related ebooks
A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Child's History of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Child’s History of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistory of England for Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStories of the Vikings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStories of the Vikings (Serapis Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAncient Sports and Pastimes of the English Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA History of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story of the Normans (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Child's Pictorial History of England: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Child's Pictorial History of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Normans; told chiefly in relation to their conquest of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarly Britain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Young Folks' History of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Orkney Maid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAustralian Life, Black and White Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMyths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPioneers of the Old South: A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMan on the Ocean A Book about Boats and Ships Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Tale of Two Cities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Adrift in the Ice-Fields Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCanada and the Canadians Volume I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYoung Folks' History of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFairy tales of Cornwall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistorical Lectures and Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Alchemist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anonymous Sex Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5War and Peace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Second Life of Mirielle West: A Haunting Historical Novel Perfect for Book Clubs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Child's History of England
4 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This delightful bit of juvenilia, written when Jane Austen was sixteen years old, is a hilarious and highly individual history of the English monarchy, from 1399 to 1649. Described by its author as being written "By a partial, prejudiced & ignorant Historian (Note: There will be very few Dates in this History)," this book more than lives up to its billing!A facsimile of the original manuscript, with illustrations by Austen's sister, Cassandra, Jane Austen's The History of England, contains a host of amusing snippets about the various monarchs, from Henry VI, whom the author disliked for being a Lancastrian, to Mary, Queen of Scots, whom she felt was much maligned.Truthfully, there isn't much to this little book, although it will certainly provide any Jane Austen aficionado with an hour's enjoyment. I myself value it for its evidence of Austen's boisterous high spirits - something that is sometimes lacking in her more sedate, adult literature.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5THIS book’s title is misleading: it is not a collaborative history written by two doyens of 19th-century English literature, but rather the entire text of The History of England from the Reign of Henry I to IV, to the Death of Charles I by Jane Austen, and an excerpt from Charles Dickens ’s A Child’s History of England . Austen’s work, written when she was only 16, comprised a mere 20 pages, while Dickens ’s was far more substantial. Hers was intended as an amusing satire but Dickens ’s work, although much of it seems tongue in cheek to the modern reader, was taken seriously enough to be a setwork for British schools until well into the 20th century. How survivors of today’s dry-as-dust history syllabus must envy children who learned of the past by means of Dickens ’s fast-paced, gossipy and partisan prose! In his introduction, David Starkey encourages us to read the histories as works of literature, pointing out how Dickens was true to the sentiments he expressed in his novels, and Austen developed themes here that she was later to master. “Austen’s opinionated frivolousness had a point. More than whimsy, her History of England is a satire on the style of history writing and pedagogy to which young girls of her class and station were routinely subjected,” Starkey says. “Austen’s implicit objection was to the vapidity of history education.” In complete contrast, Dickens wrote a male-centred history bristling with dates, and with the names of the main characters capitalised. Despite using the standard and predictable tools of the sort of history book against which Austen had rebelled, his use of language, his irony, humanity, use of evocative detail and sardonic wit make his writing a pleasure. “Throughout the book he shows himself wholly intolerant of the follies and arrogance of many of England’s rulers, at whose feet he lays much of the blame for the copious ‘turmoil and bloodshed’ of his nation’s history,” Starkey says. After completing the entirely admirable and informative introduction, it is fascinating to examine the varied opinions of the two authors at face value, as might a schoolchild. Austen condemns Elizabeth I as “wicked”, largely because she ordered the death of Mary Queen of Scots. Dickens judges her as “vain and jealous … a hard swearer and a coarse talker. She was clever, but cunning and deceitful.” But while they may broadly agree on the subject of the so-called Virgin Queen, Mary Queen of Scots is another matter entirely. Described as “amiable … this bewitching princess” and “entirely innocent” by Austen, Dickens argues that although she was “captivating”, she was also “deceitful … artful and treacherous”, and he had no doubt whatsoever that she was involved in plots to overthrow Elizabeth. Strangely enough, given the levels of anti-Catholicism that persisted in England well into the 20th century, both writers were generally sympathetic to the Church of Rome, and respected Mary’s devotion to her religion. “Could you Reader have believed it possible that some hardened & zealous Protestants have even abused her for that Steadfastness in the Catholic Religion that reflected on her so much credit?” Austen asks plaintively. In a milder vein, Dickens observes: “In their Protestant zeal, (they) made some very unnecessary speeches to her; to which she replied that she died in the Catholic religion, and they need not trouble themselves about that matter.” Of James I, the teenaged Austen admits: “I cannot help liking him”, while the best Dickens can come up with is that “he was ugly, awkward, and shuffling both in mind and person”. That might not seem very complimentary, but compared with the other things Dickens has to say about “his Sowship”, it is high praise indeed. His loathing for James was such that he was almost sympathetic towards Guy Fawkes and the others involved in the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I, although Austen comments sadly: “I am necessitated to say that in this reign the Roman Catholics of England did not behave like Gentlemen to the Protestants.” The last monarch both writers examine is Charles I, whom they agree was “amiable”. Dickens offers a far more detailed and informative account of Charles’s dispute with parliament, the civil war, and his execution. “With all my sorrow for him, I cannot agree with him that he died ‘the martyr of the people’; for the people had been martyrs to him, and to his ideas of a King’s rights, long before,” Dickens writes. Austen dismisses “the disturbances, Distresses, & Civil Wars” in a single paragraph, and ends her history with the breath-taking candour of youth: “The Recital of any Events … is uninteresting to me; my principal reason for under taking the History of England being to prove the innocence of the Queen of Scotland, which I flatter myself with having effectively done, and to abuse Elizabeth, tho’ I am rather fearful of having fallen short in the latter part of my Scheme.” Do not rely on these authors for a definitive account of the history of England . This is no textbook — it has been published for the enjoyment of fans of these two quintessentially British authors. Austen and Dickens are refreshingly unselfconscious, witty without being deliberately clever or precious, non-PC, but never cheeky, and they are a true delight to read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ah, Jane, even as a young person you had such talent. Her sarcasm is much more obvious than later in life. Very fun for anyone who likes English history (and have a sense of humor) or Jane Austen.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A stunning tour-de-force by the young Austen. The sophisticated voicing used to convey the tongue-in-cheek humour of her later works is laid bare here, with the young historian's admission that she will only give a fair hearing to those monarchs she feels deserve it. Read this if you want to learn the stories of the English Monarchs in a brief and amusing way. Also, if you want a way-in to to the sophistication of her novels, this is a great primer for the wicked humour that is voiced in such an urbane way in her adult works.