F. J. Harvey Darton

Frederick Joseph Harvey Darton (22 September 1878 – 26 July 1936) was an author, publisher, and historian of children's literature. He wrote the pioneering work The Story of English Children's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life in 1932. The Children's Books History Society gives out an award in his honor.

Darton was the oldest child of Joseph William Darton (1844–1916) and Mary Darton (née Schooling). Joseph was a partner in the publishing firm Wells Gardner, Darton and Company, which had been started by William Wells Gardner (1821–1880) to produce mainly ecclesiastical texts, but had branched out into children's literature with Joseph's involvement. The family involvement in publishing children's literature went back to 1787, with the two publishing firms of Frederick's great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, William Darton. William Darton had pioneered the publication of books for children, introducing Ann and Jane Taylor to English schoolchildren.

He went to Sutton Valence School, Dover College and graduated from St. John's College, Oxford in 1899 with a degree in classics. While at college, he visited Dorset many times on reading parties, and developed a love of the county which would last his entire life.

After graduating, he joined the family publishing firm, becoming a director in 1904. Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. published children's magazines as well as books, including The Prize and Chatterbox, which Darton edited from 1901 to 1931. He was "instrumental" in the company's publication of John Masefield's Martin Hyde (1906).

At this time, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. produced a lot of compilations of much older stories, including reissues of the old chapbook The Seven Champions of Christendom (1901) and many compilations of stories from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

In 1906 he married Emma Lucretia Bennett, a granddaughter of Sheridan Le Fanu. Together they worked on A Wonder Book of Beasts (1909), in which Emma retold "Reynard the Fox" from the version printed by William Caxton, 400 years before. In 1920, their marriage was annulled.

In 1913 he published the first of two novels. My Father's Son was published under the nom de plume "W. W. Penn" and apparently "prepared for the press by John Harvey", both names suggesting Darton's own Quaker background. In 1929 he wrote a second novel, When, again pseudonymously. The protagonists of both books end up in the family book trade and, although they are not autobiographical, Margaret Drabble, investigating Darton, called both books "darkly illuminating."

Darton's magnum opus was Children's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, published in 1932. In the preface, he wrote:

The story of English Children's Books has not yet, so far as I know, not been written as a continuous whole, or as a minor chapter in the history of English social life, which is what the present volume is meant to furnish. It has in fact been told only once with any completeness, in Mrs Field's The Child and His Book (1892).

The work drew on his family's 200 years in children's publishing, and his more than 30 years' experience. As an academic work, it didn't fly off the shelves but, as Kathleen Lines noted in her introduction to the second revised edition, in 1958, it "slowly found its way into libraries, schools and training schools for librarians." When reprinting the first edition in 2011, Cambridge University Press noted:

Setting children's books in their historical context, the work reflects much about the history of English social life as well as providing an in-depth perspective on the genre ... A classic and authoritative study for anyone interested in the history of children's literature.

In the book, Darton wrote that Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books "changed the whole cast of children's literature".

Darton also wrote about his great love, the English countryside, and Dorset in particular. In 1922 he wrote The Marches of Wessex, which was also published in America under the more obvious title The Soul of Dorset. He followed this up with A Parcel of Kent, and returned to Dorset for an article in T. P.'s and Cassell's Weekly called "Thomas Hardy's Birthplace" in 1924.

He retired to Cerne Abbas, Dorset and lived in the village's Red Lion pub for the last two years of his life.

His final book, Alibi Pilgrimage, was published on 24 July 1936. It looks into the case of Elizabeth Canning, who had claimed to be kidnapped by gypsies in 1753. Darton attempted to confirm the gypsies' alibi by undertaking long walks through all the counties from Somerset to London.

Darton died, after a short illness, in Dorchester County Hospital, on 26 July 1936, two days after the publication of Alibi Pilgrimage. His obituary in the The Times, suggested that the arduous walks undertaken in its research contributed to his death.

In her revision of Children's Books in England in 1958, Kathleen Lines summed up Darton thus:

It is probably safe to say that Darton will never be supplanted. His interest was life-long and his personal knowledge immense. His opportunities for detailed information about and round the subject were unique, for his family had maintained a continuous connection with publishing for 140 years.