From Carroll to Crompton

Abstract

In this contribution I shall try to give some account of the role of children’s editor and of children’s publishing since Macmillan’s first books of this kind were published in the 1850s. In recent times, thanks to the foundations laid by my predecessors, including Marni Hodgkin, the list has had — and still has — some major figures: from the novels and stories of Rumer Godden, Geoffrey Trease, Robert Westall and Jill Paton Walsh, to the picture books of Jill Murphy, Mary Rayner and Graham Oakley, and the poetry of Charles Causley. Throughout British publishing, the decades since the 1960s have seen a great flowering of talent in the writing and illustration of children’s books and, as a recently retired editor, I have found it illuminating to look back to the trends and events of earlier days.