This collection of essays by distinguished scholars including Keith Thomas, Humphrey Carpenter, Barbara Everett and John Bayley, covers topics ranging from the history of children's literature to the great children's writers and illustrators of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Collecting children's books - self-indulgence and scholarship, Brian Alderson; selections from the accession diaries of Peter Opie, Clive Hurst; children in early modern England, Keith Thomas; a child prophet - Martha Hatfield as "The Wise Virgin", Nigel Smith; the Puritans and their heirs, Gillian Avery; the origins of the early fairy tale for children or how script was used to tame the beast in us, Jack Zipes; "Malbrouk s'en va-t-en guerre" or how history reaches the nursery, Giles Barber; William Godwin as children's bookseller, William St Clair; Dodgson, Carroll and the emancipation of Alice, John Batchelor; Arthur Hughes as illustrator for children, Kate Flint; women writers and writing for children - from Sarah Fielding to E.Nesbit, Julia Briggs; E.Nesbit and "The Book of Dragons", Wallace Robson; excessively impertinent bunnies - the subversive element in Beatrix Potter, Humphrey Carpenter; "The Wind in the Willows" - the vitality of a classic, Neil Philip; Henry James' children, Barbara Everett; the child in Walter de la Mare, John Bayley; Tolkien's great war, Hugh Brogan; William Mayne, Alison Lurie; children's diaries, A.O.J.Cockshut; children's manuscript magazines in the Bodleian Library, Olivia and Alan Bell.