Such Constant Affectionate Care
Such Constant Affectionate Care: Lady Charlotte Finch -- Royal Governess & the Children of George II by Jill Shefrin. Los Angeles: Cotsen Occasional Press, 2003. $20 (softcover); $35 (hardcover).
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Color photographs, illustrations, and reproductions. Taking as its
starting point the set of sixteen dissected maps belonging to the
children of George III and recently acquired by the Cotsen Children's
Library, Princeton University, this work examines the new trends in
education exemplified by the practices of the royal nursery and its
governess, Lady Charlotte Finch. The author establishes a relationship
between Lady Charlotte and Mme Le Prince de Beaumont, the French
governess and author of the Magasin des Enfans (1756). Le Prince de
Beaumont is newly identified as the first person to be selling
dissected maps, or cartographical jigsaw puzzles, several years before
the map seller John Spilsbury. The educational environment in which the
royal children played with their educational toys is recreated from a
wide range of contemporary sources. Locating these dissected maps
within the domestic context of the royal household allows a
re-examination of the historiography of the use and development of
educational toys. The discussion ranges over new trends in educational
theory and practice including the evolution of rational domesticity and
the increasing involvement of aristocratic mothers in the care and
education of their children. The influence of Mme Le Prince de
Beaumont, and Lady Charlotte's upbringing and her place within a circle
of intellectual women are examined. A bibliographical history of the
individual puzzles is included, as is the delightful text of the
Prologues and Epilogues to the 1732 children's performance of Dryden's
Indian Emperor, in which Lady Charlotte and her siblings performed and
which was recorded by William Hogarth in his painting of The Conquest
of Mexico, Act IV, Scene IV, from Dryden's Indian Emperor. The text is
reproduced, together with the painting, at the end of the work.
"This volume is an important contribution to the origins of dissected maps in England, and a useful supplement to the author’s earlier work on Spilsbury." Map Forum (Issue 1, Spring 2004).
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About the author:
Jill Shefrin is a scholar in the field of early children's books and games and the history of education. Her research focuses on the role of 18th- and 19th-century games and pastimes in the history of education and childhood. She is currently preparing a descriptive bibliography and historical study and contextualization of the games and other educational aids published by the London firm of Darton between 1787-1876. She has lectured and published on games and other aspects of early children's literature and the education of children, and was for many years a librarian with the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, Toronto Public Library. She is currently a Research Associate of Trinity College, University of Toronto.
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