The aesthetics of children's poetry: a study of children's verse in English

Taking Isaac Watts's Divine Songs (1715) as its point of departure, this collection gives sustained attention to the literary, aesthetic, theoretical, and philosophical dimensions of seminal works of children's poetry from the eighteenth century to the present.

While attending to central figures of children's poetry such as Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, A.A.

Milne, and Carol Ann Duffy, the contributors also reassert the literary significance of landmark, though often marginalized, poetic works written during the past three centuries.

In spite of the enduring association between poetry as a genre and childhood as a developmental stage, children's poetry has tended to be considered in terms of publication and literary history rather than aesthetics.