Among the earliest novels written about children, for children, The History of Sandford and Merton was enormously popular for a century and a half after its first publication in 1783-9. The novel is Enlightenment for beginners, offering a course of education in class, race, and gender to its six year-old protagonists, the robust farm-boy Harry Sandford and Tommy Merton, the spoiled boy from the big house. Sandford and Merton offers entertaining and practical lessons in manners, masculinity, and class politics._x000D_ This Broadview Edition includes the original illustrations, along with contemporary reviews and other material on childhood by John Locke, Thomas Day, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others.
