Fox Collection: Colonialism

The library has another collection of historical children's literature, the Effie Lee Morris Collection, which focuses on ethnic and social stereotypes. In the Fox Collection, there are loads of topical patriotic books about England's wars. Queen Victoria sends off the army here and there. "Over a million and a 1/2 of Kopf's consolidated soups have been sent to the troops in Afghanistan and South Africa." In A Soldier's Children (14.2.2), the narrator wants to "pray particularly for the very poor ones who die of fever and miss all the fighting and fun" in Africa. "And if the black men kill our men, send down white angels to take their poor dear souls to heaven."

The outlook in Picture Alphabet of Nations of the World (8.1.7) is colonial:

A handsome people are the Greeks,
who own a classical land;
But restless, wayward, and disposed
to spurn a ruler's hand.
. . .
In far New Zealand's fertile isles
Lives a courageous race;
But ev'n the bold Maori soon
To white men must give place.

Fictional adventures are set in the West Indies and New South Wales in The Adventures of A Little Sailor Boy (7.3.2).

The beef and mutton grew in tins,
for cattle changed their habits
when all their food was eaten up
by kangaroos and rabbits. (Ah-Chin-Chin, P.Y.4)

Antipodean mammals, such as wombats, begin to turn up in natural histories The Wild Animal, 13.4.4). India is not as well-represented as Australia but the onus of the Raj is upheld by a doll in The Life of a Doll (13.1.3). She must show the "dark Hindoos" how well she can walk.

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