Children’s literature, which has been marginalised since its emergence in Britain in the mid-18th century, remained largely the preserve of female authors as long as it stayed on the margins, with the exception of authors of canonical works such as Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, J.M. Barrie, A.A. Milne, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Edith Nesbit for instance, who published most of her work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — the same period during which Rudyard Kipling, J.M. Barrie and Kenneth Grahame published their now-canonised masterpieces, respectively The Jungle Books (1894-95), Peter Pan (1904/1911) and The Wind in the Willows (1908). Nesbit, one of many authors of children’s literature whose pen name (E. Nesbit) concealed her female identity, was the subject of several biographies and monographs in the 1950s and 60s, significantly written by women – Noel Streatfeild, Anthea Bell, Doris Moore, and Julia Briggs, has almost fallen into oblivion today, even though her influence on contemporary children’s fiction has proved decisive.
More than a century after the success of The Railway Children (1905), and now that children’s literature has eventually reached ‘maturity’1 and legitimacy, it is on the verge of being dominated quantitatively by men. Among Young Adult novels from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, for example, male authors tend to outnumber female authors. Yet, among British novelists, there have always been some talented women writers who deserve more critical attention than they have received, from Sarah Fielding (sister of Henry Fielding) with The Governess; The Little Female Academy (1749) to authors of recent decades, such as Diana Wynne Jones, Geraldine McCaughrean, Frances Hardinge, Meg Rosoff or Kiran Millwood Hargrave. To a certain extent, the genre of children’s literature, whose theory has been “bound up with sex”, according to Peter Hunt, might be repositioning itself in the twenty-first century, as the female “is redefined, rewritten, reasserted” and the “hierarchical male structure [is] replaced by the holistic female structure”2.
This conference on the place of women in children’s writing in Britain and Europe will also explore the case of women who have translated for the young. Translation is a highly gendered activity, as is writing for children. Often considered the ancillary activity par excellence despite its intrinsic creativity3, it has in many cases served as a catalyst for the affirmation of the female voice through writing for young people.4 Gillian Lathey has forcefully shown that the woman translator of children’s books has either been one of Venuti’s “invisible translators” (1995) – indeed, “the most transparent of all” (2010, 5)5 – or, in the words of the translator of Grimm’s fairy tales into English and prolific Victorian author for children, Mary Howitt, a “traveller, keen language learner, and assertive professional” (97).
With this conference, we hope to further the analysis of some of the research topics that Lathey called for in the conclusion of her 2010 book, particularly that of the role of women translators for young people in Britain and Europe. All these questions, and others, may be addressed. Paper proposals (400 words maximum), in French or in English, including an explicit title and a short bio-bibliographical notice, should be sent as two separate attached Word documents by April 13th, 2026 to Virginie Douglas (
Confirmed keynote: Pr. Vanessa Joosen, University of Antwerp (Belgium)
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1 Cf. Maria Nikolajeva’s Children’s Literature Comes of Age, Routledge,1996.
2 Hunt, Peter. “Poetics and Practicality: Children’s Literature and Theory in Britain.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol.
19 no. 1, 1995, p. 41-49.
3 Cf. Laurence Kiefé, « Le traducteur est un auteur » in Traduire les livres pour la jeunesse : enjeux et spécificités,
Hachette, 2008.
4 In translation studies, there is a new trend – translator studies (rather than translation studies) – which examines
translation through the lens of the voice, perspective and biography of a particular translator.
5 Gillian Lathey, The Role of Translators in Children’s Literature. Invisible Storytellers, Routledge, 2010.
[Quelle: Pressemitteilung]