depicting children at play with toys, and games illustrates how child’s play was not a Victorian or Edwardian phenomenon. Religion promised Victorians rewards in the hereafter. The Victorians received instruction on literacy in churches, so would have been aware of scriptures such as Corinthians, 13:11 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things’. The Victorians may have differentiated between childhood and the child being a little adult. However, market forces dictated not all childhood was celebrated or equal for all children. Working-class children still lived and worked in extremes of poverty and oppression. Many prominent writers who associated with Fabianism and Pantheism, knew, and commented on changes within the social and political landscape during the Victorian era. They had seen rural workforces migrate to larger towns and cities, and how the landscape irrevocably changed. Child labour was rife. The Education Acts of 1870 and 80’ did not bring immediate change.

From the mid-nineteenth century, writers such as Charles Dickens and George Elliot documented social change. Later Thomas Hardy lamented the demise of the rural idyll in both his poetry and writing. The Pre-Raphealites and later, Thomas Benjamin Kennington, portrayed poverty in the Victorian era. The suffering of children was not invisible to broader society.

Many writers looked towards an idealised version of nature, seeking spiritual rewards within modern life, rather than rewards in the death. The emergence of authors who specifically wrote for children, included many still revered today. Beatrix Potter, A. A. Milne, E. Nesbit, and Kenneth Grahame rejected conventional ideas surrounding God, often identifying with, or being associated with Pantheistic ideology.