Sarah Trimmer (née Kirby; 6 January 1741 – 15 December 1810) was an English writer and critic of 18th-century British children's literature, as well as an educational reformer. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education, helped to define the emerging genre by seriously reviewing children's literature for the first time; it also provided the first history of children's literature, establishing a canon of the early landmarks of the genre that scholars still use today. Trimmer's most popular children's book, Fabulous Histories, inspired numerous children's animal stories and remained in print for over a century.
Trimmer was also an active philanthropist. She founded several Sunday schools and charity schools in her parish. To further these educational projects, she wrote textbooks and manuals for women interested in starting their own schools. Trimmer's efforts inspired other women, such as Hannah More, to establish Sunday school programmes and to write for children and the poor.
Trimmer's works are dedicated to maintaining many aspects of the social and political status quo. As a high church Anglican, she was intent on promoting the established Church of England and on teaching young children and the poor the doctrines of Christianity. Her writings outlined the benefits of social hierarchy, arguing that each class should remain in its God-given position. Yet, while supporting many of the traditional political and social ideologies of her time, Trimmer questioned others, such as those surrounding gender and the family.
Early life Sarah Trimmer was born on 6 January 1741 in Ipswich, England, to Joshua Kirby and Sarah (née Bull); her father was a noted artist and served as president of the Society of Artists of Great Britain. Trimmer had one younger brother, William; she was apparently the better writer, for she would sometimes compose his school essays for him.Trimmer, Some Account, 8–9; Wills, DLB, 343. As a young girl, Trimmer attended Mrs. Justiner's boarding school in Ipswich, an experience she always remembered fondly.Yarde, Life and Works of Sarah Trimmer, 15: Wills, DLB, 343. In 1755, the family moved to London when her father, who had written several important works on perspective, became the tutor of perspective to the Prince of Wales.Heath, 387: Wills, DLB, 343. Because of her father's connections within the artistic community, Trimmer was able to meet the painters William Hogarth and Thomas Gainsborough as well as the by-then legendary writer and critic Samuel Johnson. She made a favourable impression on Johnson when she immediately produced her pocket copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) to help settle a dispute between her father and Johnson over a particular passage. Johnson, delighted that she admired Milton enough to carry his works with her at all times, "subsequently invited her to his house and presented her with a volume of his famous periodical The Rambler".Yarde, Life and Works of Sarah Trimmer, 17; Wills, 343. In 1759, at the urging of his former pupil the Prince of Wales (soon to be George III), her father was made Clerk of the Works to the Royal Household at Kew Palace and the family moved to Kew.Rodgers, 113. There she met James Trimmer, whom she married on 20 September 1762 at St Mary, Ealing; after their marriage, the couple moved to Old Brentford.Grenby, "Introduction", vi–vii; Wills, DLB, 343.
Motherhood and philanthropy
Trimmer was close to her parents; after her marriage, she walked to visit her father every day, later accompanied by her eldest children. She and her husband had 12 children in all—six boys and six girls. Trimmer was responsible for her children's education and it was the combination of her duties as a mother and a teacher that initially sparked her interest in education.Rodgers, 115; Wills, DLB, 343.
Inspired by Robert Raikes, Trimmer also became active in the Sunday school movement, founding the first Sunday school for poor children in Old Brentford in 1786. She and two of the ministers in her parish, Charles Sturgess and Charles Coates, organized a fund drive and established several schools for the poor children of the neighbourhood.Yarde, 31. Initially, five hundred boys and girls wanted to attend Trimmer's Sunday school; unable to accommodate such numbers, she decided to exclude those under five years of age and restricted each family to one pupil. The parish set up three schools, each with about thirty students—one for older boys, one for younger boys and one for girls. While some other educational reformers of the period such as Mary Wollstonecraft argued for co-educational instruction, Trimmer was opposed to such pedagogical changes; she believed in educating the sexes separately.Rodgers, 118–19. The students were taught to read, with the aim of teaching them to read the Bible. The students were also encouraged to keep clean—"a present of a brush and comb was given to all who desired them".Yarde, 33. Trimmer's schools became so well known and admired that Raikes, Trimmer's initial inspiration, recommended those who needed assistance organising a Sunday school to turn to Trimmer; even Queen Charlotte asked Trimmer's advice on founding a Sunday school at Windsor.Heath, 389; Wills, DLB, 345.
After her visit to the queen, Trimmer was inspired to write The Œconomy of Charity, which describes how readers, specifically women, can establish Sunday schools in their own communities.Rodgers, 124; Wills, DLB, 345. However, her book accomplished much more than this. While proponents of Sunday schools such as Raikes and Trimmer claimed that the schools would help control the growing social unrest of the poor, critics claimed that these schools would only encourage the social upheaval they were trying to quell.Wills, "Sarah Trimmer's Œconomy of Charity", 157–58. The Hon. John Byng, for example, issued the dire warning that "not only would education 'teach them to read seditious pamphlets, books and publications against Christianity'... but it would render them unfit for 'the laborious employment to which their rank in society had destined them'".Qtd. in Wills, "Sarah Trimmer's Œconomy of Charity", 160. Trimmer agreed that the social hierarchy was divinely ordained, but believed that her Sunday Schools would reinforce it.Wills, "Sarah Trimmer's Œconomy of Charity", 160. The Sunday school debate was waged in churches, in Parliament and in print; in publishing The Œconomy of Charity, Trimmer was entering this vigorous debate.
As scholar Deborah Wills has argued: "[The Œconomy of Charity] is actually informed by a highly politicized subtext which anticipates, subverts, and counters anti-Sunday School arguments. [Trimmer] outlines a programme through which the Sunday School, when properly administered, can serve as a means of instituting social control and intensifying hierarchy... Trimmer's carefully modest and unassuming text is thus revealed as a middle-class manifesto for the appropriation of social, political, and religious power in the name of moral instruction."
For example, Trimmer contends that Sunday schools teach their pupils not merely to read the Bible but also how to draw the proper theological and political conclusions from it.Wills, "Sarah Trimmer's Œconomy of Charity", 159. Furthermore, Trimmer argues that the responsibility for educating the poor rests on the shoulders of the middle class alone. By eliminating the aristocracy from an active role in her philanthropic programs, "Trimmer ensures that those who actually regulate the Sunday School curriculum are those who will both embody and perpetuate bourgeois virtues".Wills, "Sarah Trimmer's Œconomy of Charity", 162. As Wills points out, this distinguishes her from other philanthropists of the time such as Hannah More.
Trimmer also founded and oversaw charity schools in her neighbourhood. She directed promising students from her Sunday schools, which met only once a week, to these charity schools, which met several times a week. As she wrote in her journal, these schools seemed to her to "afford a happy prospect of rescuing many poor children from vice and profligacy".Trimmer, Some Account, 220. While the Sunday schools were funded by subscription, that is, donations from people within the parish, the charity schools were largely funded by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which had funded the first charity schools around a century earlier.Yarde, 40–43. Trimmer criticised the rote learning that went on in traditional charity schools and tried to institute a more dynamic catechetical method in her own schools that would stimulate students to ask questions. She wrote in her journal, "my earnest desire is to compose a course of teaching for Charity Schools, by which the children may learn in reality, and not by rote, the principles of the Christian Religion, as taught in the Scriptures".Trimmer, Some Account, 218. Trimmer also established schools of industry to which she directed her less promising pupils. These schools would teach girls, for example, how to knit and spin. Initially, Trimmer believed that the schools would turn a profit since the girls would spin and knit all day long; however, the girls were unskilled and turned out poor products that could not be sold. Trimmer viewed this project as a failure.
Wilfried Keutsch, a modern scholar of the 18th century, has criticised Trimmer's projects as naive and moralistic:
Although Sunday schools such as the ones established by Trimmer have often been characterised by modern scholars as a repressive device used by the middle class to impose their morality on the lower classes, Thomas Laqueur has argued that the poor embraced this opportunity to obtain literacy and disregarded many of the moral lessons forced upon them.Laqueur, 21.
Literary career In a literary career that spanned more than a quarter of a century, Trimmer authored somewhere between 33Grenby, "Introduction", viii–ix. and 44 texts.Heath, 385. She wrote in a wide range of genres: textbooks, teaching manuals, children's literature, political pamphlets and critical periodicals. While many of her texts were for children, some of her works, such as The Œconomy of Charity, were also for specific adult audiences. Still others were written for both children and adults, such as The Servant's Friend (1786–87), which was meant to instruct servants of all ages.
Throughout her career, Trimmer worked with four different publishers—John Marshall, T.N. Longman, G. Robinson, and Joseph Johnson—and, by 1800, she had the most works of any author in the Newbery catalogue, the catalogue that sold the most children's literature. Eventually, Trimmer stopped publishing with Joseph Johnson, because she disagreed with his politics—he was a supporter of the French Revolution and was publishing works that she considered subversive.Janowitz, Anne. "Amiable and Radical Sociability: Anna Barbauld's 'Free Familiar Conversation.'" Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain 1770–1840. Eds. Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002), 71.
An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature