Graphic Characterization and Visual Narrative in The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes(1765)
Focusing on The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes(1765),John Newbery's lon-gest and most famous work of children's fiction,this article offers a corrective to previous scholarship that has routinely overlooked the significance of woodcut illustrations to charac-terization and narrative construction in early children's fiction.Unlike most eighteenth-cen-tury fiction,illustration was integral to Newbery's children's books,conceived at the onset,not added as embellishment to later editions.Routinely described as too small to be important or reduced to discussions of didacticism and ideology only,the cheap woodcuts contained in eighteenth-century children's fiction enabled reader-viewers of differing literacy levels to comprehend and imaginatively take part in narratives.In Goody Two-Shoes,illustrations elab-orate,specify,and extend characterizations of Margery,while also engendering a means of maintaining a child-centric tale for young audiences in the face of an ever-aging protagonist.This article demonstrates how woodcuts enable the reader-viewer to construct a narrative that extends beyond what is written.
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