FROM LIMBS OF SATAN TO INNOCENT LAMBS: The Creation of Childhood in Georgian and Regency England with Valerie Krips

The period 1750-1850 saw the rise of the idea of the child as an innocent dependant and of childhood as a distinct period of life to be cherished and remembered.

This first talk in a series of three on the idea of childhood in Georgian and Regency England, focuses on the way in which the slow secularization of attitudes to children came into conflict with long-held beliefs in original sin.

Beginning from the ‘sinful polluted creatures’ of Evangelical tracts, the child slowly came to be understood as ‘trailing clouds of glory’. The talk discusses this fascinating trajectory and its influence, then and now.

Dr Valerie Krips is Associate Professor Emerita of the English Department of the University of Pittsburgh, and Honorary Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of The Presence of the Past: Memory, History and Childhood in Postwar Britain, she is completing a book on cultural memory.