CHAPTER 2 ’ Class Culture and Children s Book ’ Publishing: Leila Berg s Nippers ’ and Aidan Chambers Topliner Novels by scholarship boy writers in the 1960s and the 1970s often fea- tured working-class lives and culture that had not previously been seen in British children’s books. However, this was only a small part of their activitiesintheperiod.Scholarshipboywritersnotonlycontributedtothe radical change of British children’s literature through writing fiction but also in their roles as critics and activists who were working to break down thesocialclassbarriersthatshapedthechildren’sbookindustry.Beforethe 1960s, working-class/scholarship boy writers and their works were virtu- allyexcludedfromtheworldofBritishchildren’sliterature.Themajorityof British children’s writers from the working class became successful, or begantodepictrealisticworking-classcharacters,onlyafterthemid-1970s, when the industry’s initial class barrier was broken; their success as chil- dren’s writers was conditioned by changes in the field of British children’s literature, particularly the attitudes of publishers. The bias of children’s editors in favour of white middle-class children’s books in the mid-twentieth century has been pointed out by various scholars (see Tucker, “Setting the Scene” 6, 11–14; Reynolds, “Publishing Practice” 30–31; Pearson,10; K. Wright 50).Today, the hegemony ofpublishers is being challenged by various kinds of publishing software and new ways of financingthepublicationofbooks.However,atthetime—andformostof the history of commercial literature—the books that reached the public weremadeavailablethroughpublishinghousesandreflectedtheireditors’ usually middle-class tastes and calculations about the potential of the books.Therefore,in1980,theeditorsofChildren’sBooksBulletinargued, ©TheAuthor(s)2017 25 H.Takiuchi,BritishWorking-ClassWritingforChildren,CriticalApproaches toChildren’sLiterature,DOI10.1007/978-3-319-55390-0_2 26 H.TAKIUCHI “Publishersthusbeseenassignificantforcesofcontrolofwhatliteratureis available tochildren”(How Much Truth 33).1Thischapterfocusesonthe initial struggle to include working-class books in mainstream children’s literature in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. BARRIERS TO PUBLISHING BOOKS FOR WORKING-CLASS CHILDREN As Raymond Williams explains, the emergence of “working-class writing” wasdifficultbecause“theeffectivepredominanceofreceivedliteraryforms” limited and conditioned what was produced (Williams, Marxism and Literature124).Althoughinthelate1950sasignificantnumberofwriters from the working class emerged in adults’ literature, most of them expe- rienced long periods of having their manuscripts rejected (Laing 62–64). JohnBraine’sRoomattheTop(1957)wasrepeatedlyrejectedfrom1951to 1955 (Laing 62; Wilson 121); Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) was accepted by the fifth publisher to whom it was sent (Laing 63); and David Storey’s This Sporting Life was rejected eight times upto1958(Laing63).Thesewriters’first,andmostrepresentative,novels werewrittenintheearly1950s,butmostpublishersdidnotseethevalueof writing featuring working-class life until some of these works began to succeed(Laing62–64).Itwasthetimewhenconditionsofexternalchange helpedwriters,andsoeventuallythosewriterspublishedtheirnovels,butit was not a straightforward process. The situation was similar in British children’s literature throughout the 1960sandthe1970s.AstheeditorsoftheChildren’sBookBulletinpointed outin1980,untilthe1970s,“therolethat[mostchildren’sbook]editors play in the selection of the manuscripts that they will publish” was “cen- sorial” (How Much Truth 33). In 1974, Robert Leeson, a scholarship boy writer, discussed the need for books for working-class children, as well as the need for books for 7- to 12-year-olds, in an article in Signal, “Boom” (1974) (for the role of Signal see Chap. 7). Since the late 1960s, the shortage of books for ordinary state school pupils, most of whom were working-classchildren,begantobediscussedbystateschoolteacherssuch as Aidan Chambers (1969) and Wallace Hildick (1970). These critics/ teachers pointed to the fact that the majority of state school pupils were reluctant to read children’s books that were written about and for middle-class children, who were likely to attend private boarding schools. 2 CLASSCULTUREANDCHILDREN’SBOOKPUBLISHING… 27 Therefore, in the 1970s, several activists and critics, including Robert Leeson, were working to increase the number of books featuring working-class and lower-middle-class lives. However, in the mid-1970s, the majority of mainstream children’s book publishers were still reluctant to publish such books. Two letters from editors associated with different publishing houses, Susan Dickinson from Collins Publishers and J.J. Curle from Macdonald and Jane’s, appeared in the following issue in response to Leeson. The Collins’ editor wrote that Leeson was “in danger of over-emphasizing the literary needs of working-class children” because she believed it was not necessary for “100% of children to be readers ofbooks”(Dickinson, letter 106). This editor maintained that only “literate working-class children” whowerelikelytobeabsorbedintothemiddleclassinfuturethroughtheir education were likely to read books about middle-class life, and often did so as a “form of escapism” (Dickinson, letter 106). This kind of attitude was, until the 1970s, widely seen in the children’s book industry (see Reynolds, “Publishing Practice” 31; Blishen, “Interview with Edward Blishen” 75; Royds, “Interview with Pam Royds” 326). In the eyes of these editors, those who did not assimilate into middle-class culture (i.e. the majority of working-class children) were effectively outside the audi- ence of British children’s literature. AttheheartoftheletterfromtheCollins’editorishernegativeviewof working-class lives. She rhetorically enquired: “Does the son of a shop steward want to read about the life of a shop steward?” (Dickinson, letter 106). One of the problematic ideological barriers to publishing books about the working class was that the culture and life of the middle classes wereseenassuperiortothoseoftheworkingclasses(Tucker,“Settingthe Scene” 11; Reynolds, “Publishing Practice” 30–31). The prejudice that working-class lives and views are inferior, so that children should not read aboutthem,or“dislikedaboutreadingaboutsuchcircumstances”(Hildick 32), was a widespread middle-class belief in and around children’s book publishing until the 1960s.2 Leeson was told when he tried to promote booksfortheworkingclassthat“wedon’twanttorubtheir[working-class children’s]nosesinit”(Leeson,personalinterview).Thisbiaswasalso,asis further argued later, one of the main reasons why Leila Berg’s Nippers series, featuring working-class lives, was criticised by some teachers: they believed“itwouldbebettertoraisetheir[working-classchildren’s]sights” (Reading and Loving 99) than to recognise and accept the working-class children’s life. 28 H.TAKIUCHI The two children’s book editors writing in Signal also insisted that by the1970sitwasimpossibletofindwriterswhocouldwritefor“aparticular class [the working-class] of child” (Dickinson, letter 106) because “the author will be middle-class, even if his father was working-class” (Dickinson,letter106;Curle,letter107).Thereisgeneralagreementthat before the 1960s there was a shortage of writers from the working class; John Rowe Townsend, for instance, makes this claim in Written for Children (6th edition, 246). However, the critical writing of scholarship boy authors in the 1960s and the 1970s suggests that it was not a lack of writers, but rather the exclusion of such writers by editors, that was the problem. Leeson makes this point in his response to the editors in the dialogue betweenhimselfandtwoeditorspublished inSignal,notingthat “such writers have appeared in adult writing” (Leeson, “Robert Leeson Replies” back cover). Significantly, the work of writersfrom working-class backgrounds who emerged in the late 1950s, such as Alan Sillitoe and Keith Waterhouse, although not for children was also popular among ordinaryteenagersinthelate1960s(seeChambers,Reluctant Reader78, 151–152).AidanChambers,inalettertoTheTimesLiterarySupplementin 1966, pointed out that publishers’ ideology and class prejudice was the true cause of the lack of working-class children’s fiction: Thepublisherswon’tbebotheredtofindthewriterswhocanwritelikethis [contemporary stories for average teenagers] because they have mis- information which suggests ‘that sort doesn’t read anyhow, and certainly doesn’t want stories about people like himself living as he does’. (Unpublished article,21May 1966) Moreimportantly,bythe1970stherewerealreadyaconsiderablenumber of scholarship boy (and girl) writers for children who wished to write storiesabouttheworkingclassbutcouldnotfindpublishersfortheirwork. Because publishers’ reluctance to publish such books was well known, early-career writers who wished to write the new kind of children’s books perhaps reluctantly but still voluntarily followed literary conventions until the mid-1970s. This attitude is in line with Bourdieu’s observation that “The manuscripts a publisher receives are the product of a kind of pre-selection by the authors themselves according to their image of the publisher” (Field of Cultural Production 133). Initially, Robert Leeson belonged to this group. Leeson’s first two books, Beyond the Dragon Prow (1973) and Maroon Boy (1974), took the 2 CLASSCULTUREANDCHILDREN’SBOOKPUBLISHING… 29 form of historical novels in which the protagonists are not working class, because he assumed children’s publishers would prefer such conventional novels (Leeson, personal interview). Historical fiction was an important genre in the 1960s and the 1970s, and for writers such as Leeson it pro- videdausefulbackdropfordiscussingtopicssuchasclassandraceinways that were acceptable because they were disguised by the historical setting (K.Wright204,216).Thiswas,therefore,Leeson’sstrategyforbecoming acceptedas achildren’swriter. Afterheearned areputation asa children’s writer with these early works, Leeson produced his first book in a con- temporary working-class setting, The Third-Class Genie (1975), which is still in print as a Collins Modern Classics and is today his most represen- tative work. However, the work was initially rejected by the hardback publisher which had published his previous two historical novels, and was only accepted by a paperback publisher, which was then regarded as inferior(Leeson,personal interview).Thedecisionarose,inpart,fromthe fact that paperbacks were more affordable and a more familiar format for most state school pupils. In the 1970s, an increasing number of radical and/or popular books for ordinary teenagers were being published as paperbacks (Pearson 21–23). However, because paperbacks were still looked down on—for instance, Leila Berg saw pupils who were told by teachers that “paperbacks are not books” (Reading and Loving 78)—and so were critically neglected, The Third-Class Genie was not reviewed by criticswhenitwasfirstpublished,althoughitwaseventuallyreviewedlater when, unusually, the book was republished as a hardback edition in the early 1980s (Leeson, personal interview). Leesonwashardlyaloneinwritingconventionalnovelsdespiteauthors’ wishes to write more radical novels. Scholarship girl writer Gene Kemp began by writing conventional animal stories beginning with The Prime of TamworthPig(1972),TamworthPigSavestheTrees(1973)andTamworth Pig and the Litter (1975), even though she “wanted to write books that would be more provocative—and more relevant—to today’s children” (“Gene Kemp”). According to Leila Berg, until the 1960s, “If you sug- gestedperhapsnon-middle-classchildrenmightlikesomething[children’s books] they could identify with, they [middle-class writers and teachers] pointed to stories about animals or gnomes” (Berg, Reading and Loving 85). In other words, when a writer wanted to write for working-class children in the early 1970s, animal stories were one of the few genres that would be welcomed by publishers. By 1977, Kemp felt able to produce a book featuring state primary school pupils, The Turbulent Term of Tyke 30 H.TAKIUCHI Tiler (1977). Once the book was published, it won the Carnegie Medal, and Kemp established her position as a writer of the new kind of school stories, set in a state school and a local community (for her school stories, see Watson, Reading Series Fiction 190–204; see also Cross). A similar pattern is seen even in the writing career of the celebrated writer Alan Garner. In his first two novels, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960)andTheMoonofGomrath(1963),theprotagonistsaremiddle-class children who visit their ex-nanny’s house. Charles Butler considers these books represent an established “convention of British children’s fantasy fiction of the 1950s and the 1960s that mysteries that have eluded the locals for centuries will yield their secrets to visiting middle-class children” (Four British Fantasists 111). Because of his “concession” (Butler, Four British Fantasists 112) to the southern, urban and middle-class point of view, Garner later dismissed these earliest books (Butler, Four British Fantasists 112). Thesecasesdemonstratehowtheconventionsofthefieldworkedatthe time to restrict the emergence of new writing. Writers could not be completelyfreefromtheconventions—ormiddle-classculture,inthiscase —ofthefield.Theseauthors’strategyofbeginningtheircareersbywriting moreconventionalnovelsworked.Theirbooksabouttheworkingclassor state school pupils were eventually published, and became influential and evencanonical.TheirsuccesswasenabledbyaradicalchangeintheBritish children’s book market in the period that they helped to initiate. In the 1970s, despite publishers’ apparent reluctance (as is discussed), stories set instateschoolswereactuallylongawaitedbymany,sothatoncethebooks oftheseauthorswerepublished,itwasnotdifficulttoprovetheirvalue.To considertheconditionswhichenabledtheirsuccess,economicfactors—the reluctanteditors’lastexcusefortheirnon-publication—mustbeexamined. THE ECONOMICS OF WORKING-CLASS CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND RISE OF SCHOLARSHIP BOY TEACHERS Theeditors’lettersthatappearedinSignalsuggestthatthemainreasonfor the reluctance to publish books about the working class was simply that “we have to sell the books we publish, and sell enough to make a profit” (Dickinson, letter 106). Robert Leeson, who “had many discussions with publishers, trying to persuade them to publish more books for working-class children” (Leeson, personal interview), recalled “there is no 2 CLASSCULTUREANDCHILDREN’SBOOKPUBLISHING… 31 market. That was their mantra” (Leeson, personal interview). Profit became more of a concern when working-class children’s books were the issue.Inthe1960sandthe1970s,“Acommitmentto‘quality’”,whichis, in reality, defined by editors’ middle-class tastes, “rather than profit is certainly a central theme in publishers’ own definitions of their aims” (Pearson 8). Readers’ and editors’ tastes and judgements are inevitably class bound, as Pierre Bourdieu argues (see Bourdieu, Distinction). In publishing, editors’ class bias was often effectively masked simply as con- ventions or as an issue of literary quality. Such publishers’ attitude of seeking middle-class quality rather than profit has, however, an economic rationality, because “quality” earns good reputation, or what Bourdieu calls “symbolic capital”, which can be converted into profit in the long term (see Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production 75). Working-class novels, by contrast, usually did not earn that kind of capital. However, there was actually a huge market for books for working-class childreninthe1970s:thestateschool.Asisdiscussedfurther,whatradical editorsinthelate1960sandthe1970ssuchasAidanChambersandLeila Berg achievedwas to highlightthe potentialprofitabilityof this marketby successfullysellinglargequantitiesofbookstoschools.Thefactthat,inthe mid-1970s, some publishers still assumed that there was not a market for working-class children’s books was not simply because, as Hildick points out, working-class children and their parents rarely bought children’s books(Hildick32).Rather,itreflectstheinfluenceoflibrarians,whowere the most influential purchasers of children’s books in the 1960s thanks to abundant state funds (Tucker, “Setting the Scene” 13; Reynolds, “Publishing Practice” 26; Leeson, personal interview; Chambers, personal interview). Although Tucker considers that public librarians’ demand for books featuring the working class in the 1960s changed publishers’ atti- tudes (Tucker, “Setting the Scene” 13), according to scholarship boy writers,thiswasnotexactlythecase.BothLeesonandChambersconsider that it was teachers, becoming the new influential purchasers of children’s books in the 1970s, who radically changed the publishers’ attitude (Leeson, personal interview; Chambers, personal interview). AlthoughChambers’andLeeson’sviewsarenotbasedonresearch,the stateofpubliclibrariesinthe1960ssuggeststhatlibrarianswerelesslikely to be a significant force for promoting books for the working class. In the 1960s, the majority of library users were middle class (Kelly 383–385). It was not that librarians failed working-class users; rather, because of the historicalmiddle-classdominanceofEnglishliterature,thehabitofreading 32 H.TAKIUCHI fiction had become a foreign practice for the majority of working-class peopleinthemid-twentiethcentury.Researchersinthe1970shighlighted the fact that children of manual workers read many fewer books than did the children of non-manual workers, although there was a much smaller gap in the number who read magazines and comics, which were generally dismissedby adults (Whiteheadet al.61–62, 66–68; Heather 48–49, 81). Pauline Heather (1981), in research conducted in 1979, also reports that often“Many[working-class]parentsareopposedtoreading”(41),“orthe local population tended to be ‘anti-culture’” (35) in schools largely con- sistingofpupilsfromcouncilhousingorthosewhosefathersareinmanual occupations, whereas parents tended to be supportive and likely to encourage reading in schools in more middle-class areas (31, 32, 34). Chambers,rememberingtheconditionsofhischildhood,recallsthatthere was“aworking-classnon-literaryculture”(Chambers,personalinterview). Untilamiddle-classboyaskedhimtogotoalibrarytogetherwhenhewas about 11 or 12 years old, Chambers himself had never thought of using a library (Chambers, personal interview). By contrast, Leeson was a regular library user (Leeson, personal interview), but he considers that he and his family were exceptionalin hiscommunity (Leeson,personal interview;see also Tucker, “Setting the Scene” 8). These two scholarship boy writers belongtothegenerationswhen“thechildren’sdepartmentofmanypublic librarieswereill-equipped,poorlystockedandbadlystaffed,andthousands of schools had no effective library” until the 1950s (Kelly 398). However, the percentages of library memberships (see Kelly 382–383, 385) suggest that, by the 1960s, library borrowing was not a part of ordinary working-class lives. What the advocates for books for the working class attempted to change,therefore,wasthis“working-classnon-literary-culture”,whichwas conditioned by the middle-class dominance of fiction. Librarians became “Conscious of the danger that libraries originally intended for the working-classes might develop into cosy middle-class book club” (Kelly 426–427) inthe late 1960s and the 1970s. However,the changewas felt, fortheadvocatesforbooksfortheworkingclass,tobenotasradicalasthe emerging influence of radical teachers, who were keen to find books for non-readers or “reluctant readers”, those who were reluctant to read fiction. School teachers became an influential voice in the world of commercial children’s literature as a result of the expansion of school libraries and increasing usage of children’s books in classrooms. Since 1945, an 2 CLASSCULTUREANDCHILDREN’SBOOKPUBLISHING… 33 increasing number of libraries were established in schools, and the abun- dant post-war public expenditure on education allowed schools to buy many books for their pupils (Tucker, “Setting the Scene” 13). Aidan Chambers,whowasateacher-librarianinthe1960s,andwasalecturerfor anin-servicecourseofchildren’sliteratureforteachersinthe1970s,states that teachers who had not bought children’s books for their classrooms previously, began to realise the use of children’s books in teaching in the 1970s (Chambers, personal interview). As a result, in the 1970s, state schoolteachersandschoollibrariansboughtbooksfortheirpupilsinlarge quantities (Chambers, personal interview). This market shift ultimately enabled a radical change in children’s books. Whatwasmoreimportant,however,isachangeofideologyinthenew generation of teachers from the 1960s. The 1960s and the 1970s was a time when some radical teachers were conscious of the political nature of education, and who saw the old education system as a kind of oppression set up by the ruling class (Long 243–244). Teachers in nonselective state schools had been, since the 19th century, traditionally “drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the upper working-class” (K. Evans 122) because most middle-class people were reluctant to take the job.3 Despite teachers’ backgrounds, until the mid-twentieth century, cultural assimila- tionism was the dominant ideology in British education system: working-class pupils were required to acquire middle-class culture to be successful in the school. As such, there was little demand for books fea- turing the working class. This cultural process of class reproduction in educational institutions, however, began to be criticised by left-wing scholars including scholarship boy researchers such as Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden, andRaymondWilliamsfrom around 1960 (see K. Jones 54–64). The claim that “what counted as culture—the central set of meanings and values which the school tried to inculcate—required alter- ation” (K. Jones 63) became “the argument of an important minority on theBritishleft,andapreoccupationofteachersassociatedwithNewLeft” (K. Jones 63). Chambers, who was part of the same generation of teachers, explains how the scholarship boys and girls were at that time: A lot of them [scholarship boys and girls] became teachers. They did that becausetheywantedtoeducatetheordinarypeople….Wethoughtwecould achievealiterate, evenaliterary,population….Wehadahugebeliefinthe power of art…. to refine your intelligence and to lift you out of the 34 H.TAKIUCHI restrictions of the working-class. But what we did not want to do was to makeeverybody into middle-classpeople.(Chambers, personal interview) The biggest difference of these teachers from the old type of teachers was the point that they did not want to “make everybody into middle-class people”. Children’s books, which had been mostly about middle-class life until the 1960s, were a part of the cultural assimilationism. In fact, in the 1960s,someteacherswerestillagainstbooksaboutworking-classchildren. InalettertoBerg,aneditoroftheNewHumanistdescribedhisencounter with a communist teacher who criticised a story because she regarded working-class speeches in the story as “bad language” and believed working-class children had to be changed by education (Macy, Letter to Berg 19 Feb. 1973). By the late 1960s, however, a considerable number of English teachers in state schools were willing to recognise and positively evaluate working-class cultures (K. Jones 64, 86).4 They knew from their experi- encesthatmostpupilswerereluctanttoreadbooksbecausethecontentsof thebookswerenotrelevanttotheirlives,andsotheywerelookingforthe new kind of books that were relevant to ordinary state school pupils’ lives (Chambers, personal interview; Leeson, personal interview; Hildick 32). According to Paul Long, in this period some progressive schools used working-class/scholarship boy novels for adults and films published in the late 1950s and the 1960s, as well as more traditional folk songs and D.H. Lawrence;evensomestudiesabouttheworkingclass,suchasJacksonand Marsden’s Education and the Working-class and Richard Hoggart’s The UsesofLiteracy,wereadoptedastextsforEnglishlessons(Long235–236). In this climate, teachers began to recognise the uses of children’s lit- erature. “This created a huge market”, Chambers says, “And that’s the market that Topliner [Chambers’ paperback label] fed” (Chambers, per- sonal interview). The two earliest and most influential attempts to publish books for working-class children in the late 1960s, Leila Berg’s Nippers and Aidan Chambers’ Topliner, were therefore both intended for schools. Thesizeoftheeducationalmarketissuggestedinaletterfromaneditorto Robert Westall. Macmillan’s editor, Marni Hodgkin, explained to Westall about two offers for the rights for a paperback edition of his The Machine Gunners: although Penguin Books’ Puffin was much more famous and prestigious, Macmillan’s Topliner, selling books directly to schools, could sell as well as or even better than Penguin (Hodgkin, Letter to Westall 7 Nov. 1975; Westall, Making of Me 194). Furthermore, radical teachers