The Victorian Fascination With Childhood

In his day, he was highly respected by the readers that he was writing to. If you asked me to guess which American literary figure was attracted to McDonald and read his works carefully, Mark Twain wouldn't be in my top 50 guesses. They both had a love of little girls, little children, and a real sense of this angelic sensibility. I think some of them and McDonald in particular were reacting against what they saw as a very stern manifestation of Calvinism in their childhood. And so then you have the two things going on. Uncelebrating childhood as about the goodness of creation,. About God making human beings for them to find fullness in life.