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This article examines Walter Crane’s picture books for children and argues that with these books Crane aimed to foster visual literacy in young readers. The term “visual literacy” was introduced in the 1960s to describe an active and critical mode of reading images that was perceived as necessary amid a proliferation of new technologies for making and disseminating pictures. Yet the phenomenon of the ubiquitous technologically mediated image was as persistent in Crane’s time as it is today, and Crane’s censure of image-making under industrial capitalism shares similar concerns with contemporary efforts to promote visual literacy. In his early toy books published by George Routledge & Sons between 1865 and 1876, Crane focused primarily on creating beautiful illustrations with the purpose of cultivating an appreciation for beauty in readers to help them resist the effects of industrial capitalism. In his later books, particularly those that Crane wrote and illustrated himself between 1875 and the turn of the century (such as Slateandpencil-Vania, Little Queen Anne and Her Majesty’s Letters, and Pothooks & Perseverance), these lessons in Aesthetic values are joined by instruction in visual literacy.
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