Following the Gold Thread: The Influence of Romanticism and Literary Form on the Religious Works of Norman MacLeod

This paper examines The Gold Thread (1860) by Norman MacLeod as a piece of literary pedagogy in a programme of Christianised Bildung. Written during an explosion of children’s literature in Victorian Britain, The Gold Thread is the first children's book written in literary form. MacLeod's use of literary form both illustrates and enacts his convictions concerning childhood education, which, I argue, were influenced by Freidrich Schiller’s vision of the education of the “beautiful soul"; a vision starkly contrasted to the highly moralised Victorian children's literature of the time. While MacLeod's connection to broader nineteeth century literary and philosophical trends have been largely ignored, this paper explores how MacLeod's Christian adaptation of the notion of Bildung and his use of literary form helped shift religious conceptions of the moral and spiritual lives of children in Britain, contributing to a social movement that culminated in the abolition of children’s labor in Scotland.