Cultivating rational thought and moral judgment along the general lines proposed by Locke and Rousseau was the paramount concern of a large group of authors who wrote improving books for children between 1750 and 1850. These writers were keen believers in the power of carefully designed narratives, and of positive as well as negative examples to shape children's understanding. All emphasized tutelage: most of their stories feature a hired tutor, but sometimes a parent is the principal dispenser of information. The purpose remains the same whoever the instructor: to make learning an active, engaging pursuit (Demers and Moyles, 121). Apart from the deliberate propagation of Rousseau, in such books as Thomas Day's Sanford and Merton (1783), the influence of France was pervasive through the moral tale, which had been fully developed on the Continent. The two chief purveyors of it, for English purposes, were Mme de Genlis and Arnaud Berquin.
