The Children's Realm

The Children's Realm

The Children's Realm, Issue 1, cover dated January 1906
Editor	Florence I. Nicholson A. M. Cole
Categories	Children's literature, Vegetarianism
Frequency	Monthly
Publisher	Vegetarian Federal Union
Founder	Arnold Hills
First issue	January 1906 (1906-01)
Final issue	September 1914 (1914-09)
Country	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Based in	London
Language	English
OCLC	503926328

The Children's Realm: A Journal to Teach the Higher Way of Living to the Young was a British monthly magazine for children and families that promoted vegetarianism. It was published in London from 1906 to 1914 by the Vegetarian Federal Union and was founded by Arnold Hills after the closure of the earlier children's periodical The Children's Garden. The magazine was edited first by Florence I. Nicholson and later by A. M. Cole. Although directed mainly at children, it was also intended for family reading and accepted contributions from non-vegetarian readers.

The magazine published fiction, poetry, essays, correspondence, recipes, practical advice and reports from children's vegetarian branches. Its articles promoted vegetarian diets and kindness to animals, and also covered social reform and philanthropy, including children's homes, dinner funds and countryside outings for poorer children. Contributors included the young artist and writer L. A. Hayter, his schoolfriend Gerald Bullett, and the freethinker and sex-reform campaigner George Bedborough. The London fruiterer W. B. Shearn was involved in events and competitions associated with the magazine.

The Children's Realm received little scholarly attention for much of the twentieth century. Since the early twenty-first century, historians of vegetarianism, childhood and print culture have used it as a source for the history of children's vegetarianism in Britain. Marzena Kubisz discusses it as one of several vegetarian children's magazines of the period and, in her work on vegan literature for children, treats it as part of the early history of children's writing about vegetarian and animal-advocacy themes.

History

Origins in the children's vegetarian movement

The Children's Realm developed from children's organisations within the British vegetarian movement. In the 1890s and early 1900s, activists including Frances L. Boult and the Ivy Leaf Society organised children's vegetarian societies and published magazines for young readers, including The Children's Garden (1900–1905). Kubisz writes that such publications gave vegetarian children a sense of community in a culture where meat-eating was normal.

Historian James Gregory places the magazine in a sequence of juvenile vegetarian periodicals that began with the Daisy Society's The Daisy Basket (1893–94), edited by Joseph Knight, and continued through Boult's Rainbow and The Children's Garden. An overview from the Ernest Bell Library also describes The Daisy Basket and The Children's Garden as predecessors of The Children's Realm.

Founding and editorial outlook

Florence I. Nicholson and A. M. Cole, the successive editors of The Children's Realm

Boult died in 1905, and Children's Garden closed in December that year. Kubisz states that Arnold Hills, who was involved with the London Vegetarian Society and the Vegetarian Federal Union, undertook to publish a replacement that would continue Boult's work with children. The first issue of The Children's Realm appeared in January 1906.

In the first issue, Hills connected Boult's work with children to ideas of mercy, kindness and "higher humanity". He described children's branches as a nursery for "little soldiers for the battle of good against wrong".

The first editor was Florence I. Nicholson, secretary of the Vegetarian Federal Union. In her New Year address in the first issue, she asked young readers to help make both the magazine and the "Children's Vegetarian Movement" successful. She was later succeeded as editor by A. M. Cole.

The magazine welcomed readers who were not vegetarian. Its editors sometimes described non-vegetarian adults and children as "still labouring in the darkness of flesh-eating", but treated them as possible converts rather than outsiders.

Circulation and distribution

The editors repeatedly asked readers to help increase the magazine's circulation. Early appeals offered prizes, including a copy of Eliza Brightwen's Wild Nature Won by Kindness, for children who obtained new subscriptions. Further appeals were made in 1908, when circulation was still considered too low.

Children were encouraged to ask newsagents to stock the magazine and to promote it at school. A letter printed in "Our Correspondence Column" in March 1910 described a schoolboy who pinned a copy of The Children's Realm on his classroom wall. Surviving sources do not give firm circulation figures or print runs.

Suspension and closure

The magazine ceased during the first months of the First World War. Kubisz writes that the war interrupted the growth of children's vegetarian activities and created financial difficulties for the publishers. In September 1914, A. M. Cole announced that The Children's Realm, described there as an "excellent little messenger of humanity and sane diet", would be suspended.

Contents and themes

Columns and genres

The Children's Realm continued many of the features of Children's Garden. Regular columns included "In the Kitchen", which gave recipes and food advice; "For the Boys", edited by a persona called The Captain; "Uncle Joker's Page"; and "Our Correspondence Column". The magazine also printed reports from children's branches and notices of events.

Its non-fiction pieces covered health, nutrition, geography, gardening and the living conditions of poor children in cities. Essays presented vegetarian arguments and linked diet reform with ideas of justice and civilisation.

The magazine also printed serial stories, short fiction and poems. Many of these works concerned human treatment of animals, child reformers and the ethics of killing animals for food. Kubisz describes animal characters and moral questions about diet as recurring features of the magazine's fiction.

Reader participation and contests

The editors encouraged readers to send letters, drawings, stories and essays. The magazine ran competitions on vegetarian subjects, including reasons for adopting a meatless diet, the ethics of flesh-eating and "Diseases, Drunkenness, Crimes and Cruelties, Connected with Flesh Eating".

Letters printed in the magazine came from both vegetarian and non-vegetarian children. Some writers identified themselves as animal lovers, while others said they were more interested in plants than animals. Kubisz suggests that the editors treated interest in nature as a possible starting point for vegetarian practice.

Social reform and philanthropy

The magazine promoted charitable work for children in British cities. Articles and illustrations contrasted the circumstances of middle-class readers with those of poorer children. Readers were urged to support projects such as The Nest, a vegetarian children's home; the Children's Dinner Fund, which Kubisz says provided thousands of cheap or free meals each week; and the Fresh Air Fund, which arranged countryside visits for children who could not otherwise afford them.

These campaigns presented vegetarian ethics alongside concerns about poverty, exploitation and social inequality. Readers were addressed both as advocates for animals and as helpers of less privileged children.

W. B. Shearn and vegetarian spaces

Kubisz identifies the fruiterer W. B. Shearn as one of the magazine's active supporters. His father, Benjamin Shearn, owned a vegetarian restaurant on Tottenham Court Road in London, which included a Fruit Saloon and Palm Garden Luncheon Rooms. The family also ran a nearby shop that contemporary publicity said "must make all meat-eating children who see it wish they were Vegetarians". W. B. Shearn, who preferred to call himself a fruitarian, ran the family's fruit and vegetable business and the Fruitarian Luncheon Saloon. The saloon became a meeting place for members of the London Vegetarian Society and for young vegetarians.

From 1907, advertisements for "B. Shearn & Son, the largest Health Food Stores in London" appeared regularly in The Children's Realm. Shearn sponsored essay competitions, including one on "Why I Am a Vegetarian", and offered baskets of fruit as prizes. He also invited entrants to a "fruit tea and conversazione", donated fruit for Yuletide festivals and Christmas bazaars, and organised parties for vegetarian children. Kubisz treats these activities as part of the practical support that helped children take part in vegetarian culture.

Gender, justice and nature

The magazine sometimes addressed subjects beyond diet and animal welfare. Kubisz notes that editorials and stories encouraged children to oppose injustice "wherever we find it". Articles also invited readers to think about girls' and boys' roles in the household and about human relations with the natural world.

Kubisz reads these features as examples of vegetarian ideas being linked, in writing for children, with gender politics and early environmental concerns.

Contributors

L. A. Hayter and Gerald Bullett

L. A. Hayter, the primary illustrator of The Children's Realm, c. 1910

Kubisz describes the young artist and writer L. A. Hayter as one of the magazine's notable contributors. His stories and illustrations, some written with his schoolfriend Gerald Bullett, included "The Weather Kingdom", "The Land of Undh-Aneethe" and "The Nimble Sixpence". The stories used fantasy, absurd humour and line drawings, with goblins, fairies, talking coins and personified natural forces among their subjects. The magazine also published early stories by Bullett, who later became a novelist, poet and critic. These included "The Rescue" and "A Moonlight Shadow", printed in the late 1900s.

George Bedborough

George Bedborough, who sometimes wrote as "Uncle George", contributed pieces on animals and social reform. A freethinker and sex-reform campaigner, he edited The Adult, wrote the poem The Atheist and advocated the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Gregory describes The Children's Realm as being "conducted" by Bedborough and notes his earlier notoriety through The Adult. Kubisz states that Bedborough became vegetarian after visiting the slaughterhouses in Chicago with Moses Harman.

From 1911, Bedborough wrote regularly for The Children's Realm. His contributions included travel writing, accounts of animals he had known and essays that combined autobiography with short stories, parables and dream visions. Some of these pieces were collected in Stories from the Children's Realm: A Book for Those Who Love Children and Animals, published by the Vegetarian Federal Union in 1914. The book was advertised as promoting vegetarianism from a humanitarian point of view.

Kubisz writes that Bedborough often treated cruelty as the result of thoughtlessness rather than deliberate malice. She also argues that he used fantasy as a way of encouraging children to imagine the feelings of animals and other people. She notes, however, that his anti-racist writing remained shaped by imperial assumptions, even when he drew comparisons between the disparagement of racialised people and the treatment of "mere animals".

Tone and style

Kubisz describes the magazine as playful and sometimes self-mocking, despite its reformist purpose. Examples include comic illustrations of a child suffering from "cabbage-itis" after eating too much cabbage, and of a head taking the form of a carrot.

Reception and legacy

The London satirical weekly Punch treated the magazine unsympathetically. In his survey of Punch and Edwardian England, Charles L. Graves notes that in 1907 the paper quoted what he describes as an apparently genuine letter from The Children's Realm, "a paper which aimed at teaching 'the higher way of living to the young'". The letter concerned a small boy who was "a very earnest vegetarian"; Graves presents Punch as treating him as a priggish child correspondent.

Kubisz notes that, like many middle-class children's periodicals of the period, issues of The Children's Realm survive mainly as bound yearbooks. She also states that vegetarian periodicals received little attention from historians for much of the twentieth century. A later account from the Ernest Bell Library states that the library holds 84 consecutive issues, from volume 1, number 1 to volume 7, number 12, and that the British Library holds issues from 1913 and 1914.

Since the early twenty-first century, historians of vegetarianism, childhood and print culture have used The Children's Realm as a source for studying children's vegetarianism in Britain. Kubisz uses the magazine, together with The Daisy Basket and Children's Garden, to examine how vegetarian children were addressed as readers, correspondents and members of societies. She argues that subscribing to and taking part in the magazine helped children experience vegetarianism as a social practice in a meat-eating culture.

In an earlier overview of vegan literature for children, Kubisz places The Children's Realm and related vegetarian magazines within the early history of children's writing about vegan and vegetarian ideas. She treats 1914, the year of the magazine's final issue, as the end of a period of growth in this field before a later twentieth-century revival.

See also

• Bibliography of veganism and vegetarianism
• History of vegetarianism
• Vegetarianism in the Victorian era
• Vegetarianism in the United Kingdom

Bibliography

• Graves, Charles L. (1922). Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Vol. IV: 1892–1914. London: Cassell – via Project Gutenberg.
• Gregory, James (2007). Of Victorians and Vegetarians. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85771-526-5.
• Edmundson, John (9 September 2014). "Some of The First Ever Magazines For Vegetarian Children". HappyCow. Retrieved 22 November 2025.
• Kubisz, Marzena (12 March 2021), Wright, Laura (ed.), "Vegan literature for children", The Routledge Handbook of Vegan Studies (1st ed.), Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 65–75, doi:10.4324/9781003020875-8, ISBN 978-1-003-02087-5, retrieved 22 November 2025{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
• Kubisz, Marzena (14 August 2024). Children's Vegetarian Culture in the Victorian Era: The Juvenile Food Reformers Press and Literary Change. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003400042. ISBN 978-1-003-40004-2.

External links

• The Children's Realm at the British Library