Samuel Goodrich

Goodrich, Samuel (1793–1860), American publisher and author of over 100 juvenile books of instruction. The son of a Congregational minister, he encountered fairy tales late in his youth, and reacted with horror to ‘these monstrosities’, a view which he retained all his life, launching many attacks on them and on nursery rhymes. His pseudonym Peter Parley was taken up by several English authors of similar books of facts, and ‘Peter Parleyism’ became a term of abuse used by those who supported works of imagination. Kingsley in The Water‐Babies (1863) referred to him slightingly as ‘Cousin Cramchild’ of Boston.

— Gillian Avery