reviews of children's books but also extracts from texts Trimmer thought would edify her adult readers. She aimed "to assess the current state of educational policy and praxis in Britain and to shape its future direction". To do so, she evaluated the educational theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Madame de Genlis, Joseph Lancaster, and Andrew Bell, among others. In her "Essay on Christian Education," also published separately later, she proposed her own comprehensive educational program. Trimmer took her reviewing very seriously and her over 400 reviews constitute a set of distinct values. As Grenby puts it, "her initial questions of any children's books that came before her were always first, was it damaging to religion and second, was it damaging to political loyalty and the established social hierarchy". Religion was always Trimmer's first priority and her emphasis on Biblical inerrancy illustrates her fundamentalism. She criticized books that included scenes of death, characters who were insane, and representations of sexuality, as well as books that might frighten children. Trimmer's fundamentalism, Grenby argues, does not necessarily mark her as the rigid thinker that many critics have presumed her to be. Grenby points out that Trimmer, like Rousseau, believed children were naturally good; in this, she was arguing against centuries of tradition, particularly Puritanical attitudes towards raising children. She also agreed with "Rousseau's key idea [while ironically attacking Rousseau's works themselves], later taken up by the Romantics, that children should not be forced to become adults too early". Trimmer praised the works of several Rousseau-inspired writers, such as Maria Edgeworth and Thomas Day. The Guardian of Education established children's literature as a genre with her reviews. Moreover, in one of her early essays, "Observations on the Changes which have taken place in Books for Children and Young Persons", Trimmer wrote the first history of children's literature, setting out the first canon of children's literature. Its landmark books are still cited today by scholars as important in the development of the genre. Fairy tales Trimmer is perhaps most famous now for her condemnation of fairy tales, such as the various translations of Charles Perrault's Histoires ou contes du temps passé (originally published in 1697), because they endorsed an irrational view of the world and suggested that children could become successful too easily (in other words, they did not have to work). Chapbooks were the literature of the poor and