The object of the following Work differs from that of all other works on popular science in its attempt to meet the wants of the Student, while meeting those of the general reader, who is supposed to be wholly unacquainted with anatomy and physiology (This is Volume 2 of a two-volume set.).

In the 1840s novelists such as Brontë and Dickens began to explore the inner world of the child. Simultaneously the first psychiatric studies of childhood were appearing. Moving between literature and science, Sally Shuttleworth explores issues such as childhood fears, imaginary lands, sexuality, and the relation of the child to animal life.