Despite the importance of child characters in the novels of Charles Dickens, his association with children’s literature is often forgotten, and his A Child’s History of England, first published in instalments in his journal Household Words ( January 1851 to December 1853), has frequently been ignored by critics. The aim of this article is to re-evaluate its achievement as an extended piece of story-telling, taking into account the particular context of the writing of juvenile histories in the early 19th century and their likely readership. My approach takes as its starting point Phelan’s (2017) framework which views narrative as a rhetorical action, and which is focused on purpose, resources and audience. I propose two main resources or strategies, interlocutory role-play and dramatization, which contribute to the work’s distinctive style; at the same time as they confirm the narrator’s ethical values as a historian for children.

尽管在查尔斯狄更斯的小说中儿童角色很重要，但他与儿童文学的联系经常被遗忘，他的《英格兰儿童史》首次分期发表在他的《家庭用语》杂志上（1851 年 1 月至 1853 年 12 月），经常被评论家忽视。本文的目的是重新评估其作为故事讲述的延伸部分的成就，同时考虑到 19 世纪初少年历史写作的特定背景及其可能的读者群。我的方法以 Phelan (2017) 的框架为出发点，该框架将叙事视为一种修辞行为，并侧重于目的、资源和受众。我提出了两种主要的资源或策略，即中间角色扮演和戏剧化，这有助于作品的独特风格；同时，他们证实了叙述者作为儿童历史学家的道德价值观。