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Thomas Day--eccentric idealist, philanthropist, ardent disciple of Rousseau, liberal thinker, and man of letters--came late in his life to the writing of novels. He was the friend of some of the most prominent intellectuals and innovators of his day--Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and Dr. William Small--and much of his work reflects the reformist sentiments of this circle of influential acquaintances. Day was part of a movement in popular literature that included the radical or Jacobin novels of Elizabeth Inchbald, Robert Bage, Thomas Holcroft, and William Godwin, though he appears not to have known any of these writers personally. His own didactic fiction, unlike theirs, was designed not to reform institutions and political systems directly but to change people by improving the methods of their education. The History of Sandford and Merton (1783-1789) and The History of Little Jack (1788) are, in fact, stories for the amusement, edification, and guidance of children.
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