Faire du jouet et du jeu des enfants des objets d'Histoire. Un long cheminement du xvie au xixe siècle

Before Philippe Ariès’ pioneer book which founded childhood’ history, each
period has progressively built up knowledge about children’s games and toys. Based on
the available ancient sources, humanists, doctors and philosophers began to elaborate
a fragmentary toys’ history. Archaeology provided a closer look at objects since the
18th century, but it was not until the 19th century that educators, archaeologists and
linguists began to write books on play and toys. Popularizers and specialists produced
a flowering of works from 1869 to 1914, from Louis Becq de Fouquières for Antiquity
to Édouard Fournier and especially Léo Claretie and Henry-René d’Allemagne for
more ambitious projects covering the entire toy’s history. Thus, journalists, men
of letters, archivists and historians ceased to believe that toy is a frivolous item, but
they did not yet understand that it is part of a child’s history.