It-Narratives: The Secret Lives of Objects
The literary genre of it-narratives, featuring stories told by objects like coins and toys, predates films like *Toy Story* by centuries and served as
The it-narrative, a literary genre where objects like coins or toys tell their own stories, became popular in eighteenth-century Britain. It predates the 1995 film Toy Story by nearly three centuries, according to a report on Literary Hub.
Also called object tales or novels of circulation, these stories follow inanimate items as they pass between owners. Narrated in first person, they invite readers to see society from the perspective of small things, from corkscrews to pins.
Satire and Scandal in Early Tales
The it-narrative originated as an adult genre, offering a platform for social satire. Authors used circulating objects to critique Britain's growing consumer culture and expose greed.
Joseph Addison's "Adventures of a Shilling" (1710) sees the coin hoarded, used as a bribe, and sent to disinherit a son. In Charles Johnstone's Chrysal; or, the Adventures of a Guinea (1760), the coin witnesses the schemes of hack authors and the plight of a destitute poet who uses it to buy food.
The object's ability to travel intimately close to people led many early stories toward sensationalism and pornography. Chrysal includes a detailed episode of an aristocrat picking up a sex worker. The anonymously-authored History of a French Louse (1779), born on a courtesan, reports on an assignation with American ambassador Benjamin Franklin, noting his decaying teeth "might have been taken for cloves."
Moral Lessons for Young Readers
By the mid-nineteenth century, the genre was adopted for moral instruction. Religious organizations in the U.S. and Britain published it-narratives featuring objects like Bibles and prayer books, targeting children and others with limited choice in reading material.
In these stories, objects judge human behavior. The Adventures of a Work-Bag (1826) fears falling into the hands of "some rude slatternly girl." Authors used the genre to encourage young, largely white middle-class readers to uphold social hierarchies and proper comportment.
Children themselves, however, embraced the form for amusement. Handmade manuscript books less than 10 centimeters tall, created by children in the New England Hale family between 1839 and 1869, feature stories about buttons and tin soldiers. One tale, "The Adventures of a Rod" (1844), chronicles a shrub attacked by schoolboys that gets revenge after becoming a disciplinary switch.
Just as Toy Story asks audiences to take childhood play seriously, the 1866 children's story "What the Playthings Said to Each Other on Midsummer Night" imagines a world where children and their things make an impact. The genre's long history shows objects have been telling their own stories long before Buzz Lightyear.
