The post–1990 revival of the récit d'enfance gave rise to new critical discussions of the genre's significance in contemporary Francophone Caribbean literature. Of equal importance, however, is the fact that these modern texts build on a number of earlier works in which childhood occupies a fundamental role. These earlier texts have known varied fates: a few are relatively well known, several are often alluded to but rarely analysed in detail, whereas others have completely slipped from critical attention. This chapter establishes a clear chronology of the récit d'enfance alongside a discussion of literary engagement with the theme of childhood more broadly. While Maeve McCusker has pointed out autobiography's ‘relative absence in the Francophone Antilles’ in comparison with the sheer volume of autobiographical works in Anglophone Caribbean literature, there is nonetheless evidence prior to the 1990s of sustained Francophone Caribbean literary engagement with that part of autobiography which deals with childhood. Fragments of childhood memoirs can be found across a variety of forms, including poetry, the novel, the short story and film. By focusing the analysis on questions of genre, several important earlier texts are brought to critical attention. Recurring themes emerge: schooling, language, history, racism, alienation, social mobility and gender relations, all of which will prove to be of enduring importance in the post–1990 récits d'enfance.

Joseph Zobel's seminal La Rue Cases–Nègres (1950) is the best–known – and the first – récit d'enfance, and establishes the genre as an integral component of modern Antillean literature. Close analysis of engagement with the theme of childhood more generally, however, demonstrates that there is a significant literary history of the Francophone Caribbean child as a complex, politicized literary conceit both before and after 1950. Michèle Lacrosil's novel Sapotille et le serin d'argile (1960), in particular, includes an important discussion of the intergenerational imperative to discuss the slave past – precisely the kind of forthright discussion which will be lacking in the récits d'enfance.

By focusing on childhood and genre, this chapter also identifies two other important neglected texts post–dating La Rue Cases–Nègres which are without doubt récits d'enfance and which develop the genre in significant, contrasting ways.