Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T16:09:13.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children's Reading and the Culture of Girlhood: The Case of L.T. Meade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Sally Mitchell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

By the beginning of World War I, a separate culture of girlhood had taken shape in Britain. “Girlhood” had its own interests, values, and (perhaps) ethics; its own language, customs, and literature. Fifty years earlier, when publishers first began to identify readers in a category which they differentiated from the adult audience on the one hand and the general children's audience on the other, they were not quite sure who girls were and what they might be interested in. Publishers' advertisements used terms such as “the girl from 8 to 18” and “those who have left the schoolroom but not yet entered society.” The earliest girls' magazines, which appeared in the last quarter of the century, opened their readers' contribution pages to “girls” up to the age of twenty-five. Mid-nineteenth-century fiction about girls generally emphasized home life and home duties, but by 1900 many books dwelt on the values and interactions of girls themselves, with hardly any mention of adults. As a first step in discussing the creation of girlhood – and the values, attitudes, and understandings which this creation encoded – the case of L.T. Meade is instructive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 17 , Spring 1989 , pp. 53 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Atalanta (1887–1898).Google Scholar
Avery, Gillian. Childhood's Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children's Fiction, 1770–1950. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975.Google Scholar
Black, Helen C. “Mrs. L.T. Meade.” In Pen, Pencil, Baton and Mask: Biographical Sketches. London: Spottiswoode, 1896: 222–29.Google Scholar
Cadogan, Mary, and Craig, Patricia. You're a Brick, Angela!: A New Look at Girls' Fiction from 1839 to 1975. London: Victor Gollancz, 1976.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Humphrey, and Prichard, Mari. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Cawelti, John G.Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimes, Janet and Daims, Diva. Novels in English by Women, 1891–1920: A Preliminary Checklist. New York: Garland, 1981.Google Scholar
Hall, Trevor H.Dorothy L. Sayers: Nine Literary Studies. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1980.Google Scholar
Low, Florence B. “The Reading of the Modern Girl.” Nineteenth Century 59 (1906): 278–87.Google Scholar
Mann, Jessica. Deadlier than the Male: An Investigation into Feminine Crime Writing. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1981.Google Scholar
Meade, L.T. “Story Writing for Girls.” The Academy and Literature 65 (1903): 499.Google Scholar
Quigley, Isabel. Heirs of Tom Brown: The English School Story. London: Chatto & Windus, 1982.Google Scholar
Root, Mary E.S. “Not to be Circulated.” Wilson Bulletin 3 (1929): 446.Google Scholar
Sayers, Dorothy L. Introduction, The Omnibus of Crime. Reprinted in Howard Haycraft, ed. The Art of the Mystery Story. Ed. Haycraft, Howard. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946: 71–109.Google Scholar
Slung, Michele B.Crime on Her Mind. New York: Pantheon, 1975.Google Scholar
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual.” In Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford UP, 1985: 53–76.Google Scholar