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Officials and Genteel-men

Owen Dudley Edwards

in British Children's Fiction in the Second World War

This chapter looks at the crisis in the status of children's fiction in Britain during the Second World War. It discusses the compensation of wartime bereavement of deprivation of necessities, and ... More

This chapter looks at the crisis in the status of children's fiction in Britain during the Second World War. It discusses the compensation of wartime bereavement of deprivation of necessities, and observes that most of the revolutionary elements in Britain's popular culture in 1940 had little to no identification with the USSR (or until the Grand Alliance was formed in 1941–2). The chapter also designates Graham's Puffin Story Books as one of the greatest series for children in human history, and as serving as one of Britain's achievements in the Second World War.Less

Orwell v. Richards: Children’s Fiction to 1940

Owen Dudley Edwards

in British Children's Fiction in the Second World War

This chapter discusses children's fiction during the early years of the twentieth century. It specifically focuses on the works of George Orwell and Frank Richards, who is also known as Charles ... More

This chapter discusses children's fiction during the early years of the twentieth century. It specifically focuses on the works of George Orwell and Frank Richards, who is also known as Charles Harold St John Hamilton.Less

The bill of fare: The politics of food in Maria Edgeworth’s children’s fiction

Sarah Moss

in Spilling the Beans: Eating, Cooking, Reading and Writing in British Women's Fiction, 1770-1830

This chapter discusses Maria Edgeworth's writing for children, looking at the centrality of food in the cultural and social constitution of the child. It notes that Edgeworth's children's fiction is ... More

This chapter discusses Maria Edgeworth's writing for children, looking at the centrality of food in the cultural and social constitution of the child. It notes that Edgeworth's children's fiction is seen to inspire the precepts of Malthus and Smith, as well as her suspicions and ambivalence towards the breast and the rest of the maternal body. The chapter also identifies some reasons why food can be particularly important in writing for children.Less

Children’s and Juvenile Literature

M. O. Grenby

in The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 2: English and British Fiction 1750-1820

This chapter examines children's and juvenile literature. Many pre-Victorian children did not encounter children's fiction at all. A substantial number, of course, were largely disconnected from ... More

This chapter examines children's and juvenile literature. Many pre-Victorian children did not encounter children's fiction at all. A substantial number, of course, were largely disconnected from literary culture by indigence or illiteracy. However, lots of those young people who did consume books continued to use material designed primarily for adults. What confuses the matter is that the distinction could be very blurred between literature for adults and literature for ‘young gentlemen and ladies’. What would now be called ‘crossover’ works were common: titles originally aimed at adults that were quickly appropriated by or for young readers. By 1820, the novel for children was establishing itself as a distinct entity, but had not quite disconnected itself from the mainstream. Children's fiction was still shadowing the novel for adults, imitating its genres, and sharing its concerns.Less

Fictionalizing Children, Children’s Fiction

Caroline Levander

in The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 6: The American Novel 1879-1940

This chapter explores the emergence of children's fiction as a genre of American literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, it looks at novels that feature ... More

This chapter explores the emergence of children's fiction as a genre of American literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, it looks at novels that feature children and explore child psychology, as well as the links between childhood and adulthood. It also examines the reception of both adult and child readers to children's literature, along with the emergence of children as powerful representatives of race relations. Finally, the chapter cites a number of novels with the child at the center, including Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder Book (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868) and Little Men (1871), Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Puddn'head Wilson (1894), and Henry James's What Maisie Knew (1897) and The Turn of the Screw (1898).Less

Children’s and Young Adult Novels: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Pacific

Clare Bradford

in The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 12: The Novel in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific Since 1950

This chapter examines the history of children's and young adult fiction in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. During the mid-twentieth century, fiction for the young in Australia, ... More

This chapter examines the history of children's and young adult fiction in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. During the mid-twentieth century, fiction for the young in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand did not yet occupy a prominent place. In Australia, most children's fiction was produced and imported by British publishers. In Canada, markets and children's reading practices were dominated by American and (to a lesser extent) British imports until 1975. In Australia and New Zealand, children's novels began to gather strength in the late 1950s and 1960s. The chapter shows how the significance of children's fiction in the project of nation-building became to be recognised as a result of the growth of the educational publishing industry following World War II. It also considers the transnational relationships that pervade children's and young adult novels from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific.Less

First Communion: The Most Beautiful Day in the Lives and Deaths of Little Girls

Carol E. Harrison

in Romantic Catholics: France's Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith

This chapter focuses on first communion, the rite of the church that marked children's arrival at the age of reason and welcomed them as full members into the community of Christ's church. It ... More

This chapter focuses on first communion, the rite of the church that marked children's arrival at the age of reason and welcomed them as full members into the community of Christ's church. It examines the communion experiences of Léopoldine Hugo, daughter of the writer Victor Hugo, and Marguerite Guyon, heroine of Victorine Monniot's best-selling novel, Le Journal de Marguerite. Léopoldine and Marguerite represent the two poles around which stories of girls' communions circulated. Where the Eucharist prepared Léopoldine for an early death, it invited Marguerite into a world of adventure. This chapter considers children's fiction as a point of access into the cliché of first communion as the most beautiful day of one's life. It also looks at Olga de la Ferronnays and Lina Ravaschieri, who never met on earth but whose lives were imaginatively linked by their pious acceptance of the Eucharist and their early deaths.Less

The Irish Fin de Siècle

Anne Markey

in The Edinburgh Companion to Fin de Siècle Literature, Culture and the Arts

This chapter provides a survey of the range of cultural activity in Ireland during the late decades of the nineteenth century. It points to the importance of Irish writers in defining the Victorian ... More

This chapter provides a survey of the range of cultural activity in Ireland during the late decades of the nineteenth century. It points to the importance of Irish writers in defining the Victorian fin de siècle, and the Irish backgrounds of many famous fin-de-siècle writers, especially women. Attention is given to specific forms of Irish writing, such as Land War fiction and experimental Irish drama and a distinct genre of Irish children’s fiction, as well as activities promoted by Irish revivalists, such as the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement, the Feis Coil Association and traditional Celtic games. Throughout this body of work, stress is placed regeneration and a looking to the future, rather than on degeneration and endings.Less

Prologue

in Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s

This book explores how the real-world politics of sex, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class struggles, environment and imperialism is represented in science fiction. In 1970 science fiction offered a ... More

This book explores how the real-world politics of sex, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class struggles, environment and imperialism is represented in science fiction. In 1970 science fiction offered a critique of mainstream culture and society from the margins, but became much more associated with synergistically organised multinational corporations a decade later. The book examines the attitudes of successive generations of science fiction writers to science fiction after Apollo and the New Wave, the rise of fantasy and the resurgence of novels centred on swords and planets. It also tackles a range of political issues, from race and environmentalism to feminism, gay rights, and postcolonialism in Vietnam and England. In addition, it looks at science fiction in other areas, including blockbuster films, pseudoscience, children's fiction, horror, architecture and postmodern metafiction.Less

“Something there is that doesn’t Love a Wall”: The Mediating Child and the Ethics of Cohabitation

Blanka Grzegorczyk

in Intergenerational Solidarity in Children's Literature and Film

This chapter reads post-9/11 children’s fiction such as Sita Brahmachari’s Tender Earth (2017) and Rachel Anderson’s Asylum (2011) as a counter-narrative to the voices of anti-immigrant rhetoric that ... More

This chapter reads post-9/11 children’s fiction such as Sita Brahmachari’s Tender Earth (2017) and Rachel Anderson’s Asylum (2011) as a counter-narrative to the voices of anti-immigrant rhetoric that reduce human beings to the status of objects and threats, as an expression of a common humanity that involves young readers in a recognition of its fundamental condition of precariousness, and as an opening up to globality that seeks to conceive of the cosmo-political solidarity required by anti-racism as an intergenerational and intercultural tackling of global imbalances of power. The chapter traces the way in which these writers credit their young protagonists with the capacity to mobilize such alliances, which are shaped by a rearticulated humanist ethics focused on the precariousness of all life and by principled opposition to the nationalist, racist, and rights-stripping thinking with which the popular language of immigration has been entangled.Less

Crossing the Divide: How Death and Dementia Develop Understanding between Young and Old in Contemporary Children’s Literature

Jean Webb

in Intergenerational Solidarity in Children's Literature and Film

An increasingly ageing population across Europe raises the issue of understanding between the young and older generations with respect to the problems emanating from dementia in older people. This ... More

An increasingly ageing population across Europe raises the issue of understanding between the young and older generations with respect to the problems emanating from dementia in older people. This chapter demonstrates how selected British fiction for children engages the younger generation in concrete approaches to reducing the generational divide and bringing about greater understanding and solidarity. The texts discussed herein are Anne Fine’s The Granny Project (1983); Melvin Burgess and Lee Hall’s Billy Elliot (2001); Jenny Downham’s Unbecoming (2008); David Walliams’ Grandpa’s Great Escape (2015), and The Dementia Diaries (2016) by Matthew Snyman and the Social Innovation Lab Kent. Each approaches the problems differently but nonetheless have the common intention of showing how intergenerational understanding and solidarity can be developed in living with those suffering from dementia.Less