Culturing the Child, 1690-1914 - by Donelle Ruwe (Paperback)

About the Book

Utilizing new historicist, feminist, and cultural studies critiques, this collection of essays provides new perspectives on early children's literary texts and the work of children's literature scholar Mitzi Myers (1939-2001).

Book Synopsis

Utilizing new historicist, feminist, and cultural studies critiques, this collection of essays provides new perspectives on early children's literary texts and the work of children's literature scholar Mitzi Myers (1939-2001).

Review Quotes

...a helpful survey...relevant and of an enduring value.

Culturing the Child is both a significant book in its own right and a fitting tribute to a scholar who believed that, from its earliest days, writing for children was-and needed to be-concerned with fundamental moral questions...

It is a fortunate thing that the festschrift in honor of Mitzi Myers is a good and useful book. I shall certainly put it on the reading list for my graduate level history of children's literature class in the spring, and I am sure that others will also fund uses for a collection of essays that are intelligent, sometimes surprising, and enjoyable to read....The book is notable for the breadth of the scholarship evoked, and the various footnotes and references along with this Myers bibliography might themselves be worth the cost of the volume to a scholar entering the field.

This collection continues Myers's lifelong project of bringing feminist, New Historicist, and cultural studies methods to early children's texts. Essays on contexts of this literature include a description of the physical presence and preparation of early children's books, a comparison of moral lessons with fairy tale fantasy, and the relationships women and children had to reading in the 18th century. Topics on the "rational dames," women writers and educators, include analyses of the works of Anna Barbaud, Hannah Moore, and Sara Trimmer. Those on the politics and pedagogy of the child include the fate of Scott's Ivanhoe, reactions to stories of heroism in St. Nicholas Magazine, and girls' educational reform in the fiction of L.T. Meade. The volume closes with personal and scholarly memoirs of Myers, as well as a bibliography of her work.

About the Author

Donelle Ruwe is an Assistant Professor of English at Northern Arizona University and is on the Governing Board of the 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Association. She publishes on British children's literature and women writers.