The Edinburgh History of Children's Periodicals - by Kristine Moruzi & Beth Rodgers & Michelle J Smith (Hardcover)

About the Book

The most wide-ranging study of the history of children's periodicals to date

Book Synopsis

Since the publication of the first children's periodical in the 1750s, magazines have been an affordable and accessible way for children to read and form virtual communities. Despite the range of children's periodicals that exist, they have not been studied to the same extent as children's literature. The Edinburgh History of Children's Periodicals marks the first major history of magazines for young people from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. Bringing together periodicals from Britain, Ireland, North America, Australia, New Zealand and India, this book explores the roles of gender, race and national identity in the construction of children as readers and writers. It provides new insights both into how child readers shaped the magazines they read and how magazines have encouraged children to view themselves as political and world subjects.

From the Back Cover

[headline]The most wide-ranging study of the history of children's periodicals to date Since the publication of the first children's periodical in the 1750s, magazines have been an affordable and accessible way for children to read and form virtual communities. Despite the range of children's periodicals that exist, they have not been studied to the same extent as children's literature. The Edinburgh History of Children's Periodicals marks the first major history of magazines for young people from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. Bringing together periodicals from Britain, Ireland, North America, Australia, New Zealand and India, this book explores the roles of gender, race and national identity in the construction of children as readers and writers. It provides new insights both into how child readers shaped the magazines they read and how magazines have encouraged children to view themselves as political and world subjects. [editor bios]Kristine Moruzi is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Australia. Beth Rodgers is Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Aberystwyth University, Wales. Michelle J. Smith is an Associate Professor of Literary Studies at Monash University, Australia.

Review Quotes

By juxtaposing studies of historical and contemporary magazines, examinations of general and niche titles, and explorations of periodicals from across and beyond the English-speaking world, the editors and contributors have provided invaluable insights into a complex and diverse field. Researchers will find this a crucial companion.--Claudia Nelson, Texas A&M University

About the Author

Kristine Moruzi is Associate Professor in the School of Communications and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She researches historical and contemporary children's literature, with a particular focus on children's periodicals and representations of gender. Her other monographs include From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature (1840-1940) (2018, with Michelle J. Smith and Clare Bradford) and Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 (2012). She is co-editor of Literary Cultures and Nineteenth-Century Childhoods (2023), Children's Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2019), Affect, Emotion, and Children's Literature: Representation and Socialisation in Texts for Children and Young Adults (2017), Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840-1950 (2014), and Girls' School Stories, 1749-1929 (2014).

Beth Rodgers is Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. She is the author of Adolescent Girlhood and Literary Culture at the Fin de Siècle: Daughters of Today (Palgrave, 2016), which received Special Mention in the University English Book Prize in 2017, and co-editor of Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s-1900s (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and Children's Literature on the Move: Nations, Translations, Migrations (Four Courts, 2013). She has also published widely on the Irish author, L.T. Meade.

Michelle J. Smith is an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Monash University, Australia. Her most recent monograph is Consuming Female Beauty: British Literature and Periodicals, 1840-1914 (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). In the field of children's literature, she is the author of From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940 (University of Toronto Press, 2018, with Clare Bradford and Kristine Moruzi) and Empire in British Girls' Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880-1915 (Palgrave, 2011). Her co-edited collections include Literary Cultures and Nineteenth-Century Childhoods (Palgrave, in press), Young Adult Gothic Fiction: Monstrous Selves/Monstrous Others (University of Wales Press, 2021), Victorian Environments: Acclimatizing to Change in British Domestic and Colonial Culture (Palgrave, 2018), Affect, Emotion and Children's Literature: Representation and Socialisation in Texts for Children and Young Adults (Routledge, 2017), Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840-1950 (Palgrave, 2014), and Girls' School Stories, 1749-1929 (Routledge, 2013).