Overview

Drawing on a wealth of material from children's periodicals from the Victorian era to the early twentieth century, Kristine Moruzi examines how the concept of the charitable child has been defined through the press. Charitable ideals became increasingly prevalent at a time of burgeoning social inequities and cultural change, shaping expectations that children were capable of and responsible for charitable giving. While the child as the object of charity has received considerable attention, less focus has been paid to how and why children have been encouraged to help others. Yet the ways in which children were positioned to see themselves as people who could and should help in whatever forms that assistance might take are crucial to understanding how children and childhood were conceptualised in the past. This book uses children's print culture to examine the relationship between children and charitable institutions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to foreground children's active roles.

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9781399521352

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Moruzi offers a compelling study of Anglophone children's charity work over nearly a century. By analysing the rhetorical strategies of periodicals for the young, she provides invaluable insight into the roles of children not only as readers and consumers of philanthropic print material, but also as donors, fundraisers and writers.--Leslee Thorne-Murphy, Brigham Young University

Author Information

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).

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