British Children's Literature and Material Culture: Commodities and Consumption 1850-1914

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Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll (Ussher Assistant Professor in Children’s Literature, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) Lisa Sainsbury (University of Roehampton UK)

British Children's Literature and Material Culture

Commodities and Consumption 1850-1914

Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll (Ussher Assistant Professor in Children’s Literature, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), Lisa Sainsbury (University of Roehampton UK)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
18 May 2023

Series: Bloomsbury Perspectives on Children's Literature

The ‘golden age’ of children’s literature in the late 19th and early 20th century coincided with a boom in the production and trade of commodities. The first book-length study to situate children’s literature within the consumer culture of this period, British Children's Literature and Material Culture explores the intersection of children’s books, consumerism and the representation of commodities within British children’s literature. In tracing the role of objects in key texts from the turn of the century, Jane Suzanne Carroll uncovers the connections between these fictional objects and the real objects that child consumers bought, used, cherished, broke, and threw away. Beginning with the Great Exhibition of 1851, this book takes stock of the changing attitudes towards consumer culture – a movement from celebration to suspicion – to demonstrate that children’s literature was a key consumer product, one that influenced young people’s views of and relationships with other kinds of commodities.

Drawing on a wide spectrum of well-known and less familiar texts from Britain, this book examines works from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There and E. Nesbit’s Five Children & It to Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses and Mary Louisa Molesworth’s The Cuckoo Clock. Placing children’s fiction alongside historical documents, shop catalogues, lost property records, and advertisements, Carroll provides fresh critical insight into children’s relationships with material culture and reveals that even the most fantastic texts had roots in the ordinary, everyday things.

By: Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll (Ussher Assistant Professor in Children’s Literature Trinity College Dublin Ireland)
Edited by: Lisa Sainsbury (University of Roehampton UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781350201828
ISBN 10: 1350201820
Series: Bloomsbury Perspectives on Children's Literature
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 18 May 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction 'Devoured by a Desire to Possess': Children's literature, commodities and consumption Children's books as commodities and vehicles for consumerism Children's books and the creation of new products Reading objects Structure of this book Chapter One Remarkable and perplexing items: Children and the Great Exhibition Learning to look Getting lost Guiding children Head, hand & heart The world of goods Conclusion Chapter Two The wonders of common things: Worldly goods in the nineteenth century The history of the it-narrative Children's it-narratives The History of a Pin The Story of a Needle 'A China Cup' The wonders of common things Conclusion Chapter Three A hailstorm of knitting needles: Otherworldly goods and domestic fantasy Commodity fetishism Spiritualism and fiction The rise of domestic fantasy Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There Speaking likenesses The cuckoo clock Conclusion Chapter Four ‘A Disgraceful State of Things’: Bad consumers and bad commodities Bad things and bad consumers in E. Nesbit's writing for children Bad things in Nesbit's work The Enchanted Castle and the live thing Bad mice and crooked sixpences: Material deviance in Beatrix Potter's work The (mis)adventures of Mr Toad Conclusion Conclusions Failed palaces and magic cities References

Jane Suzanne Carroll is Ussher Assistant Professor in Children’s Literature at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She has published a monograph, Landscape in Children’s Literature (2012), as well as articles on Susan Cooper, Jules Verne, J.R.R. Tolkien, ghost stories, and children’s fantasy.

Reviews for British Children's Literature and Material Culture: Commodities and Consumption 1850-1914

This is a brilliantly fresh account of the relationship between children, children's literature and consumer culture. In tracing the trajectory from Victorian books that enthusiastically teach children to be appreciative and discerning consumers to Edwardian works that show the relationship between children and the bought objects around them as fraught and sometimes frightening, Jane Suzanne Carroll takes in science, manufacturing, seances, magic and mysterious deaths. The writing is lively and often witty, making this as entertaining as it is informative. * Professor Kimberley Reynolds, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University, UK *