Artful Dodgers. : Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children's Literature

In this groundbreaking contribution to Victorian and children's literature studies, Marah Gubar proposes a fundamental reconception of the nineteenth-century attitude toward childhood. The ideology of innocence was much slower to spread than we think, she contends, and the people whom we assume were most committed to it--children's authors and members of the infamous "cult of the child"--were actually deeply ambivalent about this Romantic notion. Rather than wholeheartedly promoting a static ideal of childhood purity, Golden Age children's authors often characterize young people as collaborators who are caught up in the constraints of the culture they inhabit, and yet not inevitably victimized as a result of this contact with adults and their world. Such nuanced meditations on the vexed issue of the child's agency, Gubar suggests, can help contemporary scholars to generate more flexible critical approaches to the study of childhood and children's literature. "In this contribution to Victorian and children's literature studies, Marah Gubar proposes a fundamental reconception of the nineteenth-century attitude toward childhood. The ideal and ideology of innocence was much slower to spread than we think, she contends, and the people whom we assume were most committed to it - children's authors and members of the infamous "cult of the child" - were in fact deeply ambivalent about this Romantic notion." "In the process of tracing how Golden Age authors explored the enigmatic issue of the child's agency, Gubar offers a new account of the rise of the child narrator, the vogue for child actors, and the emergence of children's theatre. Artful Dodgers is essential reading for anyone interested in literary and dramatic representations of children."--BOOK JACKET Our field: the rise of the child narrator Collaborating with the enemy: Treasure Island Reciprocal aggression: unromantic agency in the art of Lewis Carroll Partners in crime: E. Nesbit and the art of thieving The cult of the child and the controversy over child actors Burnett, Barrie, and the emergence of children's theatre.