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Reviewed by:
  • Reading Lives: Reconstructing Childhood, Books, and Schools in Britain, 1870–1920
  • David Rudd (bio)
Gretchen R. Galbraith. Reading Lives: Reconstructing Childhood, Books, and Schools in Britain, 1870–1920. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Galbraith has written a very detailed and scholarly text, condensed into 134 pages (plus 33 pages of notes and a 12-page bibliography). It is always good to see someone looking at literature within its social context, following in the wake of others such as Jacqueline Rose, Claudia Nelson, Stephen Prickett, and Kim Reynolds. As Galbraith puts it, “The history of children’s literature must be linked to the history of the literary industry and to the agendas of the adults who wrote, produced, and bought it. It is, finally, records of adult memories and interpretations of children and their literature with which we must work”(3).

Galbraith has chosen a key period in which to look at the reading practices of children. For it was during this period, 1870–1920, that great debates were conducted about the advisability of creating a nation of readers and of what sorts of literature might be suitable for young minds to feed on. In order to deal with the various facets of such a topic, her book is divided into three sections. The first, called “British Childhoods Remembered,” looks at how those who grew up during this period saw not only childhood but also those key institutions that shaped it; namely, the family and education. As Galbraith notes, most autobiographers turn to childhood in order to establish particular notions of identity and to chart their personal development against more general historical change. Childhood is seen as a period in which to locate the origins of later character traits; moreover, it is a time sufficiently distant for writers to speak openly about personal emotional concerns. However, Galbraith also notes the absences in writings of this period; thus, as she notes, “few wrote about sexuality or bodily functions” (10), the exceptions being these that explicitly used a psychoanalytic approach (for example, Helen Corke and Graham Greene).

Galbraith is also keenly aware of the dangers of talking about a monolithic childhood, recognizing that the concept of childhood itself changes over time and across divides of class and gender. Thus she notes that by the 1880s, some form of schooling was becoming the norm, making childhood come to be seen as a protected stage of life—as was increasingly being captured in literary depictions of children, and in decisions on social policy. However, this ideal of a sheltered existence was only fully realized for the middle class, and Galbraith interestingly contrasts reminiscences where nostalgia reigns as opposed to those written with more of a sense of anger and regret. Of particular interest is the notion of childhood’s end captured in these memoirs, which boys [End Page 142] generally found easier to mark than girls, regardless of differences in class.

Galbraith then goes on to examine these writers’ experiences of reading, which, for many, was their first experience of solitary activity and imaginative escape. Again, there are interesting differences across class and gender; for instance, she notes that in working-class autobiographies, women have far fewer chapters on their “intellectual awakening,” having neither such time to read nor to capitalize on their reading. There is some fascinating material here on the context of reading (which often brought members of a family closer together), on censorship, and on the availability of books.

In the second part, “Constructing a Literature of Childhood,” Galbraith moves from childhood to literature, developing her examination of how childhood came to be defined as a separate and protected realm. Again, she is aware of the larger context, situating this around concerns over the future of the British “race” and the problems of creating a unified children’s literature, as opposed to one divided by gender and class. While seeking to construct this realm of security, there was an awareness that many working-class children could not be part of it; in fact, that they might contaminate this ideal image with disturbing stories of child exploitation, cruelty, and sexual abuse. Galbraith illustrates this by comparing responses to the...

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