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  • What is Adolescent Fiction?
  • Jerry Griswold (bio)

(These remarks were originally delivered at a panel on Adolescent Literature at the Modern Language Association Convention in Los Angeles, December, 1982.)

This is a genuine question for me. I've asked university professors, and had this answer: "Oh, you know. Teenage novels. Drugs and sex. You'll find them in the drugstore next to complexion remedies." I've asked book dealers, who take me to a back section of the store and point out novels by Virginia Hamilton, Julia Cunningham, Paul Zindel, S. E. Hinton, Paula Danziger, Robert Cormier, and—after a lot of eyeballing to gauge my mettle—Judy Blume. When I ask professors and book dealers if there is any classic adolescent literature, anything written before 1940, they all scratch their heads in puzzlement. That is where I'd like to begin—with the classics.

I refer to my teaching specialty as children's literature. I teach the classics of children's literature (since I have most students for so short a time I can't, in conscience, do anything else). When I teach my courses, I make two observations: first, children don't have to appear in children's literature; second, some children's literature was not originally intended soley for children. (Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress can serve as illustrations). So, I call children's literature the literary works children also or particularly like.

It seems to me that this is a sensible model to use in defining adolescent fiction. Adolescent fiction does not require the appearance of an adolescent, nor does the work have to have been originally intended for adolescents. Adolescent fiction is composed of the novels that adolescents also or particularly like.

Now, what are those works? For the last couple of years, my friend Amy Wallace and I have been collaborating on a study of what famous people read when they were young. We have been writing to people and also, looking at similar surveys—notably, Evelyn Byrne's Attacks of Taste, Otto Penzler's Books I Read When I Was Young, and a survey conducted by the Public Library of Mobile, Alabama. This research indicates one way of answering the question, "What is adolescent fiction?"

Two letters in particular mention most of the books that come up most often in responses others have made. The first is from Marianne Moore:

As a teenager, I liked: Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood; Kidnapped and Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson; Lorna Doone by Blackmore; Grimm's Fairy Tales; Lang's Fairy Books (the Red and Yellow in particular); the Brownie books by Palmer Cox; Captains Couragous by Kipling; Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin; nearly all of G. A. Henty; What Mother Nature Told Her Children; Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales; The Pied Piper of Hamelin; Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates; and Dickens' David Copperfield.

The second letter is from Henry Miller:

The following authors gave me delight during my teens: Jack London, Conan Doyle, Henry Sienkiewicz, Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Sir Walter Scott, Ernest Thompson Seton, Edgar Allan Poe, Lew Wallace, Ouida, G. A. Henty, and James Fenimore Cooper.

To this catalog, we would have to add two selections of books that were frequently mentioned by others and that were particular favorites of Tennessee Williams: the Alice books of Lewis Carroll and the Oz books of L. Frank Baum. Allen Tate and Gore Vidal insist upon the inclusion of The Arabian Nights. Vidal also mentions all of the books of E. Nesbit—an author who was a favorite on Madeline L'Engle's list right next to L. M. Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables fame) and Oscar Wilde (for his fairy tales). Wind in the Willows is a favorite of both Lloyd Alexander and Julia Cunningham, though Cunningham's own favorites also include The Secret Garden and James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks.

I have, of course, deliberately chosen the responses of writers. To show that these are representative, let me mention the adolescent favorites of another person—Ronald Reagan. During his adolescence, Reagan used to make twice-weekly trips to the public library...

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