In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Sociologizing Juvenile Ephemera:Periodical Contradictions, Popular Literacy, Transhistorical Readers
  • Mitzi Myers (bio)
Drotner, Kirsten . English Children and Their Magazines, 1751-1945. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988.

Corresponding with Sir Walter Scott about the sometimes startling changes in literary taste they'd witnessed over their lifetimes, Lady Louisa Stuart pondered, "What we call the taste of the age, in books as in anything else, naturally influences more or less those who belong to that age . . . . But how comes it to affect those who are as yet of no age . . . ?" (Stuart 235 4 Sept. 1826). Had we answers or sure means to answers, the constitution of subjectivity, of gender, of culture itself might be revealed to us. Although the history of reading practices is becoming a sexy topic, with relevant studies regularly appearing and a division session at the 1991 MLA meeting, the old question remains as tantalizing as when it was first posed.1 Kirsten Drotner's study of children's periodical reading aligns itself with this emergent subdivision in studies of print culture.

As Drotner's Acknowledgements indicate, her study has indeed been "a long time in the making." Her bibliography lists a 1977 work in Danish, and her 1983 Feminist Studies essay on early twentieth-century girls' periodicals describes her book as forthcoming from Temple University Press.2 Instead, in 1985 Aarhus University published substantially the same text as this 1988 version under the title More Next Week! with the main title above as subtitle. Although most chapters bear traces of some revision, only the introduction differs radically.3 Readers interested in periodicals, popular culture, and attempts to apply reader response theory to historical juvenile literature will want to look at the 1985 introduction because it clarifies the methodology that the rewrite mystifies. Although her bland title suggests a comprehensive historical overview, Drotner's aim is very different. A senior research fellow in cultural sociology at the University of Copenhagen, she shapes her analysis according to her disciplinary interests; in fact, she focuses on a limited number of periodicals and doesn't survey most of those cited in detail. A good part of the book is background data (whole chapters go by without textual reference), and when Drotner actually does talk about texts, her analysis is highly "contextual," not literary.

Since studies of historical juvenile periodicals are sparse indeed, we need approaches of many different kinds, sociological among them.4 Before I consider what Drotner promises and what she accomplishes, what her study doesn't attempt seems worth noting. Researchers needing a map to the bewildering terrain of juvenile ephemera will not find it here. The list of primary sources, already skimpy compared to the hundreds of titles issued, purports to include only material analyzed, but even of these, many are not actually discussed at length in the text. The alphabetical source list provides only dates of publication—no content analysis, no reference source, no locales. British juvenilia do not boast a bibliographical tool comparable to R. Gordon Kelly's 1984 guide to one hundred American children's periodicals. Kelly doesn't claim to have netted everything, but he does provide a most helpful register of titles, dates, editors, policies, contributors, contents, information sources, and libraries with holdings.5 Work like this may seem ploddingly bibliographic in contrast to Drotner's sociological sweep, but it's the necessary substratum on which informed historical research must be based.

By contrast with Kelly's, Sheila Egoff's 1951 census of British periodicals is much less adequate; even though many works are cited, place and date only are given. The author's introductory overview, like much of what used to pass for historical analysis, is in thrall to what Jerome McGann has termed the "Romantic Ideology." McGann and other new historicists refer specifically to the way that Romantic writers' vocabulary and ideology have governed later critical reading of their works. But if the Romantics' fiat paralyzed investigation of their own literary production, still more has the Wordsworthian natural boy blighted analysis of earlier juvenile literature, unless in the chapbook or fairy tale form that the Romantics privileged (neither, of course, originally intended for children).6 Egoff, for example, writes...

pdf

Share