From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840–1940 by Michelle J. Smith, Kristine Moruzi, and Clare Bradford (review)

From Colonial to Modern builds on the authors' previous work on British and colonial children's literature: Michelle J. Smith's Empire in British Girls' Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880–1915 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Kristine Moruzi's Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850–1915 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), Clare Brad-ford's Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children's Literature (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2007), and Moruzi and Smith's edited collection Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture, and History, 1840–1950 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). In this new collaboration, the authors explore how the complex network of colonial literature for girls constructs a transnational ideal of girlhood that both serves imperial interests and contributes to emerging national identities. Although the title seems to imply a straightforward trajectory, the authors emphasize that it refers only to the temporal scope of the project. Colonial girlhood is a contested site; hence, the book addresses the complex, ongoing negotiations of transnational identity via representation of girls' bodies, girls' relationships with colonial spaces, and girls' futures.

While the authors give some consideration to British publications, they focus primarily on books and periodicals produced for girls in the British white settler colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, selected for their similarities. (They exclude South Africa because of its differences as a former Dutch colony and relatively small amount of relevant Englishlanguage literature published during the period under consideration.) The even-handed discussion of these three nations is impressive, particularly given the much smaller literary market in New Zealand. They examine novels by well-known authors such as Australian Ethel Turner, New Zealander Phillis Garrard, and Canadian Lucy Maud Montgomery, as well as a range of novels by lesser-known figures. They also discuss periodical material: children's pages and reviews from colonial newspapers, church-and school-sponsored papers, and girls' magazines and annuals. The scope of the project means that some of the discussions are necessarily brief, but the breadth of archival material unearthed will provide inspiration for scholars who wish to build on this work.

The authors divide the book into three sections: "Empire and Transnational Flows," "National and Transnational Dynamics," and "Modernity and Transnational Femininities." The first section comprises chapters on "Colonial Girls' Print Culture" and "Girlhood in the British Empire." The authors review the marketing of British books, periodicals, and annuals to the colonies, making good use of advertisements, book reviews, and correspondence columns in the colonial press. This section also outlines the development of publishing for girls in each of the colonies, including an overview of significant periodicals. Because so much reading material for colonial girls originated in Britain and colonial authors often originally published in Britain (or America, in the case of some Canadian writers), a sophisticated transnational web of colonial girls' literature emerged. This globally produced and disseminated literature, the authors argue, models a transnational girlhood that simultaneously encompasses British imperial values and accommodates colonial anxieties. While the British imperial girl found in the novels of Bessie Marchant, for example, is a homogenizing figure, Smith, Moruzi, and Bradford note the extensive debates about colonial girls' femininity and preparedness for motherhood in the colonial periodical press at the turn of the twentieth century.

With chapters on the colonial girl and family, the relationship of the colonial girl to the natural environment, and treatment of the racial other in girls' literature, the second section of the book addresses in more detail some of the ways in which national differences complicate the figure of the transnational girl. The family motif is, of course, crucial to the imperial project: "Mother" Britain looks after and is served by her colonial "daughters," and daughters of empire serve by becoming mothers of empire. In colonial girls' literature, however, narratives of...