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Present But Unaccounted For: The Canadian Young Adult Short Story of the Nineteenth Century Conies of Age JEAN STRINGAM HOSE OF US GIVEN to celebrating age milestones in adolescent literature will want to take special note of the following announcement : "The Canadian Young Adult Short Story Turns 123 Years Old in 1999." Some would have adolescent literature be a postmodernist occurrence dating from The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1967) or, more expansively , a half-century-old endeavour beginning with Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly (1942), but this would be to ignore the hundreds of stories written by Canadians, and about Canada and Canadians, the first of which began to appear in 1876 and thereafter in the most popular and influential of the U. S. children's magazines. Judging from the overwhelming number of adolescent protagonists in these stories who are specifically described by their authors as being between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, the target market was undoubtedly the Young Adult. Caroline Hunt's article in the Spring 1996 Children's Literature Association Quarterly (4-11) is correct in asserting that Young Adult literature has been neglected by theorists; but in no respect can it be said to come into existence in the twentiethcentury. The four periodicals selected as the focus of this paper, St. Nicholas: A Magazine for Boys and Girls (1870-1943), Harper's Young People (18791899 ), Golden Days for Boys and Girls (1880-1907), and Youth's Companion (1882-1928), contain numerous short stories by Canadian authors still recognized today for their contributions in adult literature: CharlesG. D. Roberts , SaraJeannette Duncan, E. W.Thomson, and Marjorie L. C. Pickthall. Other Canadian authors publishing in these periodicals, such as L. M. Montgomery, Norman Duncan, and Marshall Saunders, continue to be T 54 applauded as setting the standard in children's literature on an international level. But beyond these well-known names exists the works of lesserknown or entirely forgotten authors whose hundreds of stories form the formidable bulk of texts that need and deserve to be evaluated as a genre, as an art, and as an ethos of an age. Canadians were favoured with wide publication in these journals, and the realistic animal stories of writers such as Charles G. D. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton brought an international reputation to their authors as well as to their Canadian subjects. Since these stories have been treated with critical vigour by a number of theorists, this paper will not consider them even though they comprise a very large portion of the periodical literature. Rather, I will consider broad issues such as class considerations , gender differentiation, and nineteenth-century racial stereotypes. Using R. Gordon Movies' research published in Canadian Children's Literature (1995) as a base, this paper will sample approximately forty years of the Young Adult short story beginning in 1876 with Mrs. C. E. Groser's "A Summer Ride in Labrador," published in St. Nicholas, and ending in 1914 when WorldWar I forcibly altered the existing social structures. Mrs. Groser's story maynever need to see the light of day again, but I begin with it because, after all, it is the first story published by a Canadian in these periodicals, and it does sound manyof the basic themes that were to become the hallmarks of the Canadian contingent. Three daughters of a missionary stationed in Labrador gain parental permission to take the family's dog-team and sled out on an early morning ride to say goodbye to friends leaving the camaraderie of the winter settlement for their solitary summer fishing cove. Adventures follow the journey: the dogs fight those of another team; the girls prevent being overturned only by jumping out of the sled prior to the mishap; they must then recapture the dogs. The return journey is also eventful: one adolescent sister dallies in her clam digging, making the sisters' departure close to midday,when the river is in danger of melting from the June sun; the runaway dog-team chases after a deer and is only stopped when the girls run the sleigh into a tree; the ice on the river melts under the sleigh runners; and the father at home encourages the sled dogs to their utmost effort in beating the ice break-up by feeding upwind the dogs who remain at home. Unfortunately the story seems to strain for danger, despite it being always genuinely and amply present, so that the author is immediately under suspicion of writing from someone...

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