 | Juvenile Literature and British Society, 1850-1950 : The Age of Adolescence In this study, Charles Ferrall and Anna Jackson argue that the Victorians created a concept of adolescence that lasted into the twentieth century and yet is strikingly at odds with post-Second World War notions of adolescence as a period of "storm and stress." In the enormously popular "juvenile" literature of the period, primarily boys' and girls' own adventure and school stories, adolescence is acknowledged as a time of sexual awareness and yet also of a romantic idealism that is lost with marriage, a time when boys and girls acquire adult duties and responsibilities and yet have not had to assume the roles of breadwinner or household manager. The book reveals a concept of adolescence as significant as the Romantic cult of childhood that preceded it, which will be of interest to scholars of both children's literature and Victorian culture. Anna Jackson is a poet and academic, born in 1967. She received a DPhil from Oxford University and currently teaches English literature at Victoria University of Wellington. She has written several poetry collections including Thicket and I, Clodia, and Other Portraits. She is also the author of Diary Poetics: Form and Style in Writers' Diaries 1915-1962 and British Juvenile Fiction 1850-1950: The Age of Adolescence written with Charles Ferrall. In 2015 she won the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. This fellowship provides the winner with a three-month residency in Menton, France, and a monetary award of NZ$35,000. Her novella, The Bed-Making Competition (2018), won a 2018 Viva la Novella prize. (Bowker Author Biography) |
