Kirjahaku

In 18th through 20th-century British and American literature, school stories always play out the power relationships between adult and child. They also play out gender relationships, especially when females are excluded, although most histories of the genre ignore the unusual novels that probe the gendering of school stories. When the occasional man wrote about girls schools-as Charles Lamb and H. G. Wells did-he sometimes empowered his female characters, granting them freedoms that he had experienced at school.Women who wrote about boys' schools often gave unusual emphasis to families, and at times, revealed the contradictions in the schoolyard code against telling tales or presented competing versions of masculinity, such as the Christian gentleman versus the self-made man. Sometimes these middle-class white women projected their sense of estrangement onto working class and minority women. Sometimes they wrote school stories that were in dialog with other genres, as when Mrs. Henry Wood wrote a sensation story or, like Louisa May Alcott, they domesticated the boys school story, giving prominence to a female viewpoint.

The popularity of the Harry Potter books among adults and the critical acclaim these young adult fantasies have received may seem like a novel literary phenomenon. In the nineteenth century, however, readers considered both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as works of literature equally for children and adults; only later was the former relegated to the category of "boys' books" while the latter, even as it was canonized, came frequently to be regarded as unsuitable for young readers. Adults-women and men-wept over Little Women. And America's most prestigious literary journals regularly reviewed books written for both children and their parents. This egalitarian approach to children's literature changed with the emergence of literary studies as a scholarly discipline at the turn of the twentieth century. Academics considered children's books an inferior literature and beneath serious consideration. In Kiddie Lit, Beverly Lyon Clark explores the marginalization of children's literature in America-and its recent possible reintegration-both within the academy and by the mainstream critical establishment. Tracing the reception of works by Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. Frank Baum, Walt Disney, and J. K. Rowling, Clark reveals fundamental shifts in the assessment of the literary worth of books beloved by both children and adults, whether written for boys or girls. While uncovering the institutional underpinnings of this transition, Clark also attributes it to changing American attitudes toward childhood itself, a cultural resistance to the intrinsic value of childhood expressed through sentimentality, condescension, and moralizing. Clark's engaging and enlightening study of the critical disregard for children's books since the end of the nineteenth century-which draws on recent scholarship in gender, cultural, and literary studies- offers provocative new insights into the history of both children's literature and American literature in general, and forcefully argues that the books our children read and love demand greater respect.

In 18th through 20th-century British and American literature, school stories always play out the power relationships between adult and child. They also play out gender relationships, especially when females are excluded, although most histories of the genre ignore the unusual novels that probe the gendering of school stories. When the occasional man wrote about girls schools-as Charles Lamb and H. G. Wells did-he sometimes empowered his female characters, granting them freedoms that he had experienced at school.Women who wrote about boys' schools often gave unusual emphasis to families, and at times, revealed the contradictions in the schoolyard code against telling tales or presented competing versions of masculinity, such as the Christian gentleman versus the self-made man. Sometimes these middle-class white women projected their sense of estrangement onto working class and minority women. Sometimes they wrote school stories that were in dialog with other genres, as when Mrs. Henry Wood wrote a sensation story or, like Louisa May Alcott, they domesticated the boys school story, giving prominence to a female viewpoint.

The hit Broadway show of 1912; the lost film of 1919; Katharine Hepburn, as Jo, sliding down a banister in George Cukor's 1933 movie; Mark English's shimmering 1967 illustrations; Jo - this time played by Sutton Foster - belting "I'll be / astonishing" in the 2004 Broadway musical flop: these are only some of the markers of the afterlife of Little Women. Then there's the nineteenth-century child who wrote, "If you do not ...make Laurie marry Beth, I will never read another of your books as long as I live." Not to mention Miss Manners, a Little Women devotee, who announced that the book taught her an important life lesson: "Although it's very nice to have two clean gloves, it's even more important to have a little ink on your fingers." In The Afterlife of "Little Women," Beverly Lyon Clark, a leading authority on children's literature, explores these and other after - tremors, both popular and academic, as she maps the reception of Louisa May Alcott's timeless novel, first published in 1868. Clark divides her discussion into four historical periods. The first covers the novel's publication and massive popularity in the late nineteenth century. In the second era - the first three decades of the twentieth century-the novel becomes a nostalgic icon of the domesticity of a previous century, while losing status among the literary and scholarly elite. In its mid-century afterlife (1930-1960), Little Women reaches a low in terms of its critical reputation but remains a well-known piece of Americana within popular culture. The book concludes with a long chapter on Little Women's afterlife from the 1960s to the present - a period in which the reading of the book seems to decline, while scholarly attention expands dramatically and popular echoes continue to proliferate. Drawing on letters and library records as well as reviews, plays, operas, film and television adaptations, spinoff novels, translations, Alcott biographies, and illustrations, Clark demonstrates how the novel resonates with both conservative family values and progressive feminist ones. She grounds her story in criticism of children's literature, book history, cultural studies, feminist criticism, and adaptation studies. Written in an accessible narrative style, The Afterlife of "Little Women" speaks to scholars, librarians, and devoted Alcott fans.