Dickens and the Imagined Child
Dickens and the Imagined Child

Author: Peter Merchant

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1317151208

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The figure of the child and the imaginative and emotional capacities associated with children have always been sites of lively contestation for readers and critics of Dickens. In Dickens and the Imagined Child, leading scholars explore the function of the child and childhood within Dickens’s imagination and reflect on the cultural resonance of his engagement with this topic. Part I of the collection examines the Dickensian child as both characteristic type and particular example, proposing a typology of the Dickensian child that is followed by discussions of specific children in Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House. Part II focuses on the relationship between childhood and memory, by examining the various ways in which the child’s-eye view was reabsorbed into Dickens’s mature sensibility. The essays in Part III focus upon reading and writing as particularly significant aspects of childhood experience; from Dickens’s childhood reading of tales of adventure, they move to discussion of the child readers in his novels and finally to a consideration of his own early writings alongside those that his children contributed to the Gad’s Hill Gazette. The collection therefore builds a picture of the remembered experiences of childhood being realised anew, both by Dickens and through his inspiring example, in the imaginative creations that they came to inform. While the protagonist of David Copperfield-that 'favourite child' among Dickens’s novels-comes to think of his childhood self as something which he 'left behind upon the road of life', for Dickens himself, leafing continually through his own back pages, there can be no putting away of childish things.

Children Remembered
Children Remembered

Author: Robert Woods

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1846310210

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Children Remembered discusses the relationship between parents and children in the past. It focuses on the ways in which adults responded to the untimely deaths of children, whether and how they expressed their grief. The study engages with the hypothesis of 'parental indifference' associated with the French cultural historian Philippe Ariès by analysing the changing risk of mortality since the sixteenth century and assessing its consequences. It uses paintings and poems to describe feelings and emotions in ways that are not only highly original, but also challenge traditional disciplinary conventions. The circumstances of infant and child mortality are considered for France and England, while example portraits and poems are selected from England and America. While the work is firmly grounded in demography, it is especially concerned with current debates in social and cultural history, with the history of childhood, the way pictorial images can be 'read', and the use as historical evidence to which literature may be put. This is a wide- ranging and ambitions multi-disciplinary study that will add significantly to our understanding of demographic structures; the ways in which they have conditioned attitudes and behaviour in the past.

Reading Blake's Songs
Reading Blake's Songs

Author: Zachary Leader

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-11

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 131738122X

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First appearing in 1981, this book was the first full-length study of the Songs of Innocence and Experience to be published in almost fifteen years. The book provides detailed readings of each poem and its accompanying design, to redirect attention to the nature and achievement of the book as a whole, to Songs as a single, carefully unified work of verbal and visual art. Particularly close attention is paid, not only to the designs Blake etched to accompany his poems, but also to the many books and treatises for and about children to which, it is argued, Songs alludes or is indebted. Like so many important works of this period, Songs is shown to be autobiographical in nature, one of Blake’s attempts to order and account for the conflicts and crises of his own art and life. Its story is that of an artist’s growth into and out of vision, and of his gradual realization of the dangers and deficiencies of the prophetic mode.

Child Workers in England, 1780–1820
Child Workers in England, 1780–1820

Author: Katrina Honeyman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-23

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1317167953

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The use of child workers was widespread in textile manufacturing by the late eighteenth century. A particularly vital supply of child workers was via the parish apprenticeship trade, whereby pauper children could move from the 'care' of poor law officialdom to the 'care' of early industrial textile entrepreneurs. This study is the first to examine in detail both the process and experience of parish factory apprenticeship, and to illuminate the role played by children in early industrial expansion. It challenges prevailing notions of exploitation which permeate historical discussion of the early labour force and questions both the readiness with which parishes 'offloaded' large numbers of their poor children to distant factories, and the harsh discipline assumed to have been universal among early factory masters. Finally the author explores the way in which parish apprentices were used to construct a gendered labour force. Dr Honeyman's book is a major contribution to studies in child labour and to the broader social, economic, and business history of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.

Hard At Work In Factories And Mines
Hard At Work In Factories And Mines

Author: Carolyn Tuttle

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-11-28

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0429701500

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Children have worked for centuries and continue to work. The history of the economic development of Europe and North America includes numerous instances of child labor. Manufacturers in England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Prussia as well as the United States used child labor during the initial stages of industrialization. In addition, child labor prevails currently in many industries in the Third World. This book examines the explanations for child labor in an economic context. A model of the labor market for children is constructed using the new economics of the family framework to derive the supply of child labor and the traditional labor theory of marginal productivity to derive the demand for child labor. The model is placed into a historical context and is used to test the existing supply-and-demand-induced explanations for an increase in child labor during the British Industrial Revolution. Evidence on the extent of childrens employment, their specific tasks and trends in their wages from the textile industry and mining industry is used to support the argument that it was technological innovation which created a demand for child labor. Certain mechanical inventions and process innovations increased the demand for child labor in three ways: increasing number of assistants needed; increasing the substitutability between children and adults, and creating work situations that only children could fill. Specific innovations in the production of textiles and in the extraction of coal, copper and tin are highlighted to show how they favored the use of child workers over adult workers. The book concludes with a look at the current situations in developing countries where child labor is prevalent. Considerable insight is gained on the role of child labor in economic development when this historical model is applied to the contemporary situation.

The British Toy Business
The British Toy Business

Author: Kenneth D. Brown

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9781852851361

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At its height British toymaking was a significant industry, with famous names such as Britains and Meccano known throughout the world. While in essence a specialised form of small-scale engineering, its products and market have always been unique, reflecting the current priorities of both parents and children. Yet, while individual toys and marques have been catalogued extensively, no previous history of toymaking as a whole exists. The British Toy Business provides a fascinating example of the development of a specific industry. Many early early toys were home-made. From the eighteenth century, with its growing recognition of children as something other than small adults, date the beginnings of specialised toys, usually produced by small workshops and sold by street-sellers. The nineteenth century, with its industrial growth and middle-class prosperity, saw an expansion of toymaking. The 1960s and 1970s were the most successful years of British toymaking, with companies like Lesney making record profits. Yet British toy makers failed to solve a number of fundamental problems. Following an unexpected sudden downturn in sales at a time of high interest rates, the major names in British toy making, Lesney, Airfix, Mettoy and Dunbee Combex Marx, all collapsed between 1979 and 1985, leaving the business to be dominated largely by importers.

International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture
International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture

Author: Kirsten Drotner

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2008-02-19

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 1446206645

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This essential volume brings together the work of internationally-renowned researchers, each experts in their field, in order to capture the diversity of children and young people′s media cultures around the world. Why are the media such a crucial part of children′s daily lives? Are they becoming more important, more influential, and in what ways? Or does a historical perspective reveal how past media have long framed children′s cultural horizons or, perhaps, how families - however constituted - have long shaped the ways children relate to media? In addressing such questions, the contributors present detailed empirical cases to uncover how children weave together diverse forms and technologies to create a rich symbolic tapestry which, in turn, shapes their social relationships. At the same time, many concerns - even public panics - arise regarding children′s engagement with media, leading the contributors also to inquire into the risky or problematic aspects of today′s highly mediated world. Deliberately selected to represent as many parts of the globe as possible, and with a commitment to recognizing both the similarities and differences in children and young people′s lives - from China to Denmark, from Canada to India, from Japan to Iceland, from - the authors offer a rich contextualization of children′s engagement with their particular media and communication environment, while also pursuing cross-cutting themes in terms of comparative and global trends. Each chapter provides a clear orientation for new readers to the main debates and core issues addressed, combined with a depth of analysis and argumentation to stimulate the thinking of advanced students and established scholars. Since children and young people are a focus of study across different disciplines, the volume is thoroughly multi-disciplinary. Yet since children and young people are all too easily neglected by these same disciplines, this volume hopes to accord their interests and concerns they surely merit.