Detailing the development of a new Western attitude to children and their place in society, this book tells the story of Italy's forgotten children at the end of the nineteenth century - foundlings, street children, factory and mine workers, emigrants and delinquents - and illustrates the efforts of the recently unified Italian state to help them.

'A brilliant analysis of Italian concern about marginalised children. Well-written and imaginative, it is essential reading on the relationship between childhood and national identity.' - Hugh Cunningham, author of Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500, 2nd ed 2005

"Carl Ipsen sets out in this absorbing study to demonstrate that the period between the 1870s and the First World War was when Italian society recognized that it needed to take care of its most marginal, mistreated and poor children... Ipsen has a knack of enticing the reader into each of his chapters on the reform campaigns with aptly chosen case studies...[He] has performed a useful service to his profession in documenting in such detail this all-too-human tale of idealism foundering in a harsh material world." - Colin Heywood, Reader in Modern French History, the University of Nottingham

Autorentext
CARL IPSEN is Associate Professor of History, Indiana University, USA.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Introduction: Pinocchio, Child in Danger/Dangerous Child Abandoned Children Emigrating Children Working Children Children Behind Bars: Reformatories and Juvenile Delinquency Salviamo il fanciullo! Epilogue: From Pinocchio to Cuore, Children Inside the Margins Bibliography