After the first phase of industrialization in Britain, the child emerged as both a victim of and a threat to capitalism. This book explores the changing relationship between the child and capitalist society in the works of some of the most important writers of children's and young-adult texts in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

'...Parkes's book is an insightful contribution to the scholarship on youth and capitalism, which deserves more attention from the fields of children's literature and childhood studies' Troy Boone, Children's Literature Association Quarterly

Autorentext
CHRISTOPHER PARKES is associate professor in English Literature at Lakehead University, Canada. He is the author of scholarly articles on children's literature and eighteenth-century literature.

Inhalt
Introduction Dead Ends and Blind Alleys: Young-Adult Literature and the Nineteenth-Century British Labour Market Family Business and Childhood Experience: Charles Dickens's David Copperfield and Great Expectations Adventure Fiction and the Youth Problem: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped Commercialism and Middle-Class Innocence: E. Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers and The Railway Children Educational Tracking and the Feminized Classroom: Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden The Female Life History and the Labour Market: L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Anne's House of Dreams Conclusion: Childhood in the Age of Self-Branding Bibliography Index