Victorian Baby in Print
«Wagner does a terrific job of engaging both with the popular culture of childrearing manuals and-sometimes less familiar-Victorian children's and sensation literature as well as the famous work of Charles Dickens, for instance, and her book is in this respect a real treasure-trove of sections on babies and infants drawn from this wide range of sources.»
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Modern Language Review
The Victorian Baby in Print: Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture explores the representation of babyhood in Victorian Britain. The first study to focus exclusively on the baby in nineteenth-century literature and culture, this critical analysis discusses the changing roles of an iconic figure. Les mer
attitudes to infancy really were, but also challenges persistent cliches surrounding the literary baby that emerged or were consolidated at the time, and which are largely still with us. Drawing on a variety of texts, including novels by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and
Charlotte Yonge, as well as parenting magazines of the time, childrearing manuals, and advertisements, this study analyses how their representations of infancy and infant care utilised and shaped an iconography that has become definitional of the Victorian age itself. The familiar cliches surrounding the Victorian baby have had a lasting impact on the way we see both the Victorians and babies, and a critical reconsideration might also prompt a self-critical reconsideration of the still
burgeoning market for infant care advice today.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Oxford University Press
- Innbinding
- Innbundet
- Språk
- Engelsk
- ISBN
- 9780198858010
- Utgivelsesår
- 2020
- Format
- 3 x 16 cm
Anmeldelser
«Wagner does a terrific job of engaging both with the popular culture of childrearing manuals and-sometimes less familiar-Victorian children's and sensation literature as well as the famous work of Charles Dickens, for instance, and her book is in this respect a real treasure-trove of sections on babies and infants drawn from this wide range of sources.»
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Modern Language Review
«In this masterful exploration of literary babies, Wagner exposes the many roles that babies have in Victorian writing ... Thoroughly researched and grounded in historical debates on infant care, this book offers a complex picture of infant characterization ... Wagner investigates the contradictory nature of idealized versus strictly commodified babies in ways that will resonate today. Scholars of the Victorian Age will appreciate this close examination of the youngest literary characters.»
C. L. Bandish, CHOICE