Childhood in Edwardian Fiction

The first book-length look at childhood in Edwardian fiction, this book challenges assumptions that the Edwardian period was simply a continuation of the Victorian or the start of the Modern. Exploring both classics and popular fiction, the authors provide a a compelling picture of the Edwardian fictional cult of childhood.

Contents Notes on Contributors Worlds Enough and Time: The Cult of Childhood in Edwardian Fiction; A. E. Gavin and A. F. Humphries PART I: THE CHILD LOST Pagan Papers: History, Mysticism, and Edwardian Childhood; P. March-Russell Cult or Cull? : Peter Pan and Childhood in the Edwardian Age; K. L. McGavock Intangible Children: Longing, Loss, and the Edwardian Dream Child in J. M. Barrie's The Little White Bird and Rudyard Kipling's 'They'; A. E. Gavin PART II: THE CHILD AT PLAY IN HOME AND GARDEN The Edwardian Child in the Garden: Childhood in the Fiction of Frances Hodgson Burnett; J. Darcy Playing at House and Playing at Home: The Domestic Discourse of Games in Edwardian Fictions of Childhood; M. Beissel Heath Separated Lives and Discordant Homes: The Otherness of Childhood in D. H. Lawrence's Early Fiction; A. F. Humphries PART III: SOCIETY'S CHILD Exhibiting Childhood: E. Nesbit and the Children's Welfare Exhibitions; J. Bavidge 'Girls! Girls, Everywhere!': Angela Brazil's Edwardian School Stories; M. Smith Towards the Modern Man: Edwardian Boyhood in the Juvenile Periodical Press; S. Olsen PART IV: SAVAGERY AND THE CHILD Primitive Minds: Anthropology, Children, and Savages in Andrew Lang and Rudyard Kipling; K. Sands-O'Connor Truth and Claw: The Beastly Children and Childlike Beasts of Saki, Beatrix Potter, and Kenneth Grahame; E. Hale Murdering Adulthood: From Child Killers to Boy Soldiers in Saki's Fiction; B. Gibson Index