New Book on Children’s Vegetarian Cultures in Victorian Periodicals

Cover of Marzena Kubisz’s new book, Children’s Vegetarian Cultures in the Victorian Era (2024), courtesy of Routledge.

Congratulations to Marzena Kubisz on the publication of her new book with Routledge press, Children’s Vegetarian Culture in the Victorian Era: The Juvenile Food Reformers Press and Literary Change (2024)!

According to the publisher’s description, “This book fills a unique gap in the research on the cultural history of vegetarianism and veganism, children’s literature and Victorian periodicals, and it is the first publication to systematically describe the phenomenon of Victorian children’s vegetarianism and its representations in literature and culture.

“Situated in the broad socio-literary context spanning the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the book lays the groundwork for contemporary children’s vegan literature and argues that present ethical and environmental concerns can be traced back to the Victorian period. Following the current turn in contemporary research on children, their experience and their voices, the author examines children’s vegetarian culture through the prism of the periodicals aimed directly at them. It analyses how vegetarian principles were communicated to children and listens to the voices of children who were vegetarians, and who tested their newly formed identity in the pages of three magazines published between 1893 and 1914: The Daisy Basket, The Children’s Garden and The Children’s Realm.”

About the Author

Marzena Kubisz is an Associate Professor in literary studies in the Institute of Literary Studies, University of Silesia, Poland. Her academic interests are in cultural history of vegetarianism, vegan studies, Victorian culture, periodicals studies, animal studies and children’s literature.

Marzena’s work appeared in Victorian Periodical Review and she has contributed a book chapter to The Routledge Handbook of Vegan Studies. She is an organiser of Polish annual vegan studies seminars and an Associate Editor of the Polish academic journal Er(r)go. Theory-Literature-Culture. Research on Children’s Vegetarian Culture in the Victorian Era was funded by an RSVP Curran Fellowship and the University of Silesia Research Excellence Initiative.