New Book on Periodicals and “The Charitable Child”
Kristine Moruzi is pleased to announce the publication of Philanthropy in Children’s Periodicals, 1840-1930: The Charitable Child (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)!
As the publisher succinctly states, “Drawing on a wealth of material from children’s periodicals from the Victorian era to the early twentieth century, Kristine Moruzi examines how the concept of the charitable child has been defined through the press.” The book highlights how children’s periodicals contributed to the development of charitable ideals for children between 1840 and 1930, and considers the role of middle- and working-class children as charitable donors. As the first book-length study on this topic, the text’s interventions make the power of the press clear: “While the child as the object of charity has received considerable attention, less focus has been paid to how and why children have been encouraged to help others. Yet the ways in which children were positioned to see themselves as people who could and should help – in whatever forms that assistance might take – are crucial to understanding how children and childhood were conceptualised in the past.” The book therefore demonstrates how children’s magazines and children’s columns encouraged young people to undertake charitable work by considering their agency, motivations, subjectivity, and habits. It also highlights the transnational circulation of charitable ideas for young people.
Congratulations, Kristine!
About the Author
Kristine Moruzi is Associate Professor in the School of Communications and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She researches historical and contemporary children’s literature, with a particular focus on children’s periodicals and representations of gender. Her other monographs include From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children’s Literature (1840–1940) (2018, with Michelle J. Smith and Clare Bradford) and Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850–1915 (2012). She is co-editor of Literary Cultures and Nineteenth-Century Childhoods (2023), Children’s Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2019), Affect, Emotion, and Children’s Literature: Representation and Socialisation in Texts for Children and Young Adults (2017), Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840–1950 (2014), and Girls’ School Stories, 1749–1929 (2014).
