Juvenile Literature and British Society, 1850-1950: The Age of Adolescence

This study argues that the Victorians and Edwardians created a cult of adolescence as significant as the Romantic cult of childhood, positing adolescence as a liminal period between childhood and adulthood, a time that adults could remember nostalgically but which for children leaving home represented a potentially terrifying immersion into a strictly hierarchical and authoritarian world. "Juvenile" literature was able to accommodate the potentially radical Romantic concepts of childhood to the demands of middle class society. The adolescent was the exemplary figure of the Victorian and Edwardian society because he or she epitomised both its freedoms and restrictions.Ferrall, Charles is the author of 'Juvenile Literature and British Society, 1850-1950: The Age of Adolescence', published 2009 under ISBN 9780415964760 and ISBN 0415964768.