In Their Own Words: Child Writers and the 19th-Century Press

Nineteenth-century children became published authors in record numbers, offering innovative contributions to the new media of their day. As my study shows, with the rise of celebrity authorship, children’s literacy, and the information age, the trend toward publishing nineteenth-century children’s writing was far more commonplace and widespread than has been previously recognized. When we read children—in their own words—we find vital and often surprising documentation of children’s views on death and mortality, work and literary labor, and literacy and storytelling.