The Victorian Era in Twenty-First Century Children’s and Adolescent Literature and Culture

Victorian literature for audiences of all ages provides a broad foundation upon which to explore complex and evolving ideas about young people. In turn, this collection argues, contemporary works for young people that draw on Victorian literature and culture ultimately reflect our own disruptions and upheavals, particularly as they relate to child and adolescent readers and our experiences of them. The essays therein suggest that we struggle now, as the Victorians did then, to assert a cohesive understanding of young readers, and that this lack of cohesion is a result of or a parallel to the disruptions taking place on a larger (even global) scale.

Sonya Sawyer Fritz is an associate professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas. Her work has appeared in Neo-Victorian Studies, Girlhood Studies, and several essay collections.

Sara K. Day is an assistant professor of English at Truman State University and the author of Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Fiction. She has also served as associate editor of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly and co-editor (with Miranda Green-Barteet and Amy. L Montz) of Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction.