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British and Commonwealth Literary Studies
Victorian and Edwardian Popular Fiction
   
The Collection
Location: Department of Special Collections, Green Library
Finding Guides: Individual titles are listed in Socrates by author
and title. A complete catalog of the collection
is also available online or in printed form in the Reading Room of the Department
of Special Collections.
Research Access and Use: Materials in the Department of
Special Collections are non-circulating and must be used in the
Special Collections' Reading Room in the Cecil H. Green Library.
The Reading Room is open 10:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday.
Photocopies, photographs, and microfilm can be made of some materials
in the collections. For more information about the collections
and access policies, please contact Special Collections by telephone
at (650) 725-1022, by electronic mail at speccollref@stanford.edu or by regular mail at the Department of Special Collections, Stanford
University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305-6004.
Content: A collection of 450 books of fiction produced from about
1860 to the end of the First World War. These books, frequently directed
at juveniles, presented cautionary tales which extolled the virtues of hard
work and piety as a route to social achievement, having the primary function
of altering behavior in the working classes to conform with social norms.
Many of them were issued by the great religious publishers and were often
explicitly moral and improving in tone. An outgrowth of the Sunday School
and Charity Movements and their push to educate the children of the poor
in the expanding industrial towns, these cheap, attractive, and undaunting
books were designed for the semi-literate and newly literate classes to
use in the pantry, factory school, or orphanage. They were frequently illustrated
with woodcuts or engravings and typically bound in bright decorated or pictoral
cloth covers. The stories range from wholesome adventures for girls and
boys to temperance tales and stories of destitution and heroism amidst the
hardship of city life. The great majority of the writers were women, who
chose this medium to further the Victorian endeavor of educating, improving
and bringing religion to the masses. They provide pictures of life in Victorian
and Edwardian England and are an interesting source of insight into the
values and attitudes of that age.
Last modified:
July 14, 2006
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