This bibliography includes citations for texts written by adults about childhood in America before 1900. It reflects the direction that child studies research has taken since the 1980s as the voices of children are sought by authors working on a variety of topics, including literacy, citizenship, and race.
Book Length Studies
- Arksey, Laura, Nancy Pries and Marcia Reed. American Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of Published American Diaries and Journals. Detroit: Gale, 1987.
- Capshaw, Katharine and Anna Mae Duane, editors. Who Writes for Black Children? African American Children’s Literature before 1900. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. With contributions by Laura Wasowicz (AAS), Nazera Sadiq Wright (Ford Fellow, 2013-14), and Brigitte Fielder (CHAViC Fellow, 2011).
- Cohoon, Lorinda. Sensationalized Citizenship: Periodicals, Books and American Boys, 1840-1911. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press 2006.
- Crain, Patricia. Reading Children: Literacy, Property, and the Dilemmas of Childhood in Nineteenth Century America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Based partly on research done at AAS.
- Marten, James. The Children’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Based partly on research done at AAS.
- Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004.
- Sánchez-Eppler, Karen. Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Based partly on research done at AAS.
- Smith, Victoria Ford. Between Generations: Collaborative Authorship in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. Based partly on research done at AAS.
- Weikle-Mills, Courtney. Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013). Based on research done at AAS.
- Wright, Nazera Sadiq. Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Based partly on research done at AAS.
Essays
- Cohen, Lara Langer. “The Emancipation of Boyhood: Postbellum Teenage Subculture and the Amateur Press” Common-Place, v. 14, no. 1 (Fall, 2014). An AAS publication.
- Edelstein, Sari. “Reading Age Beyond Childhood.” ESQ 62.1 (2016): 122-127. (AAS Peterson Fellow, 2008-2009)
- Fabian, Ann. “Amateur Authorship” A History of the Book in America, v. 3: The Industrial Book 1840-1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, pp. 412-415. Based partly on research done at AAS.
- Handwritten Newspapers: An Alternative Medium issue of Finnish Lit. Soc., v. 26 (2019).
- Isaac, Jessica. “Youthful Enterprises: Amateur Newspapers and the Pre-History of Adolescence, 1867-1883." American Periodicals, v. 22, no. 2 (2012), p. 158-177. Based on research done at AAS.
- Izard, Holly V., "Worcester Through a Child’s Eyes: The Diaries of Louisa Jane Trumbull, 1829-37.
- Lindey, Sara. “Boys Write Back: Self-Publication and Periodical Authorship in Late Nineteenth-Century Story Papers.” American Periodicals v. 21, no. 1 (2011), p. 72-88.
- Mattes, Mark Alan, “The Intermedial Politics of Handwritten Newspapers in the 19th-century U.S.,” in Handwritten Newspapers: An Alternative Medium during the Early Modern and Modern Periods (Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Literature Society, 2019). Partially based on research done at AAS.
- Myers, Elissa. “’Something More Than Invisible’: Care as Agency in Girls’ Amateur Periodicals” Children’s Literature Quarterly 45, no. 2 (Summer 2020), p. 103-123.
- Petrik, Paula. “The Youngest Fourth Estate: The Novelty Toy Printing Press and Adolescence, 1870- 1886” Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850-1950 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1992), p. 125-142.
- Sánchez-Eppler, Karen, “Practicing for Print: The Hale Children’s Manuscript Libraries,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1:2(2008): 188-209.
- Sánchez-Eppler, Karen, “In the Archives of Childhood” in The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the New Humanities, edited by Anna Mae Duane, University of Georgia Press, 2013.
- Wasowicz, Laura E., "Chronicling the Lava Wave: My Adventure Unearthing the Amateur Press," Caxtonian Vol. XXXII, No. 2 (March/April 2024), p. 1-3.
Dissertations
- Isaac, Jessica. “Compliant Circulation: Children’s Writing, American Periodicals, and Public Culture, 1839-1882” (University of Pittsburgh, 2015)
- McDermott, Shawna. “Visualizing the Future: Childhood, Race and Imperialism in Children’s Magazines, 1873-1939” (University of Pittsburgh, 2020). Based partly on research done at AAS.
- Smith, Mikki. “Print Networks and Youth Information Culture: Young People, Amateur Publishing and Children’s Periodicals, 1867-1890" (University of Illinois, 2017). Based partly on research done at AAS.
Projects in Process
- Ben Davidson, “Freedom’s Generation: Coming of Age in the Era of Emancipation.” Book manuscript, based partly on research done at AAS
Websites
- Library of Amateur Journalism (LAJ) Collection
This collection, housed in the Special Collections at the University of Wisconsin-Madison library, was maintained for many years by the Fossils, an "alumni" organization of amateur journalists.
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