Consumerism and American Girls’ Literature, 1860-1940

Peter Stoneley0521821878, 9780521821872, 9780511061943

Why did the figure of ”the girl” come to dominate the American imagination from the middle of the nineteenth century into the twentieth? Peter Stoneley looks at how women were fictionalized for the girl reader as ways of achieving a powerful social and cultural presence. Covering a wide range of works and writers, this book is of interest to cultural and literary scholars.

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Table of contents :
Preliminaries……Page 1
Copyright……Page 6
Declaration……Page 7
Contents……Page 9
Illustrations……Page 10
Acknowledgments……Page 11
Introduction: “Buying into womanhood”……Page 13
1 The fate of modesty……Page 33
2 Magazines and money……Page 49
3 Dramas of exclusion……Page 64
4 Romantic speculations……Page 73
5 Preparing for leisure……Page 83
6 Serial pleasures……Page 102
7 The clean and the dirty……Page 119
8 “Black Tuesday”……Page 134
Conclusion……Page 153
Notes……Page 157
Index……Page 177