Guardians of Morality: Librarians and American Girls��� Series Fiction, 1890���1950

Hamilton-Honey, Emily

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/31898 Copy

Description

Title

Guardians of Morality: Librarians and American Girls��� Series Fiction, 1890���1950

Author(s)

Hamilton-Honey, Emily

Issue Date

2012

Keyword(s)

Main Street Public Library Collections

Abstract

This article examines the contentious relationship between the first few generations of librarians and series fiction for girls. Librarians and library boards had mixed responses to twentieth-century series books; they favored earlier postbellum series that taught girls traditional religious behavior and caretaking, by authors such as Louisa May Alcott and Martha Finley. While such series could certainly offer empowering kinds of agency, they left out a great many options that were opening up to women, including higher education, new professions, and individualized consumption. Keeping more contemporary series off library shelves also meant that librarians were boycotting most of the work of publishing syndicates, particularly the work of Edward Stratemeyer. Syndicate volumes were often viewed as immoral and dangerously influential by the newly professionalized arbiters of reading.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ISSN

0024-2594

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/31898

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2012.0012

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2012 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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