The Boy Detective in Early British Children’s Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction: The Birth of the Boy Detective

   • Lucy Andrew

   Pages 1-12

3. The Corruption of Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Boy Detective Hero

   • Lucy Andrew

   Pages 13-51

4. Taming the Beast: Adolescence, Empire and the Detective’s Boy Assistant

   • Lucy Andrew

   Pages 53-92

5. “Be Prepared!”: Looming Conflict, Active Citizenship and the Rise of the Professional Boy Detective

   • Lucy Andrew

   Pages 93-146

6. Forever Young: The Cult of Childhood and the Schoolboy Detective

   • Lucy Andrew

   Pages 147-186

7. The Journey Continues? Boy Detectives Beyond the Story Papers

   • Lucy Andrew

   Pages 187-199

8. Back Matter

   Pages 201-243

   PDF

This book maps the development of the boy detective in British children’s literature from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. It explores how this liminal figure – a boy operating within a man’s world – addresses adult anxieties about boyhood and the boy’s transition to manhood. It investigates the literary, social and ideological significance of a vast array of popular detective narratives appearing in ‘penny dreadfuls’ and story papers which were aimed primarily at working-class boys. This study charts the relationship between developments in the representation of the fictional boy detective and changing expectations of and attitudes towards real-life British boys during a period where the boy’s role in the future of the Empire was a key concern. It emphasises the value of the early fictional boy detective as an ideological tool to condition boy readers to fulfil adult desires and expectations of what boyhood and, in the future, proper manhood should entail. It will be of particular importance to scholars working in the fields of children’s literature, crime fiction and popular culture.

• Genre fiction
• Popular fiction
• Liminal
• Male
• Adolescence
• British and Irish Literature

• Faculty of Humanities, University of Chester, Chester, United Kingdom

  Lucy Andrew

Lucy Andrew is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Chester. Her research interests are in children’s and young adult literature, crime fiction and fandom.  She has published on Veronica Mars and supernatural crime fiction for young readers. She is the co-editor of Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crimes (2013).

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