The Care and Nurture of Aspiring Writers: Young Contributors to Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas

Abstract

The Care and Nurture of Aspiring Writers:Young Contributors to Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas Greta Little (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution During the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States publishing industry enjoyed unprecedented growth and development. Technological advancements had resulted in more reading material and easier distribution to the ever-growing numbers of the literate population. A significant part of this expansion was an increase in books and magazines for children, which played an important role in shaping the American culture and society. As R. Gordon Kelly points out in Mother Was a Lady: "The traditions of the publishing industry reflected their origins in the antebellum period when literature was identified more with gentility, scholarship, and instruction and less with popular entertainment. . . ." Publishers "considered themselves custodians of morals and culture acting in proxy for the nation," and in developing their magazines for children, they were guided by this vision of their role (9-10). The sponsorship of these children's periodicals by leading publishers emphasizes the relatively conservative nature of the enterprise. For the men and women who edited these magazines and for the publishers whose names appeared on the title pages, children's literature was an important part of a general cultural mission they had self-consciously assumed. (11) Kelly outlines various ways in which children's periodicals from 1865-1890 helped influence American society through the fiction they published. He argues that the major publishers and editors of the time "were associated with a functional elite in American society, which sought to model its ideal social expression on the type of the traditional gentleman" (31). The close personal involvement and control of the periodicals they published gave them a voice in shaping the views and values of the generations of children who read their magazines. In fact, Kelly attributes part of the success enjoyed by Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas to the personal relationships the editors achieved in their exchanges with young readers through columns and letters and to their practice of printing contributions from readers (30). While it is true that these sections enhanced reader appeal, they also served the didactic and educational purposes of the publishers and editors as well. It was in these sections that they undertook to encourage and to educate future generations of writers. For example, Jon Townsend Trowbridge, one of the three original editors of Our Young Folks, believed that young people should have literature which showed them real life, promoted morality, encouraged a love of nature, and cultivated "clearness and beauty of expression" (quoted in Kelly, 23). He and his co-editors, Lucy Larcom and Mary Abigail Dodge (from 1866-68), used "Our Letter Box" not only to acknowledge letters received but to challenge their young readers to strive for greater excellence in their puzzles and compositions. . . .so let none of all the anxious and hopeful little readers wonder or grieve that their offerings are not printed. Out of such a vast number we have to select what seem to us the best, (and this is no easy task, but one which occupies many hours and much thought,) because the readers of the Magazine must have the very best which we can find for them. We are just as much obliged for the hundreds which we have to lay aside, as for the tens which we think it well to print. . . . Let it be further remembered, O beloved young folks, that your efforts to prepare something worthy of our acceptance do you just as much benefit, if the result does not quite reach our standard of excellence, as if it were one of the best things in a whole volume. (Our Young folks, January 1866, 64) [End Page 19] The editors reiterated their message of encouragement while explaining their high standards in a letter of rejection printed in the same issue: . . .Irene and all beginners must remember that they come to a competition with the most skilful writers in the country when they offer us their compositions, and that they can no more expect to do as well with their heads as grown and practised persons, than to do as much and...