University of Mississippi

Eighteenth Century 

The written record of civilization shows that children’s magazines of the eighteenth and 

nineteenth centuries strived to guide young readers with moral lessons, sentimental verses and 

instructive tales. From 1789 through the 1830s, religious, educational, and reform interests 

shaped children’s periodicals.

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                                                 Nineteenth Century 

In addition to encouraging morality and providing education and entertainment, 

socialization was a role of American children’s magazines in the nineteenth century. Although 

late eighteenth century British writers had used juvenile literature to socialize children, Professor 

Karcher credits 

Juvenile Miscellany

 editor and writer Lydia Maria Child as the first to mold the 

genre to America’s needs in 1826.  

Child utilized children’s literature to instill the principles she believed vital to a 

democracy (as opposed to a monarchy): “a commitment to equal rights for all and the courage to 

stand by one’s inner convictions, as well as the internalization of the middle-class work ethic.”

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The conservative social mission of nineteenth century children’s literature reinforced 

society’s class and gender rules of the middleclass work ethic that included the emergence of a 

new notion of childhood and value system. Child also shared her stand on racial equality that 

continued to reverberate for years after her courage and willingness to share abolitionist views 

with her young readers was responsible for the magazine’s closing in 1834.

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Many grew up to share her beliefs. 

Education was the emphasis from the 1840s through the Civil War. The magazine 

business had assumed by the 1850s much of the character it has today with a growing number of 

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specialists writing for the fast-increasing number of specialized magazines.

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After the Civil War entertainment joined education as a goal of children’s magazines. 

Two especially beloved nineteenth century publications offering a refreshing change of pace 

from the “dreary moralizers” of the eighteenth century were 

Juvenile Miscellany 

(offering 

amusement with instruction from 1826 to 1834) and 

St. Nicholas

 (which started its 68 year run in 

1873 and is still remembered as the paramount children’s journal of all time).

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St. Nicholas’

 

acclaimed editor Mary Mapes Dodge viewed “A child’s magazine is its playground” and hired 

such literary luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Rudyard Kipling as 

contributing writers.

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