What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of 'Classic' Stories for Girls

by Shirley Foster, Judy Simons

Overview

What Katy Read focuses on a much neglected area of literary criticism: literature for girls. Written by women for children, such texts have been doubly marginalized by the critical establishment. Shirley Foster and Judy Simons use twentieth-century feminist critical practice to open up fresh perspectives on popular fiction for girls written between 1850 and 1920. The study analyses both American and British novels for girls which have acquired 'classic' status, from the domestic myth to the school story, and considers their scope and influence in providing role models for girl readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333626733
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	04/05/1995
Edition description:	1995
Pages:	223
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements - Preface - Introduction - Susan Warner: The Wide, Wide World - Charlotte Yonge: The Daisy Chain - Louisa May Alcott: Little Women - Susan Coolidge: What Katy Did - E.Nesbit: The Railway Children - L.M.Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables - Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden - Angela Brazil: The Madcap of the School - Bibliography - Index

Editorial Reviews

Intrigued that generations of women have read and relished the same juvenile books, scholars Foster and Simons reexamine eight classics of girls' fiction from the perspective of 20th-century feminist critics. Among the British and American titles they scrutinize, those most familiar to present-day U.S. readers include Little Women, The Secret Garden, What Katy Did, and Anne of Green Gables. The texts are analyzed with the aim of defining the genre (fiction written by women for children), explaining the sociohistorical context of the works, and discovering why and how the novels "spoke to their age and continue to speak to today's." This soundly researched study offers insightful and provocative views of literate women and the books they have written and read. Highly recommended for all literature collections.-Carol A. McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary Lib., Williamsburg, Va.

Library Journal

“From the first paragraph of the preface, I engaged with What Katy Read as a scholar, a reader, and a woman who nourished herself on the fiction passed on by my mother and grandmother. Shirley Foster and Judy Simons offer me a tour of my own history. They explain much of our overt shared culture as literate women as well as the covert, mysterious, painful messages we seem to share. In my mind, there is no better goal for a book. Clever, creative, and enriching without being hegemonic, patronizing, or demanding.”—Bonnie Sunstein

From the Publisher