Exporting the Nordic children’s ’68: the global publishing scandal of The Little Red Schoolbook

The Little Red Schoolbook (1969) was one of the most well-travelled media products for children from ’68 aimed at children, and it was certainly the most notorious. Over the course of a few years (1970–2) it was translated and published in Belgium, Finland, France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, it also circulated freely in Austria and Luxembourg, and reached beyond Europe to countries including Australia, Japan and Mexico. It led to an obscenity trial in Great Britain, nearly toppled the Australian government, and caused a global publishing scandal. This essay therefore looks at the Scandinavian children’s ’68 in its international context, via a transnational, comparative analysis of the reception of the LRSB, in order to examine how ‘68 counterculture and ideas of childhood clashed and converged in the West around 1970. It asks: what can the publishing history of the LRSB tell us about the distinctive features of children’s media in Scandinavia at this time

Modernising and moralising: Hachette’s fiction series for children, 1950s-1960s

This article focuses on the editors and editorial pieceworkers (translators, adaptors, illustrators, correctors, and members of the reading committees) behind the production of two of France’s most famous series for children, the Bibliothèque Rose and the Bibliothèque Verte. Hachette’s cheap and luridly coloured cardboard-covered books for children that flooded the French market in the long sixties formed an important and yet overlooked component of what Sirinelli calls the ‘rejuvenation’ of French mass culture, when the young became an important new market. Using the extensive archives of Hachette’s children’s department, this essay analyses how the editors responded to the unprecedented growth and important structural changes that historians concur were taking place in the children’s publishing industry across the West in the post-war period. This novel approach, which draws upon the methodologies of the sociology of publishing and book history, asks what can the editors’ perspective teach us about this key period in children’s publishing history? What was their role in these processes of change

Pippi Longstocking, juvenile delinquent? Hachette, self-censorship and the moral reconstruction of postwar France

This paper looks at the blockages to the publication of children’s literature caused by the intellectual climate of the postwar era, through a case study of the editorial policy of Hachette, the largest publisher for children at this time. This period witnessed heightened tensions surrounding the social and humanitarian responsibilities of literature. Writers were blamed for having created a culture of defeatism, and collaborationist authors were punished harshly in the purges. In the case of children’s literature, the discourse on responsibility was made more urgent by the assumption that children were easily influenced by their reading material, and by the centrality of the young to the discourse on the moral reconstruction of France. As the politician and education reformer Gustave Monod put it: “penser l’avenir, c’est penser le sort des enfants et de la jeunesse.” These concerns led to the expansion of associations and publications dedicated to protecting children and promoting “good” reading matter for them, and, famously, to the 1949 law regulating publications for children, which banned the depiction of crime, debauchery and violence that might demoralise young readers. Using the testimonials of former employees, along with readers’ reports and editorial correspondence preserved in the Hachette archives, this paper will examine how individual editorial decisions and self-censorship strategies were shaped by the 1949 law with its attendant discourse of moral panic on children’s reading, and how national concerns for future citizens were balanced with commercial imperatives

Children’s 68: introduction

In the years around ‘68, children’s books and media became caught up in the current of turbulence, protest and countercultural agitation that characterised this era. A new motif emerged – the children’s version of the raised fist of the revolutionary. It appeared in imprint logos, sometimes holding a lollipop aloft, often with a child’s face imposed on it, or on badges for children handed out with magazines, or even, in the case of a German picturebook Fünf Finger sind eine Faust (Five finger..

The children’s collections at the University of Reading

This article discusses the main archive and library collections at the University of Reading relating to children's literature. It then details some of the research and teaching specialisms at the University of Reading related to the collections, before concluding with an explanation of research and funding opportunities around these collections

Francophone literary archives at risk

As the Senegalese author and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor wrote in 1989, the “irreparable losses” of literary heritage “have been instrumental in permanently distorting the contribution of our peoples to universal civilization”. This risk remains important, and has become even more urgent with renewed threats from climate change and new forms of warfare. Much more work needs to be done to protect literary archives at risk at both a national and an international level, as well as to concert the work that is currently being carried out by myriad organisations across a variety of regions. This chapter explores initiatives within French-speaking transnational structures and contexts to protect literary archives. As one of the large language areas whose literary production attracts the attention of international manuscript collectors, and with large and unique transnational structures organised according to the shared French language and culture, the French-speaking efforts to address these issues are far-reaching and distinctive. To further promote the drawing together and sharing of perspectives, the chapter sets out some of the singularities of the francophone experience, and highlights differences in approaches and methodologies in the French work to safeguard global literary heritage. It explores this work through two case studies: first that of a French literary manuscript research institute, and its team that works in collaboration with local scholars and custodians on preserving francophone manuscripts in the Global South, and second, the non-governmental approach of a much smaller French literary and publishing archive. It is structured around three key areas where the French experience has been distinctive. First, it looks at the research agenda in French-speaking academia, and how this has shaped priorities and responses to the problem of archives at risk; second, it examines the supra-national structure of La Francophonie and the challenges and opportunities this offers; and it concludes with recent efforts to move beyond the state-focused approach that has often characterised French-led rescue work through attempts to develop smaller, non-governmental solutions

The Comtesse de Ségur: Catholicism, Children‟s Literature, and the 'Culture Wars' in Nineteenth Century France

This thesis analyses the comtesse de Ségur (1799-1874), France's best-selling children's author, both as a cultural icon and as a historical subject. Although Ségur became the best-selling author for young children in the twentieth century, and a publishing phenomenon, her work has often been overlooked by Anglophone historians. This is because she is perceived to be a part of a school of didactic authors derided as “governesses”, and who are usually characterised as bigoted spinsters, in possession of little in the way of real literary talent. The recent tendency in French academic research has therefore been to play down the comtesse de Ségur's politico-religious agenda, in order to distance her work from that of her colleagues, and to explain her enduring popularity. However, such an approach is based upon a questionable reading of such “governess” authors, and is an indication that Ségur's politics recall a part of their history that many French people would prefer to forget. In contrast, it is the contention of this thesis that the comtesse's work must be understood in the context of the religious antagonisms of Second Empire France. Ségur was closely involved with one of the most influential religious propaganda networks of the Second Empire. The informal nature of their activities meant that Ségur's gender did not prevent her from engaging in the political fray. The thesis examines the immediate production of her work in the context of the Catholic drive to propagate „good books‟, and highlights the importance which the religious revival attached to the child and to children‟s literature; it looks at the myth-making process which generated the comtesse de Ségur as a symbol of ideal Christian womanhood, and the role that this played in the politics of identity in the second half of the nineteenth century; and finally it asks what her legacy has been for feminine culture in France. In restoring the comtesse de Ségur to the intransigent Catholic movement, this thesis brings to light a neglected aspect of the Franco-French culture wars, namely the important contribution made by women authors such as Ségur to the massive surge in religious print culture in the mid-century. It questions the old stereotypes that have long surrounded Catholic women, and shows just how engaged they were in the struggle for the nation's soul that raged in post-revolutionary France

Fighting 'on the side of little girls': feminist children's book publishing in France after 1968

The publishing activities of the French second-wave feminist movement are well-documented. Less attention has been focused on its attempts to imagine childhood freed from sexism. In the mid-1970s, the Franco-Italian editorial partnership ‘Du côté des petites filles/Dalla Parte delle Bambine’ fought ‘on the side of the little girls’ by publishing a new kind of children's book: politically and aesthetically subversive, and engaged in the period's major feminist debates. Tracing relationships between the publishers involved, this article illustrates how feminist campaigns helped shape new ideas on children and their culture after 1968: child-rearing was both a major point névralgique of the movement as a whole, and an issue requiring action, to provide tools for the struggle. Examining publishing practices, creative artists and books, this study reveals both the intellectual impact of the MLF activists on ideas of childhood and children's literature, and the artistic visions and new poetics they helped nurture