In:A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Madeleine Dobie and Mads Anders Baggesgaard
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVII] 2025
► pp. 349–365
Chapter 19Creating a new abolitionist literature for children
Lydia Maria Child’s The Juvenile Miscellany (1826–1834) between domesticity and racial hierarchies
Published online: 29 April 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.37.19moc
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.37.19moc
Abstract
This chapter aims to analyze American abolitionist Lydia Maria Child’s first antislavery stories
in The Juvenile Miscellany, the periodical for children she edited from 1826 to 1834 that, through
short stories, poems and puzzles, provided amusement and imparted moral lessons to young girls and boys. The chapter
therefore explores Child’s early use of children’s literature as a political instrument to create a multiracial
egalitarian America by educating young minds in a republic that had declared that all men were born equal but had kept
in slavery “that class of Americans called Africans.” Furthermore, it will show how, although she struggled to fight
slavery and racial prejudice, in her abolitionist stories Child often reaffirmed racial hierarchies and forms of white
superiority.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Women, Domestic Abolitionism, and the creation of an abolitionist literature for children
- Lydia Maria Child’s abolitionist stories in The Juvenile Miscellany
- Enslaving white children: The white abduction story
- Struggling against racial prejudices: Positive accounts of African Americans
- Atlantic geographies of slavery: United States, Western expansionism, and positive accounts of Africa
- The wrongs of slavery, even under a kind master
- Racial hierarchies and white superiority in child’s abolitionist stories
- Conclusion
Notes References
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