Victorian Childhoods

The experiences of children growing up in Britain during Victorian times are often misunderstood to be either idyllic or wretched. Yet, the reality was more wide-ranging than most imagine. Here, in colorful detail and with firsthand accounts, Frost paints a complete picture of Victorian childhood that illustrates both the difficulties and pleasures of growing up during this period. Differences of class, gender, region, and time varied the lives of children tremendously. Boys had more freedom than girls, while poor children had less schooling and longer working lives than their better-off peers. Yet some experiences were common to almost all children, including parental oversight, physical development, and age-based transitions. This compelling work concentrates on marking out the strands of life that both separated and united children throughout the Victorian period.

Ginger S. Frost is Professor of History at Samford University in Birmingham, AL. She is the author ofPromises Broken: Courtship, Class and Gender in Victorian England and Living in Sin: Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England as well as numerous articles. She has received fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and served as President of the Southern Conference on British Studies from 2002 to 2003.