Children’s Voices from the Past

This book explores a central methodological issue at the heart of studies of the histories of children and childhood. It questions how we understand the perspectives of children in the past, and not just those of the adults who often defined and constrained the parameters of youthful lives. Drawing on a range of different sources, including institutional records, interviews, artwork, diaries, letters, memoirs, and objects, this interdisciplinary volume uncovers the voices of historical children, and discusses the challenges of situating these voices, and interpreting juvenile agency and desire. Divided into four sections, the book considers children's voices in different types of historical records, examining children's letters and correspondence, as well as multimedia texts such as film, advertising and art, along with oral histories, and institutional archives.

• concept of childhood
• methodology
• social work
• out-of-home care
• youth studies
• Boy’s Own Paper
• Girl’s Own Paper
• Nom de Plume
• childhood studies

• Deakin University, Burwood, Australia

  Kristine Moruzi

• Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, Australia

  Nell Musgrove

• University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

  Carla Pascoe Leahy

Kristine Moruzi is Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Australia. She is author of Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 (2012) and co-author of From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children’s Literature (1840-1940) (2018).

Nell Musgrove is Senior Lecturer in History at Australian Catholic University. She is the co-author of The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia: Just Like a Family? (Palgrave, 2018) and author of The Scars Remain: A Long History of Children’s Institutions and Forgotten Australians (2013).

Carla Pascoe Leahy is Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Honorary Associate at Museums Victoria. Her research examines the history of women and children in twentieth-century Australia. Her previous publications include Spaces Imagined, Places Remembered: Childhood in 1950s Australia (2011) and Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage (2012).