Description: Ranging from the fundamental question, whether a childrens literature is possible, or what its formal and contextual parameters might be, to issues of contemporary cultural studies (postcolonialism, gender, race and class) this essay collection inserts childrens literature into literary, theoretical and historical debate. From English renaissance childrens reading, it shifting to Shaws Castle Blair, an ambivalent metaphor for a nineteenth-century Ireland seeking postcolonial self determination, and a study of wild Irish girls civilising education in England in De Horne Vaizeys and Meades novels. The book interrogates Hodgson Burnetts obsessions with childhood innocence and her problematic adult-child relationships; the golliwog transformed from a transgressive figure into a non-PC icon; and schoolboys from the Jennings series and Greyfriars to Huck Finn and Harry Potter. Blyton, Dillon, Frost, Lynch, Parkinson, Ransome, Thomas, and Whelan come under scrutiny, as does the link b
