Book Description

This book focuses on the Child’s Paper (Efimeris ton Paidon), a nineteenth century Greek children’s magazine with protestant allegiances, published monthly from 1868 until 1893. The author draws on a range of archival sources and employs an interdisciplinary approach drawing on the history of ideas, childhood studies, children’s literature, and literary theory, in order to explore the views transmitted with respect to children and childhood. The study concludes that the magazine was a rather peculiar blend of Protestant austerity with the Romantic vision of the child. Published in a hostile Orthodox environment, which interpreted such publications as attempts to undermine national (Greek Orthodox) consciousness, the Child’s Paper oscillated between the foreign Protestant tradition and contemporary Greek reality.