Editorial

Abstract

The cover of this issue of Papers features an image which appears in the First Book of the Victorian Readers, originally published in 1928. As Jane McGennisken demonstrates in her essay on Australian mythologies of childhood in the Tasmanian and Victorian readers, the literary texts selected for these readers represent Australian children as innocent inhabitants of a young country, a conceit also proposed by Ethel Turner at the beginning of Seven Little Australians: ‘the land and the people are young-hearted together’. McGennisken argues that these imaginings of an innocent Australian childhood are analogous with mythologies of an innocent nation, which act to divert attention from the (less innocent) histories of imperialism fundamental to the nation’s foundation. Another preoccupation of the readers is the idea of the child as leader, in stories about courageous children like Grace Bussell, who in rescuing the victims of a shipwreck demonstrates the qualities of Australian girlhood by exercising a motherly concern. The readers constitute an important component of reading material for Australian children from the late 19th century until the 1940s; the online database AustLit: the Australian Literature Resource now includes a section on the Victorian Readers and the Victorian School Papers, at: http://www.austlit.edu.au/ (go to ’research Communities’, ‘Australian Children’s Literature’ and ‘the Victorian Classroom’).