What Katy read

Written by women for children, girls' fiction has been doubly marginalized by the critical establishment, yet it remains a crucial element in most girls' formative literary experience. In their original and provocative analysis of texts written between 1850 and 1920 - including Little Women, What Katy Did, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, The Daisy Chain, The Railway Children, The Madcap of the School, and The Wide, Wide World - Foster and Simons examine what makes a classic and how such texts construct role models which both reflect and subvert contemporary ideologies of childhood.…