Turn-of-the-Century Child
Books and Reading

Folktales

Poems and Poets

Parents' Reading

Newspapers & Magazines

 

General Resources

• Bader, Barbara.  American Picturebooks from Noah’s Ark to the Beast Within.  New York: Macmillan, 1976.
  
  
• Barlett's Familiar Quotations (1901)
  [http://www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/]
  Quote passages, phrases and proverbs that others might have used.
  
  
• Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events Pre-1620 to 1920
  [http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl311/timefram.html]
  Chronology by decade of political and social history with links to literature and authors.
  
  
• Murray, Gail Schmunk.  American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood.  New York: Twayne, 1998.
  Concise historical analysis of how American children's literature from 1660-1990 reflected the historical and cultural changes America.
  
  
• Silvey, Anita ed. Children’s Books and their Creators.  New York: Houghton, 1995.
  
  
• Children's Literature Research Collection. State Library of South Australia.
  [http://143.216.21.6/treasures/clrc/index.html]
  In particular see "Heroes and Villains" [http://143.216.21.6/treasures/clrc/hero.htm] and the "Lucy Collection"
  [http://143.216.21.6/treasures/clrc/lucy.htm]
  
  
• "Reading and Writing." Centenarians; The Story of the 20th Century by the Americans Who Lived It. ed. Bernard Edelman.   New York: Farrar, 1999.
  
  
• Fowler, H. W.  The King's English (1908)
  [http://www.bartleby.com/116/]
  Guidelines on the correct English of the time.
  
  
• The Gilded PAge.
  [http://www.wm.edu/~srnels/gilded.html]
  Collection of electronic texts written by US authors or widely read by Americans in the Gilded Age (loosely defined here as 1866-1901).
  
  
• Hart, James D.  Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature. New York: Oxford, 1986.
  Brief biographies of important authors, plot summaries, important literary movements, and information on American literary history.
  
  
• Literature for Young Readers from the Modern English Collection. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library 
  [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/kiddielit.html]
  
  
• The Marguerite Archer Collection of Historic Children's Materials. J. Paul Leonard Library.  San Francisco State University [http://www.library.sfsu.edu/servcoll/archives4.html]
  Curator Meredith Eliassen
  
  
• VanMeter, Vandelia.  American History for Children and Young Adults; An Annotated Bibliographic Index.  Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1990.
  
  
• World of the Child; Two Hundred Years of Children's Books.University of Delaware.
  [http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/child/]
  
  
  

Children or teens born in 1900 might have read

A, B
Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876) and others
Aesops Fables (1880)
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) and others
Anne of Avonlea (1909), Anne of Green Gables (1908) by L.M. Montgomery and others
Arabian Nights
Around the World in 80 Days (1873), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1873)  by Jules Verne and others
At the Back of the North Wind by George Macdonald (1871)
Birds' Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (1872)
Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (1889) and others (e.g. Violet, Yellow, Red)
Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle 
Bound to Rise by Horatio Alger (1900) and others
Brownies: Their Book by Palmer Cox (1887)

C - F
Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903) and others, or other books online at The Jack London Collection
Child's Journey with Dickins by Kate Douglas Wiggins (1912)
The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland (1901)
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickins (1843) and others
Dick Merriwell's Fighting Chance or the Split in the Varsity by Burt L.Standish (1910)
Dime Novels by Frank Meriwell and others
Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) and others
East of the Sun and West of the Moon Illustrated by Kay Nielsen (1914)
Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum and others
Fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm,
Fairy tales by Hans C. Anderson (1916) online texts
Farm Book (1910); The Railroad Book (1913) by E Boyd Smith
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1831)
Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter (1904)

G - I
Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter (1909) reprinted by Indiana University Press (1984)
Goops and How to Be Them by Gellett Burgess (1900)
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)
Gyp at Home and Abroad by John Howard Jewett (1907)
Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge (1865)
Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde (1888)
Heidi by Johanna Spyri (1884)
Hole Book by Peter Newell (1908)
Hound of the Baskervilles by Conan Doyle (1901-1902) and others
House That Jack Built by Randolph Caldecott (1878)
Indian Boyhood by Charles Alexander Eastman (1902)
An Indian Boy's Story by Ah-nen-la-de-ni [Daniel La France] (1903)

J- L
Johnny and Billy Bushytail by Howard R. Garis (1910)
Johnny Crow’s Garden by L. Leslie Brooke (Warne, 1903)
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)
Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (1893)
Juan and Juanita
Just So Stories, Kim (1901), and The Jungle Book (1893) by Rudyard Kipling
King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table; Le Morte D'arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (1903)
King of the Golden River
Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1826) and others
Legends of the Alhambra by Washington Irving
Little House stories by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Little Lame Prince by Dinah Maria Craik (1874)
Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1889)
Little Nemo in Slumberland (1907) by Winsor McCay
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905) and others
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1869)
Lives by Plutarch

M - P
Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (1883)
Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1911)
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Alice Caldwell Hegan (1901)
Mutt and Jeff comics (1907)
My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)
Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess (1914)
Odysseys of Homer, translated by George Chapman (1857)
Peter Pan (1904);  Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie (1911)
Peterkin Papers by Lucretia Hale (1880)
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (1891)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1840), The Cask of Amontillado (1849) by Edgar Allan Poe and others

R, S
Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle (1918)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1903)
Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Gray (1912), Zane Grey Museum
Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting (1920)
Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman (1899)
Story of My Boyhood and Youth by John Muir (1914)
Story of My Life by Helen Keller (1903)
Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit (1899)
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

T, U
Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) and Tale of Mr. Todd (1911) by Beatrix Potter
Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb
Tanglewood Tales
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burrows (1914) and others, more
TheTime Machine (1895), War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells
Tom Sawyer (Harpers "contract with Samuel Clemens for Harper to publish "Mark Twain" books, Mark Twain web)
Tom Swift and His Motor-cycle by Victor Appleton (1910)
Treasure Island (1883) Wyeth edition (1911); The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson
Uncle Remus; His Songs and His Sayings (1880); Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Legends of the Old Plantation by Joel Chandler Harris
Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the lowly by Harriet Beacher Stowe (1852)

V, W
Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Bianco (1922)
Violet Fairy Book (1901), Blue Fairy Book (1889), Yellow Fairy Book (1890), Red Fairy Book (1894) by Andrew Lang
Water Babies by Charles Kingsley (1909)
What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge (1872)
Wigwam Stories
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)
Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1852) by Nathaniel Hawthorne; illustrated by Walter Crane (earlier edn. 1851 reissued Oxford, 1996) and others
Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (1900)

Retellings of folktales they might have heard
Hamilton, Virginia. The People Could Fly; American Black Folktales.  New York: Knopf, 1985. 
Hamilton, Virginia.  A Ring of Tricksters.  New York: Blue Sky, 1997.
Hamilton, Virginia. When Birds cound Talk and Bats Could Sing.  New York: Blue Sky, 1996.

Poems and Poets

"Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal…"

"There's no place like home.."

"My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.."

Strategy: Browse the American Verse Project  for poems by Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other pre-1920 American poets.

 

Giovanni, Nikki ed.  Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate; Looking at the Harlem Renaissance Through Poems.  New York: Holt, 1996.  
Contains poems by W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes.

ee cummings
Emily Dickinson Poems (1896) and Emily Dickinson Web page
Eugene Field.   Poems of Childhood.  (1904)
Robert Frost
Vachel Lindsay
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" and Song of Hiawatha.
James Whitcomb Riley.  Little Orphant Annie.  New York: Putnam, 1890,1983.
Carl Sandburg
Robert Louis Stevenson.  Child’s Garden of Verses. (1896)
Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass (1900)

And their parents might be reading...