The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science and Medicine, 1840-1900

In the 1840s novelists such as Charlotte Brontë and Dickens began for the first time to explore the inner world of the child. At the same time, the first psychiatric studies of childhood started to appear. Moving between literary and scientific texts, Sally Shuttleworth explores a range of fascinating issues, from childhood fears and passions through to precocity and sexuality. She looks at the rise of child psychology and psychiatry, and the transformation of ideas of childhood in the post-Darwinian era. The Mind of the Child shows how many of our current concerns regarding childhood, such as the impact of educational pressure, the problems of adolescence, or the rise of child suicide, have their roots in the Victorian era.