{"id":14560,"date":"2021-04-27T01:56:54","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T01:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/?p=14560"},"modified":"2021-04-27T01:56:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T01:56:59","slug":"tamara-s-wagner-the-victorian-baby-in-print-infancy-infant-care-and-nineteenth-century-popular-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/2021\/04\/27\/tamara-s-wagner-the-victorian-baby-in-print-infancy-infant-care-and-nineteenth-century-popular-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamara S. Wagner, <em>The Victorian Baby in Print: Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"180\" height=\"272\" src=\"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/victorian-babyhood-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14562\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Victorian Baby in Print<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tamara S. Wagner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Victorian Baby in Print: Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture<\/em>&nbsp;explores the representation of babyhood in Victorian Britain. The first study to focus exclusively on the baby in nineteenth-century literature and culture, this critical analysis discusses the changing roles of an iconic figure. A close look at the wide-ranging portrayal of infants and infant care not only reveals how divergent and often contradictory Victorian attitudes to infancy really were, but also challenges persistent clich\u00e9s surrounding the literary baby that emerged or were consolidated at the time, and which are largely still with us. Drawing on a variety of texts, including novels by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Charlotte Yonge, as well as parenting magazines of the time, childrearing manuals, and advertisements, this study analyses how their representations of infancy and infant care utilised and shaped an iconography that has become definitional of the Victorian age itself. The familiar clich\u00e9s surrounding the Victorian baby have had a lasting impact on the way we see both the Victorians and babies, and a critical reconsideration might also prompt a self-critical reconsideration of the still burgeoning market for infant care advice today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tamara S. Wagner<\/strong> is Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she teaches Victorian literature. Her books include&nbsp;<em>Victorian Narratives of Failed Emigration: Settlers, Returnees, and Nineteenth-Century Literature in English<\/em>&nbsp;(2016),&nbsp;<em>Financial Speculation in Victorian Fiction<\/em>&nbsp;(2010), and&nbsp;<em>Longing: Narratives of Nostalgia in the British Novel, 1740-1890<\/em>&nbsp;(2004). She has also edited collections on&nbsp;<em>Domestic Fiction in Colonial Australia and New Zealand<\/em>&nbsp;(2014),&nbsp;<em>Victorian Settler Narratives<\/em>&nbsp;(2011), and&nbsp;<em>Antifeminism and the Victorian Novel: Rereading Nineteenth-Century Women Writers<\/em>&nbsp;(2009). Professor Wagner currently works on Victorian babyhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Order online at: <a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/product\/the-victorian-baby-in-print-9780198858010?cc=us&amp;lang=en#\">https:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Victorian Baby in Print Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture Tamara S. Wagner The Victorian Baby in Print: Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture&nbsp;explores the representation of babyhood in Victorian Britain. The first study to focus exclusively on the baby in nineteenth-century literature and culture, this critical analysis discusses the changing roles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[497],"tags":[1902,1581,1427],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}