The Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements arose in the first decades of the
twentieth century, an era of social and political unrest, and they were
initially the center of intense controversy in Britain.Much has been written on the Baden-Powells and the Scout
organization, but little has been done on either the Guides or on gender in
either movement. Also, most works deal specifically with the first two decades
of the movements, rather than with the interwar period. The major official
histories of the Scouts and Guides include Henry Collis, Fred Hurll and Rex
Hazlewood, B-P's Scouts: An Official History of the Boy Scouts
Association (London: Collins, 1961); Rose Kerr, The Story of the Girl
Guides (London: Girl Guides Association, 1954); and Alix Liddell, The
Girl Guides, 1910–1970 (London: Frederick Muller, 1970). Robert
Baden-Powell has been the subject of several biographies and the Chief Guide,
Olave Baden-Powell, has written an autobiography that is quite useful. The best
biography is the recent one by Tim Jeal, The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord
Baden-Powell (New York: William Morrow, 1990). The analytical works on the
movements are limited to work on the Scouts by Martin Dedman,
“Baden-Powell, Militarism, and the ‘Invisible Contributors' to
the Boy Scout Scheme, 1904–1920,” Twentieth Century British
History 4:3 (1993), 201–23; John Gillis, Youth and History
(New York: Academic Press, 1974); Robert H. MacDonald, Sons of the Empire:
The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement, 1890–1918 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1993); Michael Rosenthal, The Character
Factory (New York: Pantheon Press, 1986); John Springhall, Youth,
Empire and Society (London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1977); Allen Warren,
“Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the Scout Movement and Citizen Training in
Britain, 1900–1920,” English Historical Review 101 (1986),
376–98; and Paul Wilkinson, “English Youth Movements,
1908–1930,” Journal of Contemporary History 4:2 (April
1969), 3–23. Allen Warren has written several insightful articles,
including, “Mothers for the Empire,” in Making Imperial
Mentalities, ed. J. A. Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1990), 96–109; “Citizens of the Empire,” in Imperialism
and Popular Culture, ed. John Mackenzie (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1986), 232–56; and “Popular Manliness: Baden-Powell, Scouting
and the Development of Manly Character,” in Manliness and Morality:
Middle-class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940, eds. J.
A. Mangan and James Walvin (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987),
176–98. Good studies of working-class boys are: Michael J. Childs,
Labour's Apprentices: Working-class Lads in Late Victorian and
Edwardian England (London: Hambledon Press, 1992) and Harry Hendrick,
Images of Youth: Age, Class and the Male Youth Problem, 1880–1920
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). For the post-World War I period, see: David
Fowler, The First Teenagers: The Lifestyle of Young Wage-Earners in Interwar
Britain (London: Woburn Press, 1995). Two classic studies of middle-class
girls are: Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian
England (London: Routledge, 1981) and Deborah Gorham, The Victorian
Girl and the Feminine Ideal (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,
1982). For works specifically dealing with American Scouting, see Jeffrey P.
Hantover, “The Boy Scouts and the Validation of Masculinity,”
Journal of Social Issues 34:1 (1978) and David I. Macleod, Building
Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners,
1870–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). By
the 1920s, however, they had become an established part of what came to be seen
as the British “way of life.” The movements also began a sustained
international expansion, winning acclaim from educators, government officials,
social organizations, and even the League of Nations. Yet this extension of the
Scout and Guide program into other countries produced problems both abroad and
at home, as contradictions appeared in the ideologies and activities of the two
groups. Practically speaking, they both faced difficulties in accommodating
different races, religions, languages, and nations in the new global
brother/sisterhood.