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Childhood's Imperial Imagination: Edward Stratemeyer's Fiction Factory and the Valorization of American Empire1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Brian Rouleau
Brian Rouleau
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Numerous studies have appeared in recent years that deal with the reasons and rationalizations that accompanied America's overseas acquisitions in 1898. This article uses juvenile series fiction to examine how the nation's youth—boys in particular—became targets of imperial boosterism. In the pages of adventure novels set against the backdrop of American interventions in the Caribbean and the Philippines, Edward Stratemeyer, the most successful author and publisher of youth series fiction, and other less well-known juvenile fiction producers offered sensationalistic dramas that advocated a racialist, expansionistic foreign policy. Stratemeyer and others offered American boys an imaginative space as participants in and future stewards of national triumph. Young readers, the article argues further, became active participants in their own politicization. An examination of the voluminous fan mail sent to series fiction authors by their juvenile admirers reveals boys' willingness, even eagerness, to participate in the ascendancy of the United States.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 479 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2008

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References

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20 Under Dewey at Manila or, The War Fortunes of a Castaway (Boston, 1898)Google Scholar, the first of Stratemeyer's six-book “Old Glory Series,” sold 6,000 copies when it was released in November 1898 for the Christmas season. The book's sequel, Fighting in Cuban Waters, registered advance sales of more than 2,000 copies, and from its release in August of 1899 through Christmas of that year, it sold more than 16,000 copies. Based on these sales figures, Lee and Shephard Publishing was able to negotiate for shelf space at several different department stores throughout the country, further expanding Stratemeyer's popularity. Complete sales data for the entire series has not yet been discovered; what exists has been extracted from the surviving correspondence between Stratemeyer and his publisher. See , Abel, “A Man of Letters, A Man of Business,” 110, 139, 217–18Google Scholar. These books had wide circulation beyond what sketchy sales data reveal. Libraries and public schools reported heavy borrowing of Stratemeyer's work, and anecdotal evidence suggests an informal but widespread “book trade” among boys who bought these novels and shared them. On the popularity of Stratemeyer among school children and at libraries, see Soderbergh, Peter A., “The Stratemeyer Strain,” 864–72Google Scholar. An early twentieth-century survey of public-school children, known as the Winnetka Graded hook Ust, found that 98 percent of pupils surveyed were conversant with at least some of the works of Stratemeyer or one of his pseudonyms. See Washburne, Carleton and Vogel, Mabel, “Supplement to the Winnetka Graded Book List,” Elementary English Review 4 (Feb. 1927): 47–52, (Mar. 1927): 66-73Google Scholar., Nye, Unembarrassed Muse, 77Google Scholar.

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78 Harry Morris to Arthur Winfield, May 30, 1933, Folder 1, Box 56, SSRC.

79 S. G. Reid to Victor Appleton, June 10, 1933, Folder 1, Box 56, SSRC.

80 Bruce Rhodes to Edward Stratemeyer, Jan. 9, 1933, Folder 2, Box 56, SSRC.

81 Robert Mclntyre to Victor Appleton, Oct. 1, 1930, Folder 1, Box 56, SSRC.

82 Iillie M. Nickerson to Victor Appleton, May 15, 1933, Folder 1, Box 56, SSRC.

83 Joseph Schroth to Victor Appleton, Jan. 1, 1932, Folder 2, Box 56, SSRC.

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