A Page Without Borders: the transnational world of youth correspondence pages in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, 1880-1920

This thesis examines the vast world of anglophone youth correspondence pages in New Zealand, Australia and Canada during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. A hugely popular feature within family periodicals, youth correspondence pages contained letters written by young people of varying ages about their everyday lives. While offering ample opportunities to explore the lives of young people in this era, these letters are not simply an archive for the social and cultural histories of settler-colonial childhood and youth. They are also evidence of the highly social nature of anglophone youth print culture in this period. Correspondence pages created a new space for young people within the press, in which they not only consumed content as readers but were able to actively participate within the forum as writers. This dialogue-based format fostered a sense of community and belonging which transcended the borders of the printed page as correspondence pages became correspondence clubs. These clubs held dual potential as sprawling transnational print networks – an ‘imagined community’ – of young writers and as tight-knit, local, social clubs whose activities jumped off the page and into the real world. The first half of this thesis considers the textures of correspondence page practices and cultures, moving from the personal, to the local, and finally to the transnational. It aims to reconfigure understandings of young people’s correspondence pages, to look beyond the borders of individual publications, and to draw connections across the anglophone printscape: to understand this format as a transnational phenomenon. The second half focuses on three case studies which reveal the benefits of contextualising these clubs as part of a broader phenomenon. The results of this analysis are presented as a series of ‘upendings’ in which existing conceptions of settler-colonial childhood are challenged and expanded.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Gilderdale, Anna Louise

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Barnes, Felicity
• Daley, Caroline

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/66911

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/66911