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BETH RODGERS: Hello. My name is Dr. Beth Rodgers. I'm a lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.

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I think studying childhood in any period is really important and really interesting. I often say to my students, there have always been children.

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People have always been born as babies and grown chronologically from youth to adulthood. But what it means to be a child, how we conceptualise childhood is not always the same across time and circumstance.

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Our ideas about what makes for a good childhood, an ideal childhood. And I think we can tell a lot about a period by thinking about how it conceptualises childhood.

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A lot about its values, its assumptions, its contradictions. The 19th century is a prime example if you think about the John Everett Millais

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painting of Bubbles, the little cherubic child who then becomes part of the Pears soap advertisement that's so famous from the period. That's all about the innocence of childhood.

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And that's this really dominant idea and image that seems to kind of jostle alongside child labour practises of the day. And it's a sort of central contradiction there.

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So I think we can tell a lot about historical period and a lot about the children of that period by thinking about how childhood is conceptualised. I think the interwar period is a really particularly interesting

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period in the history of childhood, and in the history of children's periodicals. We're used to ideas about the huge changes on the geopolitical and economic stages

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in this period when the world is recovering from the Great War at one end of things. And of course, heading into the Second World War at the other end.

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But it's also a time of profound social change. And historians often note the kind of shifting class dynamics in Britain after the First World War, and the kind of changes in terms

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of patterns of consumption, changes in the kinds of jobs people had access to, shift to kind of greater suburban living, smaller family sizes. So people's family lives and the children within those families.

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There was a lot of change happening that I think we can see in the pages of children's periodicals. And at least, there's a much greater sense

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of children as a kind of viable and marketable readership in this period. So a number of the essays in the Interwar Culture collection talk about this period as a boom in mass market

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and the mass market press. All kinds of new readerships being established. And children were part of that. So the 1918 Education Act opened up

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education for working class and lower middle class children. More so than it had been in previous decades when education had been quite kind of partial and part time. You have much greater access to education

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in the interwar period, which of course increases literacy levels. And there's a greater sense that childhood as kind of-- the ideal of childhood as a period distinct from adulthood.

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And that starts to kind of cut across class lines to more of an extent. It's not just the preserve of the middle and upper classes, as it may have been in the previous century.

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And so I think this boom in mass market children's periodicals really reflects a much broader change in childhood-- definitions of childhood in the interwar period.

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Well, I think periodicals are a really useful resource in the study of childhood for a whole range of reasons. So first of all, of course, even just the very fact that they are-- children

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are seen as a viable marketable readership tells us a lot about childhood in that period. And often, things like the price of a periodical can help us get a sense of the target readership

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and the kind of assumptions about literacy, and leisure time, and pocket money that publishers had about the group of readers that they were targeting.

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So we got from that sort of superficial sense we get an idea of who was thought of as a viable market. Then looking a little bit closer the content of periodicals can give us a sense--

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a sort of a window into childhood at the period. Not in the sense that there are completely mirrors of childhood, because periodicals don't really function like that.

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But they give us a sense of what editors and writers assumed children would be interested in, or thought they should be interested in. And that tells us a lot about the period,

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about values associated with childhood, anxieties about what children should or shouldn't know. But of course, that said, periodicals need repeat purchase to be successful.

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That's one way in which they are different kind of a publication from a novel, for example. They need a reader to return every week or every month, depending on the publication cycle.

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So it can all be driven by adult needs. And so we do get a sense as well of what at least some children enjoyed wanted to read about, what they find to be pleasurable content in their reading lives.

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And as well as that, I think we get a sense that can be almost like repositories of child voices to some extent. Now that comes with some caveats.

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The letters that are included in periodicals, it's not complete unfettered access to the child's voice. Because of course they're mediated by editors, we don't know what letters weren't included.

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And also, of course, there is no such thing as one child voice-- one authentic child voice in any period. Children are as capable of being as various as adults in that way.

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And things like gender, and class, and circumstance, all of these things can affect how the child kind of experiences the world. But nonetheless, a lot of periodicals

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did publish letters from children and competition entries from children. And this gives us a real insight into what life might have been like for those children at the time.

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And often people say, well, surely, these are made up. Surely, these are just invented in the editorial office. And that may be true in some instances. But a lot of people have started to do work

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on finding and tracing some of the readers in periodicals. So Sian Pooley, for example, has used census records to match up readers names in 19th century regional newspapers with real life people

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in the census record. So I think the evidence would suggest that most of the contributions are in fact authentic. And so from a range of perspectives,

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I think children's periodicals are a really underused resource actually in the study of childhood. Well, I think four titles immediately jump out.

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Even if you have no prior knowledge of the field, I think there are four titles that immediately sound like they're going to be relevant to the study of childhood.

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And they are Schoolgirls' Weekly, Peg's Paper, Chums, and Modern Boy. Now Peg's Paper and the Schoolgirls' Weekly are part of this boom in mass market periodicals

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in the interwar period. So Peg's Paper launches in 1919, and Schoolgirls' Weekly in 1922. Chums is a little bit older.

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It's the oldest of the four that we're looking at. And it launched in 1892 and set up as something of a rival to the Boys' Own Paper, which had been the really successful leading periodical for boys

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of the late 19th century. And I think even in the interwar period, it kind of bears the markers of that kind of original set up. So it has a lot of content that is

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geared towards the sort of middle class boy of the empire. And that kind of material that would have been prevalent in the late 19th century titles as well. The Modern Boy then is then set up

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as something of arrival of Chums. It comes out in 1928. And I think it's interestingly positioned to come out in 1928 because it sort of falls somewhere

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between being influenced by Chums, that older kind of boys' paper, and borrowing some of the strategies of the mass market papers of the 1920s. So it's very keen on asserting its modernity at every point

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from the title onwards. It's also very well known for its fiction. It was the original home of the Biggles figure, for example. So that gives you a sense of the kind of material

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that was in there as well. All of them feature lots and lots of stories. A mixture of serialised stories and standalone pieces as well. Although, the kind of themes and tone

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differs depending on the sort of target reader in question. And they also feature illustrations, editorials, competitions, advertising. So they have all of that in common.

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But as I say, the themes and the tones can be a little bit different. And I'll say something kind of broadly speaking about the readership.

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So Schoolgirls' Weekly, the title itself, of course, indicates the kind of reader that it's targeting. Many of the stories are set in schools. We get lots about schoolgirl rivalries

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and friendships and adventures. But a lot of the stories feature school-age girls having adventures outside of the confines of school as well. And it's particularly big on the girl detective.

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And in fact, this particular issue that I've opened features Valerie Drew and her Alsatian dog, Flash, who at one point gets a story of his own, actually, as well. And there was also in the earlier issues,

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a girl detective called Sylvia Silence. So that's one of the things that we get popularised in Schoolgirls' Weekly. I think of the four, we do get a sense, from the titles anyway,

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that they are going to be sort of neatly split along gender lines. So Schoolgirls' Weekly and Peg's Paper for girls and young women.

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And Chums and The Modern Boy for boys and young men. Although, I think there is some evidence that it's maybe slightly more complicated than that. So Chums, for example, in some of the later issues I've seen,

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they have these sort of advertisements for would be pen pals. Where people write in with their name and their address, and perhaps a list of some of their interests hoping for pen

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pals from around the world actually to write to them. And there are a surprising number of girls actually writing in, which suggests that a large number of girl readers

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didn't feel themselves excluded from the readership of Chums. It was very much for them as much as for anyone else. So I think that sort gives us pause in thinking about sometimes the differences

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between actual readers and imagined readers. But in terms of readership, I think Peg's Paper is probably the most ambiguous. It's known as one of the leading example of the mill girl

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papers. So scholars like Penny Tinkler and Lise Shapiro Sanders have talked about mill girl papers and the ways in which they targeted this kind of new readership

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in the interwar period of probably older adolescent girls, who were working in mills and factories and industry. Who are probably not married, but were

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interested in reading about romance, and beauty, and glamour. They probably finished their schooling so they were less interested in the sort of stories

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in the Schoolgirls' Weekly. Sometimes discussions about mill girl papers are folded into discussions about women's magazines of the period.

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But I think it's productive to talk about Peg's Paper while thinking about childhood and adolescence in this time. I think it tells us something more broadly about changing definitions of childhood and youth in this period.

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So I've done some work on the late 19th century and how this kind of new crop of girls books and magazines in the 1880s and 1890s and 1900s kind of targeted, but also helped to shape the kind of burgeoning

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adolescence in that period. But at that point, this is an adolescence, this kind of broadening out of the period between childhood and womanhood that was really only

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the preserve of the kind of middle classes and well-to-do girls. And I think what Peg's Paper demonstrates is that by the interwar period, that

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is very much a marketable readership in terms of working class and lower middle class girls as well. So I think it plays an important role in the broader discussion of reading for young people in this period.

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Now I think of these four, the only two that are in kind of major potential competition with each other are Chums and The Modern Boy. I think Schoolgirls' Weekly and Peg's Paper

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are targeting a slightly different age group. But I think here, between these two, we start to see some tensions in the market potentially. So Chums is a much older paper, which

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was launched to compete with The Boys' Own Paper. And a lot of the ones of that era actually folded just before the Great War as a result of wartime paper shortages.

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Chums didn't. Chums survived. But in the interwar period, it actually changed a few times. It went from being a weekly to a monthly, and then to an annual,

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which we think was suggesting that in terms of its appeal to a readership, it was perhaps losing some of its popularity. That need for repeat purchase that periodicals have.

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And they weren't successfully meeting that. That goes for all periodicals that they need to secure repeat purchase. But the thing that's different with children's periodicals

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as well is that their readership periodically ages out. So something like the Women's Weekly, which I know was also in the Interwar collection, it can realistically have a sense that it will--

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if it can hook a reader, it can potentially have her for life. And Schoolgirls' Weekly has to deal with the fact that one generation of school girls will age out and will be replaced by another one.

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So it's got to constantly appeal to these new readerships coming in. And it seems like something like Chums starts to lose that fight a little bit.

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And because The Modern Boy really sets itself up unashamedly in its first issue as the most up-to-date boys paper in the world, number one of the book every boy has been waiting for, its how it pitches itself

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on the cover. And now by the time we get to the Second World War, neither of these papers ultimately survives, they both succumb to those wartime paper

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shortages and the fact that papers either fold or get merged into other titles. But I think that says something interesting to us about readership in the interwar period as well,

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and the way in which it's shifting all the time. Well, I think those four titles that I discussed are certainly a really great place to start. But actually, when you look beyond those titles

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into the wider collection, there's a real wealth of fascinating material that talk about children and childhood from a whole range of different perspectives.

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Parenting and child rearing is one of the obvious ones in some of them were domestic magazines. So Women's Pictorial, for example, and many of the covers are very angelic looking children and babies.

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And there are a lot of articles and advice pieces and answers to correspondence about parenting, and lots of issues to do with that. And the Family Herald is another good example.

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Lots of advice about medical issues, social etiquettes pertaining to kind of family dynamics and that sort of thing. And it also has a children's hour section as well.

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And in that way, it's kind of following the 19th century tradition of the family magazine where there's sort of something for everyone. But I think beyond the more domestic magazines,

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we can find childhood as a topic in a whole range of ways. So a more political title like Labour Woman, for example, often has pieces in it about child care, about a good nursery provision for when women are out at work.

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And there's an interesting article in the first issue about adolescent girls and industry. So that exact cohort who are reading Peg's Paper, for example.

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And then for something completely different, a magazine like Armchair Science has lots of very eclectic-- very eclectic articles in general, but a lot of very eclectic content about children as well.

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So in the May 1930 issue, for example, just looking down the page of contents here where there's all kinds of things like steering aeroplanes by wireless, harnessing the tides,

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the electrification of Ireland. In amongst these kinds of pieces and their stuff about children, about a dietary experiment that featured 20,000 children. And there are articles talking about the birth rate.

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And then there's this very interesting piece about nurseries, New Fashioned Nurseries, it's called. And talking about the improvements which science has brought about in the nursery.

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And the opening paragraph tells us that the popular-- popularising of science in general and of such subjects as hygiene, physical culture, and psychology in particular, enables the child of today to receive a highly specialised

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training in mind and body. It is also influenced nursery matters in the way of furniture and decoration, and the trend of modern design is towards simplicity,

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suitability, and cheerfulness. And so this is a periodical that's all about innovation and invention. And I think it's really interesting that childhood

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is seen as being part of modernity in that sense that there can be such a thing as the child of today. And that child may be different from children of the past. And so I think in the wider collection,

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there are all kinds of ways you could think about childhood in the interwar period. Having a strong, distinctive editorial persona is really important to the textual identity

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of any periodical. That's one of the things that makes it distinctive in the market and that can help to secure that repeat sale or repeat purchase.

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You want to establish a sense of a community of readers. And often being led by a distinctive editorial persona is part of that. And

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In the Victorian period, a lot of that editorial persona, they were often quite authoritarian and it was a thing about instruction and leading by example and wisdom.

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Not always in an unkind way, but certainly The Girls' Own Paper, for example, in its answers to correspondence section. And often it was more about authority than sympathy. They would chastise readers for poor handwriting

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and that sort of thing. I think what we have in Peg's Paper and Schoolgirls' Weekly is really quite different because the editorial tone is much more informal, much more chatty.

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We get a real sense of camaraderie between editor and reader. So Peg's Paper is the perfect example really. In the very first issue, the editorial,

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which comes from Peg herself, is called Let's Be Pals. So even the use of that word pal is very different. Another late Victorian periodical, Girl's Realm, which was from 1898 to 1915,

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the editor of that did try to set up a sort of sense of community and friendship. She always referred to my dear girls. But even with that, it was still quite a maternal kind

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of sisterly persona. I think what we have in Peg's Paper here is very different. So she says, hello, girls. Here I am and here is a copy of our paper.

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It's going to be your weekly pal, and it will greet you every Thursday. So not just Peg, but the periodical itself is going to be a pal.

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And there's a lovely little illustration in the top corner here of a group of three girls crowded around, reading a copy of Peg's Paper. Reading is usually such a solitary experience,

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but here it's kind of conceptualised as being this group dynamic. We have girls on the other side of the page kind of reaching out to those girls who are readers.

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So it's all about friendship and community. And again, the kind of idea of who this editor is very, very different from those more kind of authoritarian voices we may have had in the past.

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So for example, she says, not so very long ago, I was a mill girl, too. And my clogs clattered with yours down the cobbled street. Someday, I'll tell you my story.

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Because I've been a worker like you, I know what girls like. And I'm going to give you a paper you'll enjoy. And at the end, she signs off that, don't forget that in sunshine and rain, your best pal is Peg.

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So I think that's a very, very different kind of relationship that's being set up between editor and reader at the outset. And again, I think we got something quite similar

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in Schoolgirls' Weekly. The key difference here is that from the outset, it's very evident that it's a male editor. So very different kind of relationship than between Peg

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and her and her readers. But nonetheless, there's a sense of chattiness, of camaraderie, that the editor wants the readers to think of themselves as Schoolgirls'

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Weekly readers. And we start to get a sense as well of how that editorial persona and kind of marketing, how they start to come together.

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And in the second issue, for example-- if I can find that-- the editorial begins-- which is called Notes In Class, by the way, which I think is quite nice--

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begins, thank you. Well, girls, I thank all of you who have written to tell me how much you like the Schoolgirls' Weekly and how you look forward to it.

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I have never had any doubt that the paper would appeal to you because there is such a lot in it and the stories are of sterling worth. So really kind of emphasising to the reader

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that you've bought this and you will enjoy it. So there's a rule there of trying to support and grow with that readership. But it's all done in a very kind of chatty, friendly way

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that I think is very much in keeping with the wider tone of the stories, school stories and camaraderie that we get elsewhere. And I think it's in this way that I think The Modern Boy

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kind of borrows from some of the strategies of the papers from the 1920s, rather than something like Chums. Similarly, the word pal is used quite a lot in the Editor Talks

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section of The Modern Boy and requests that you-- some of you haven't written to your pal here, the editor of The Modern Boy. You should really do so.

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And don't forget to tell your pals at school about your pal, the editor. So that sense of-- there's always lots of exclamation marks as well in these editorials.

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That sense of informality, I think, is one of the things that make it quite different. I think we can definitely see a big impact on people's lives communicated through their periodicals.

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Both of the Great War, but also of the impending Second World War, which of course, we as 21st century readers know is just over the horizon for these readers. I think there are some practical markers of that.

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So I mentioned earlier how wartime paper shortages, both in the Great War and then the Second World War caused some titles to either fold or to merge with other titles.

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And so what that means is that in the 1920s, then we have a bit of a gap in the market. These new readerships and this need for more titles. So that's one of the practical reasons why the Great War--

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the relationship between, I guess, the Great War and the periodical boom that came after it. But I think there is also evidence of its impact on people's emotional and imaginative

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lives, as well as their material ones. And I think we can really see this in Peg's Paper. So in that first volume-- in the first issue, in fact, there's a really interesting complete story called 'A Girl

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With An Aching Heart', by someone called Penelope York, which is their very first short story in Peg's Paper. And it's about really someone-- a factory girl kind of dealing with the fact that a man who

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had previously declared his love for her, but she'd rejected him a few times, she thought he was lovesick and puppy-ish and she didn't-- she had no interest in him.

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But he has gone off to war and he's really distinguished himself. It's almost like a sort of Peg's Paper version of Jane Austen's Persuasion or something.

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She's rejected him. He's gone off and distinguished himself in the battlefield and come back. And her whole kind of world is uprooted by that.

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And so these ongoing implications of people coming back or not coming back, and romantic entanglements, and the emotional kind of fallout of that, which we actually see evidence of in some

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of the letters in Peg's Paper. So there's a letter, one springs to mind where someone is writing in saying that they've fallen in love with a Canadian soldier.

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And he wants to marry her and take her back to Canada. And what should she do? So I think this story is really well pitched actually to readers and their lives.

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And there's some lovely moments in the story. So we learn about Betty's own war work in a munitions factory. And there's a part, for example, where

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she wonders if the strain of making munitions had aged her or robbed her of her good looks. So elsewhere in Peg's Paper, there's a lot of interest in glamour, and beauty, and fashion.

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And here, that's kind of merging with the experience of being a worker during the war. And later on, as Betty and Jim kind of circle around each other and trying to decide what's happening,

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Jim uses the kind of language of war, or the language of the end of war as part of his flirtation with Betty. So he says, for example, the fight's

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got to be fought before marriage. And he means his adventures in life, but also the kind of tussle they're having between themselves.

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And he says, the engagement is an armistice, and the wedding day is a signing of the peace. So Peg's Paper, when it comes out, the war has ended. But I think here we get a sense of ongoing kind of implications

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and an imaginative role that it's having in the storytelling. And then if we jump to the very other end of the period and look at the volume from 1939,

00:28:23.700 - 00:28:35.110

just having a general look through it, you don't immediately get a sense of impending war. I mean, that's potentially in keeping with the kind of magazine that Peg's Paper is.

00:28:35.110 - 00:28:49.130

It's about glamour and fantasy, the pleasure of storytelling. Perhaps there's not so much of a role for that and that sense of imminent war. But as the issues go on, you start

00:28:49.130 - 00:29:04.310

to get a little sense of reality starting to intrude. So in September 1939, there's a little note just in the middle of one of the serialised stories. A note that says, owing to the international situation

00:29:04.310 - 00:29:11.300

at the time of going to press, it has been decided to postpone our free gift of a Eterna rings till a later date. More news later.

00:29:11.300 - 00:29:19.570

Peg. So we get a sense that something's going on beyond the pages of this magazine in readers' lives.

00:29:19.570 - 00:29:32.120

And we start to get this even more clearly. There's a larger notice once we get to October. And it's actually a little order form, important is on top of it, saying,

00:29:32.120 - 00:29:41.570

my dears, owing to the war, the supply of paper on which Peg's Paper is printed has been greatly restricted. Inside this copy, you will find a leaflet explaining the matter

00:29:41.570 - 00:29:52.940

to you fully. Even so, you will still be able to obtain your favourite Peg's Paper every week if you fill in this piece of-- this column and hand it to your newsagent straight away.

00:29:52.940 - 00:30:03.470

And then they make a comment that, with the winter blackouts coming on and the blackout making things very-- sorry, the winter nights coming on and the blackout making things very dull away from home, you'll need your favourite

00:30:03.470 - 00:30:19.370

Peg's Paper more than ever. And so they're knowing the dangers of the wartime printing shortages for periodicals, we can get that sense coming through here from the editors.

00:30:19.370 - 00:30:29.240

And this is a kind of broader reality. And there's also a column called Peg's Man Pal. And it's usually dealing with kind of ethical issues and things.

00:30:29.240 - 00:30:39.920

And as this volume continues, some of the problems being addressed are to do with things like how to fill your time when your boy is sent away to war and stuff.

00:30:39.920 - 00:30:53.480

And as it goes on, then it starts to-- we start to see it in the storytelling as well. So there's a really striking cover to the 25th of November 1939 issue, which is to accompany a story called

00:30:53.480 - 00:31:02.870

'Weekend Wife'. And it depicts a scene that we're very used to seeing in wartime films. The kind of emotional farewell at a train station.

00:31:02.870 - 00:31:13.130

Read the great dramatic novel of love and wartime, complete inside. So it's starting to become part of the storytelling. It's starting to become part of people's imaginative lives

00:31:13.130 - 00:31:24.660

again. The December 2 issue, it's called 'War Bride'. And again, the cover starts to match some of the content in that way.

00:31:24.660 - 00:31:46.690

So I think Peg's Paper demonstrates this book ending of the interwar period in this way that the war is part of people's lives in a whole range of ways. Well, this is an era-- it's not just magazines that

00:31:46.690 - 00:31:57.400

are part of mass culture. But it's an era where the radio, gramophone, and film become increasingly part of people's lives and leisure time.

00:31:57.400 - 00:32:10.180

And I think the magazines really do a lot to try to capture that in the pages for their readership, as well. That kind of acknowledgment that the magazine is just one

00:32:10.180 - 00:32:21.310

part of their kind of broader cultural experiences, I guess. This is a time when kind of celebrity culture is gaining a real foothold. And I think one of the lovely things

00:32:21.310 - 00:32:31.870

about being able to look at this collection from the beginning to the end of the interwar period it's been able to kind of chart the increase in that. And chart the evolution that sort

00:32:31.870 - 00:32:41.680

of increased accessibility of film, but also the evolution from the silent era to the talkies where the kind of first talkie comes out in 1927, for example.

00:32:41.680 - 00:32:52.950

Kind of right in the middle of the period that we're looking at. So this huge change in technology is happening in the childhoods of our readers,

00:32:52.950 - 00:33:03.250

and it's having a huge impact. And The Modern Boy, for example, has this whole piece about listening to the pictures. You know how wonderful this new innovation is.

00:33:03.250 - 00:33:14.170

And I think we get a real sense of excitement throughout the magazines. And Lisa Stead has done some really good work on film magazines for children and young women.

00:33:14.170 - 00:33:25.450

But I think what these magazines demonstrate is that it wasn't just the kind of specialist titles, that film was really important and interesting. In the Schoolgirls' Weekly, for example,

00:33:25.450 - 00:33:40.420

right from the beginning, they gave away free photo cards of stars to try to kind of entice readers and hook them with that kind of lovely free gift. And this is something that seems to kind of run

00:33:40.420 - 00:33:55.570

throughout its life. So this particular volume here is from 1936. And there's a huge full-page ad for the wonderful free gift that will be coming in the next issue, the superb film star's

00:33:55.570 - 00:34:10.060

confession album, which is going to have signed confessions from 48 famous cinema stars. And in fact, what's really wonderful about this particular edition that we have is that little album

00:34:10.060 - 00:34:20.620

has, in fact, been preserved. So we get to see what it's like and turn it over. It is with great pleasure that your editor asks your acceptance of this unique collection

00:34:20.620 - 00:34:30.400

of photographs and signed confessions of many of the most famous screen and stage stars of the day. And whether these are actually genuine confessions,

00:34:30.400 - 00:34:40.280

whether this is, in fact, Isabel Jean's favourite sport, she says, she's not fond of games. Is the true or is this not true? I'm not sure.

00:34:40.280 - 00:34:50.020

It may well be invented. But nevertheless, this is something that Schoolgirls' Weekly knew their readers would respond to. The fact that it's used as a free gift, I think,

00:34:50.020 - 00:35:04.220

really enhances that sense that it's going to help secure some purchases. Peg's Paper, we see film be part of the content to much more of a degree as well.

00:35:04.220 - 00:35:17.050

So there's a regular feature called 'Peg Trots Round Film Land', which is really lovely. Gather secrets for you girls about your favourite films. And a lot of this is about behind the scenes things,

00:35:17.050 - 00:35:29.170

how films are really made. But it also edges towards that kind of fantasy, aspirational aspect of the film world for readers. So for example, there's one of the tidbits

00:35:29.170 - 00:35:40.300

in this particular column says, factory girl or cinema star, which would you rather be? Earning two pounds a week in a factory or 200 in a week as a movie star?

00:35:40.300 - 00:35:47.320

Kathlyn Williams says that movie stars are no better off than factory girls. For when they've paid all their heavy expenses, there's nothing left.

00:35:47.320 - 00:35:58.960

Still, some of my readers wouldn't mind chancing it. What do you think? So there's this-- it's part of this exchange then with the editorial voice as well.

00:35:58.960 - 00:36:07.610

And there's another piece as well called 'The Real Thing', where they note that they do try to get the real thing in pictures nowadays. For instance, when they want a newsboy,

00:36:07.610 - 00:36:17.950

they don't get any boy to take the part. They fetch a real newsboy into the studio. And the same with mill girls or factory hands. Of course, are the people who start reading Peg's Paper

00:36:17.950 - 00:36:32.290

and dreaming about the chance that they'll have to go and trot round film land. But I think it's not just the girls' magazines that really are invested in the glamour and fantasy of the world of film.

00:36:32.290 - 00:36:40.480

We get it in Chums as well. Chums has a lovely feature called, is so-and-so your favourite. So a different actor each time.

00:36:40.480 - 00:36:51.220

And this particular issue is, 'Is Douglas Fairbanks Your Favourite?' And it's basically a photo montage with lots of images from the different films

00:36:51.220 - 00:37:02.290

that the actor has been in, and pictures from their kind of lives as well. So again, that sort of celebrity culture thing going on. Douglas Fairbanks is pictured with Mary Pickford

00:37:02.290 - 00:37:14.800

in one of these, who was his then wife. And she's a big hit in the girls' magazines, so there's a little kind of crossover between them here. And then there's also a picture from Robin Hood saying,

00:37:14.800 - 00:37:23.260

do you remember Robin Hood? It is some years since he appeared in this film, but this scene recaptures some of the thrills of that great film.

00:37:23.260 - 00:37:36.670

And of course, we have to remember that people wouldn't have had access to being able to revisit old films in the way we were able to do so now. So this image from a film from 10 years ago, at this point,

00:37:36.670 - 00:37:50.350

may have been particularly enjoyable for a reader to encounter. And there's lots of other kinds of film montages as well. So we've also got more thematic ones.

00:37:50.350 - 00:38:02.770

So for example, keeping fit for the film's. Chums is a sort of magazine that is very interested in physical culture and in sport, and keeping fit in lots of different ways.

00:38:02.770 - 00:38:17.230

And here, it's been applied to, well, if you do this, it's an opportunity to maybe be in a film one day. So it's bringing together these dual interests in a slightly different way.

00:38:17.230 - 00:38:28.570

And then later on, you can see this evolution from the silent film to the talkies. This particular montage is called 'Daring Deeds for the Talkies'.

00:38:28.570 - 00:38:40.960

Which I guess is essentially kind of daredevil sort of stunt work. But one of them is a picture from a silent film and somebody on the front of a train there.

00:38:40.960 - 00:38:51.760

It says, do you remember the old silent days when an express train used to provide you with thrills? It is still more exciting in the talkies. So we really get a sense of how exciting and new

00:38:51.760 - 00:39:05.230

this whole world of cinema and cinema going is for readers. I know in the wider Interwar Culture collection, there are a number of specialist cinema titles. But I think what these examples demonstrate

00:39:05.230 - 00:39:25.790

is that children's periodicals-- periodicals for young people were really invested in those discourses, and they were part of those broader trends as well. Well, I think I've already given a bit of a sense of some

00:39:25.790 - 00:39:35.720

of the differences between them while we're talking about some of the stories that were popular in each. And of course, a question like this comes with a caveat that we can never 100% be sure who

00:39:35.720 - 00:39:44.810

read these particular titles. And often, it's not necessarily the case that the actual readers perfectly aligned with the margins and target readers.

00:39:44.810 - 00:39:58.130

So that example from Chums that lots of girls were writing in to be a pen pal suggests that plenty of girls were readers of Chums. And who's to say that brothers didn't pick up the girls

00:39:58.130 - 00:40:11.420

sleuths of Schoolgirls' Weekly? But I think that caveat kind of out of the way, it's definitely the case that the primary kind of target readership for these titles is gendered.

00:40:11.420 - 00:40:26.060

And I think there are differences in tone and content between titles that mostly targets girl readers and mostly target male readership. Certainly, in terms of the protagonists--

00:40:26.060 - 00:40:36.590

I mean, some of this is obvious in terms of the protagonists, this idea that you want to really see yourself in the material that you read. So Schoolgirls' Weekly and Chums are

00:40:36.590 - 00:40:48.110

both periodicals that feature a lot of school stories. But it tends to be schoolgirls in Schoolgirls' Weekly. And it tends to be groups of boys in Chums. So I think that stands to reason.

00:40:48.110 - 00:40:57.830

But I think some of it is maybe slightly less expected as well. So Chums tends to-- it's indebted to that kind of adventure fiction of the late 19th century.

00:40:57.830 - 00:41:13.200

That kind of Boys' Own fiction that's often set in locations associated with the, the British Empire. I think broadly speaking, empire is more of an obvious feature in the two examples of boys'

00:41:13.200 - 00:41:24.050

papers that we have today than it is in Schoolgirls' Weekly and Peg's Paper. And a lot of in the 19th century context, there's been a lot of scholarship about the ways

00:41:24.050 - 00:41:38.330

in which girlhood was implicated in empire as much as boyhood. And so it's not to say that it's not there in other kinds of ways, but I think certainly, that more a kind of direct engagement with empire

00:41:38.330 - 00:41:52.220

and questions of empire is present in the boys' material in terms of theme of stories. And also kind of the tone of some of the editorials. I mean, the epigraph that accompanies Chums and states

00:41:52.220 - 00:42:01.070

this very obviously. It actually says, to the boys of the empire, upon which the sun never sets. So it's writ large in that context.

00:42:01.070 - 00:42:18.650

And you can certainly see it in some of the covers, the different issues of Chums as well. And The Modern Boy, one of the very first items featured in The Modern Boy is all about, in fact, a pageant of empire,

00:42:18.650 - 00:42:29.840

for example. So these kinds of ideas seem to come through much more in the boys' papers. So that's one kind of difference that I noticed.

00:42:29.840 - 00:42:43.790

And I think another difference is content on careers and thinking about adulthood, the next stage along for these readers. The Modern Boy has a regular feature

00:42:43.790 - 00:42:53.510

called Careers in the Making. For example, which in this particular issue I've got, if you want to be an architect. And it's all about hints and tips

00:42:53.510 - 00:43:06.500

about pursuing architecture. And there are also ones about journalism. And often, these kinds of professional jobs that are becoming increasingly a thing

00:43:06.500 - 00:43:17.460

in the interwar period, when we have that kind of change. More people moving to suburban locations. That particular aspect of the changing culture in the interwar period.

00:43:17.460 - 00:43:26.900

So a lot of these jobs make their way into The Modern Boy in a way that they don't seem to make their way into the two examples of girls' papers that we have.

00:43:26.900 - 00:43:39.740

Now a lot of that might be about class as well as about gender. But nevertheless, I think it's interesting that there is that difference between them. And I think finally, one of the other big ways

00:43:39.740 - 00:43:50.420

that we can see things being slightly different in the girls' papers and the boys' papers is in advertising. So advertising, there's copious amounts of advertising in all of these titles, which is really, really

00:43:50.420 - 00:43:59.090

wonderful to see. Often, it's the case and in some of the older titles that were bound into volume form that advertising was kind of excised and thrown away.

00:43:59.090 - 00:44:15.080

Seen as not important to be preserved. Which for us, as historians, is really, really frustrating. It's been preserved in these issues that we've got. So it's really fantastic to see the broader material

00:44:15.080 - 00:44:26.490

culture of childhood in this period as well. Often, there's a lot of connection between the content of the magazines and the stories and editorials, and then the kind of material

00:44:26.490 - 00:44:40.470

that's being advertised. And there's a clear difference then between our titles. So Peg's Paper, a lot of the advertising is about beauty products, it's about fashion.

00:44:40.470 - 00:44:54.480

This particular page, there's advice about how to deal with blushing, with how to make your hair straight or wavy and lustrous. There's quite a lot about tablets and things

00:44:54.480 - 00:45:11.400

for a variety of vague female maladies in the period as well. Food, confectionery, but from the perspective of being part of the modern girl's existence. So that's very, very different from what

00:45:11.400 - 00:45:27.030

we have in Chums, which is lots of stuff about-- this particular one has a how to get a steamship model, how to get a scale model of a train Model making really dominates in a lot of the advertising,

00:45:27.030 - 00:45:38.370

as it also does in some of the articles-- the non-fiction articles in the paper. There's one about, don't wait until it's too late about getting essentially a tutor

00:45:38.370 - 00:45:49.020

for matriculation and all other exams, kind of a correspondence course. Which is again maybe tapping into this sense of future careers and things as well

00:45:49.020 - 00:46:00.810

that are more open to boys in this period than to girls. And there's movies at home. We lend you safety films. So there's this connection between the content

00:46:00.810 - 00:46:13.950

and the advertising. And the advertising does seem to be more about hobbies and pursuits in the boys' papers, and more about beauty and fashion in the girls'.

00:46:13.950 - 00:46:24.970

And as I say, the important caveat that we don't know exactly who you read this material. Sometimes, in Peg's Paper, there's information about baby products as well.

00:46:24.970 - 00:46:35.970

Which may be because the readers of Peg's Paper are older and maybe that's just over the horizon for them. Or indeed, it could be that mothers are more likely to pick up Peg's Paper

00:46:35.970 - 00:46:45.930

and their daughter's for-- their daughter's issue of Peg's Paper and get this information and go off and pursue that. It's hard to tell.

00:46:45.930 - 00:47:04.550

But I think certainly, there is a clear difference between the advertising for both of them. Well, definitely, it's been really lovely to have a look through the Interwar collection,

00:47:04.550 - 00:47:13.640

and to see some things like these free gifts. I have to say, I think these are some of my highlights of the collection. This is the film star's confession book

00:47:13.640 - 00:47:24.710

that I mentioned earlier. I think periodicals, by their nature, are quite ephemeral. And free gifts in periodicals are even more ephemeral. So it's very, very rare, I think,

00:47:24.710 - 00:47:38.090

to come across these things still in existence. So seeing those has been one of the real highlights. The fact that those are preserved and digitised and not--

00:47:38.090 - 00:47:48.740

sometimes they're not. But even if they're not, we get a sense on the cover pages, for example, about what are being given away is free gifts. I think that tells us a lot about what

00:47:48.740 - 00:47:58.100

young people at this time are assumed to be interested in and drawn to. And the fact that some of them, as I say, are preserved is really wonderful.

00:47:58.100 - 00:48:12.560

And Peg's Paper as well in the early first edition gave out Peg's Lucky Cards. Which sort of seemed to be a kind of like bespoke tarot card type of thing, which is very, very unusual.

00:48:12.560 - 00:48:27.200

And in this particular volume, we actually have those cards preserved. They haven't been cut away and used by an original reader. So it's wonderful to be able to kind of see this material as it

00:48:27.200 - 00:48:40.680

would have been experienced by its original readers. So that's definitely been a highlight for me. I think this particular volume of Chums is another highlight of the collection.

00:48:40.680 - 00:48:50.660

This is the volume where it moved from being a weekly paper to a monthly paper. And it very much, in the opening editorial, called Between Ourselves.

00:48:50.660 - 00:49:00.020

It works really, really hard at pitching this rebirth of the title. I said earlier about how this was quite a popular title from the late 19th century.

00:49:00.020 - 00:49:11.810

And it seems to kind of lose its foothold in that popularity as the 20th century progresses. And certainly, with the likes of The Modern Boy coming up as a rival, it seems to really struggle

00:49:11.810 - 00:49:26.240

to assert its former dominance. And seeing how it tries to kind of reposition itself is really fascinating, I think. It talks here about coming up to its 40th birthday.

00:49:26.240 - 00:49:37.720

And it uses the word rebirth actually to describe this relaunch. It's really trying to assert its own modernity. And one of the strategies that uses throughout actually

00:49:37.720 - 00:49:50.240

this volume. It sets up interviews with 'old boys'. So old, former readers who are now themselves grown up and have various illustrious jobs and job titles

00:49:50.240 - 00:49:57.410

and things. I think it's a way to get readers to think, if you stick with Chums, you too will form part of this long illustrious

00:49:57.410 - 00:50:06.950

history of readership. But of course, is an 11-year-old necessarily going to care about that or are they going to care about the new fangled, exciting, new

00:50:06.950 - 00:50:16.400

publication like The Modern Boy? So I think seeing a publication like Chums really kind of struggle with that and with its place in the market and is really, really interesting

00:50:16.400 - 00:50:28.190

and tells us a lot about the fact that this was a time when it was a very competitive market in publications for a juvenile audience. And as I said, children's periodicals not only

00:50:28.190 - 00:50:37.520

have to constantly seek repeat purchase, but they have to deal with this constantly ageing-out readership. And some are more successful than others at that.

00:50:37.520 - 00:50:48.980

And seeing a really famous one trying to grapple with that, I think, has been, for me, as a scholar of periodicals, is quite a highlight of the collection.

00:50:48.980 - 00:51:02.480

And then I think finally, the thing that really stands out to me as someone who spent some time reading through these is the film material, I have to say. I think it's the stuff that makes it feel more modern.

00:51:02.480 - 00:51:14.810

You suddenly realise, these readers, these magazines didn't come all that long ago really. They could well have been read by our grandmothers and great grandmothers and grandfathers

00:51:14.810 - 00:51:23.810

and great grandfathers. And suddenly, the film stuff really kind of brings that home to you. You may have seen these films yourself.

00:51:23.810 - 00:51:32.210

Particularly, once we get into the talkie era, you may have seen the films. You may know the actors. And I think that brings a whole new perspective

00:51:32.210 - 00:51:42.490

to this material and really brings those original readers kind of up to our present moment in a way that they aren't always.