ABSTRACT
Just as the ethic of work and endeavour epitomised by Samuel Smiles's philosophy acted upon earlier educational imperatives stemming from evangelical Christianity and utilitarianism to produce the boy's adventure story, the moral fiction of the Empire. The new currents of thought in the mid-century also acted upon writing intended for girls. The novel for girls, which developed in the 1850s, grew partly in reaction against romances, and aimed to correct the sensibility they fostered and to counteract their imperfect. The romance was aligned with evangelical party; the novel was to develop in reaction against all that it stood for, offering alternative religious, social and aesthetic values. By the 1880s Charlotte Yonge was admitting as obvious the premiss that girls are indiscriminate devourers of fiction, and that the semi-religious novel or novelette is to them moralising put into action, and the most likely way of reaching them.
