ABSTRACT
The Victorian period was the age of the child. One out of three people during the era was under 15 years of age.1 Victorian society was a society of children, and, more importantly, it was arguably the first society to define “childhood” in completely new and separate terms from adulthood. Children became dominant in literature and a major concern for social reformers. This was the era of Oliver Twist and Alice in Wonderland, of Walter Pater’s “The Child in the House” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children,” an era to idealize the child and mobilize for its relief from poverty and labor practices. The “Cult of the Child” as a slogan may not have been coined until the 1880s, but a cult was in practice well before then.2
