Social Print: Shaping Community and Identity through Youth Correspondence Pages, New Zealand, 1886-1920

Abstract

Histories of print culture have tended to cast children and young people as readers and consumers of literature, rather than active writers and creators. This thesis brings young people’s writing into focus through an analysis of youth correspondence pages in New Zealand periodicals over the period 1886-1920. It reveals that not only did young people write to periodicals to express opinions and represent their lives in print, but that correspondence pages provided a new forum for youth socialisation. These correspondence clubs constituted an ‘imagined community’ on-page, yet also created very real communities off-page through the organisation of affiliated social activities. The press was not simply an organ of news and adult opinion, but was a key tool in young people’s social lives. Thus, this thesis has dubbed the wider social dynamic of the press the world of ‘social print’. Looking at the social side of print culture allows us to better understand the role which print (and specifically periodicals) played in the everyday lives of New Zealand young people in this era. It argues that the four periodicals studied here: the Maoriland Worker, New Zealand Farmer, New Zealand Graphic and Otago Witness, were not only embedded within a family readership, but that the clubs envisioned themselves as ‘paper families’. This ‘print-kin’ network forged strong and enduring bonds, yet was also fluid in its ability to transcend the page, bridging distance and time. The interplay between ‘real’ and ‘imagined’, and off-page and on-page spaces, fashioned a social world for young people which was created by, but not bound to, the press. Off-page, members of the clubs formed an identity as part of this dynamic social world and their interactions complicate traditional narratives of childhood and youth around concepts such as age, gender, citizenship and charity. The interactive nature of the press is undeniably social and this thesis seeks to reposition the social as a key lens of analysis for histories of print culture. It is important to recognise that whilst the juvenile print market did produce works for young people, through media like correspondence pages, young people were also able to participate in the creation of their own printed world. Envisioning New Zealand’s young people as active participants in the social world of print sits at the heart of this thesis, and these sources provide valuable evidence of young people’s voices and agency within print culture.