Andrew O’Malley 
Making of the Modern Child [PDF ebook] 
Children’s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century

The Making of the Modern Child explores how the concept of childhood in the Victorian era was constructed through the ideological work performed by children’s literature, as well as pedagogical writing and medical literature of the era. The author ties the evolution of the idea of ‘the child’ to the growth of the middle class, which used the figure of ‘the child’ as a symbol in its various calls for social reform.