Holiday House (novel)

Holiday House
1865 edition
AuthorCatherine Sinclair
Published1839
PublisherWilliam Whyte & Co.
Publication placeScotland

Holiday House: A Book for the Young is a novel by Catherine Sinclair. It was first published in Edinburgh by William Whyte & Co. in 1839.[1]

Holiday House is set in Edinburgh at some point before 1815.[2] It tells the story of siblings Laura, Harry, and Frank Graham, who live with their uncle and grandmother.[3] Their mother is dead and their father is out of the country.[3]

The narrative is constructed around two sets of episodes.[4] The first focusses on Laura and Harry's misbehaviour; the second emphasises their growing maturity.[5] In the second portion of the narrative, Frank joins the navy, falls ill, and dies.[6] Frank's death ends Laura and Harry's childish mischief and turns them toward a Christian ethic.[7]

In her preface to the novel, Sinclair rejects the didacticism that had dominated children's literature in English since the late 18th century.[1] She writes that Holiday House aims to show characters who exemplify "that species of noisy, frolicsome, mischievous children, now almost extinct".[8] Critics have viewed Holiday House as a transitional work between this earlier period and later children's fiction by authors including Lewis Carroll,[9] and have explored its gendered portrayal of childhood as preparation for imperial careers.[10]

Citations

  1. ^ a b Hahn 2015, p. 284.
  2. ^ Wolff 1975, p. 297.
  3. ^ a b Lesnik-Oberstein 2002, pp. 82–83.
  4. ^ Horne 2001, p. 22.
  5. ^ Horne 2001, pp. 22–23.
  6. ^ Hoffman 2013, p. 115.
  7. ^ Wolff 1975, p. 298.
  8. ^ Avery 1975, p. 143.
  9. ^ Rudd 2004, p. 53.
  10. ^ Valint 2011, p. 65.

Works cited

  • Avery, Gillian (1975). Childhood's Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children's Fiction, 1770–1950. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-16945-1. OCLC 2048422.
  • Hahn, Daniel (2015). The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (2d ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-174437-2. OCLC 921452204.
  • Hoffman, A. Robin (2013). "Holiday House, Childhood, and the End(s) of Time". Children's Literature. 41 (1): 115–139. doi:10.1353/chl.2013.0019. ISSN 1543-3374.
  • Horne, Jackie C. (2001). "Punishment as Performance in Catherine Sinclair's Holiday House". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 26 (1): 22–32. doi:10.1353/chq.0.1362. ISSN 1553-1201.
  • Lesnik-Oberstein, Karin (2002). "Holiday House: Grist to The Mill on the Floss, or Childhood as Text". The Yearbook of English Studies. 32: 77–94. doi:10.2307/3509049. JSTOR 3509049.
  • Rudd, David (2004). "The Froebellious Child in Catherine Sinclair's Holiday House". The Lion and the Unicorn. 28 (1): 53–69. doi:10.1353/uni.2004.0009. ISSN 1080-6563. S2CID 143506505.
  • Valint, Alexandra (2011). "Mischief, Gender, and Empire: Raising Imperial Bachelors and Spinsters in Catherine Sinclair'sHoliday House". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 36 (1): 64–88.
  • Wolff, Robert Lee (1975). "Some Erring Children in Children's Literature: The World of Victorian Religious Strife in Miniature". In Buckley, Jerome Hamilton (ed.). The Worlds of Victorian Fiction. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-96205-2. OCLC 1218594.


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