''The Juvenile Miscellany'' was a 19th-century American bimonthly children's magazine published in Boston, Massachusetts between 1826 and 1836. It was founded by Lydia Maria Child. Publishers varied over the years, but the original publisher was John Putnam.

Sarah Josepha Hale Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 24, 1788April 30, 1879) was an American writer, activist, and editor of ''Godey's Lady's Book''. She was the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Hale famously campaigned for the creation of the ...

edited the magazine as a monthly between September 1834 and April 1836.

History

The magazine was founded in 1826 by Lydia Maria Child. She supervised its bimonthly publication between September 1826 and August 1834. Child's interest in abolitionism and the publication in 1833 of her antislavery book, ''An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans'', led to Child being socially shunned. Subscriptions to the magazine dropped off. Child left her editorial position. Child wrote in the magazine to child readers when leaving the magazine in 1834: "After conducting the ''Miscellany'' for eight years, I am now compelled to bid a reluctant and most affectionate farewell to my little readers. May God bless you, my young friends, and impress deeply upon your hearts the conviction that all true excellence and happiness consists in living for others, not for yourselves. ... I intend hereafter to write other books for your amusement and instruction; and I part from you with less pain, because I hope that God will enable me to be a medium of use to you, in some other form than the ''Miscellany''."American children's periodicals, 1821-1840: The Juvenile Miscellany
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Content

The magazine's content emphasized

middle class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Com ...

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

values. It featured

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

s, stories, puzzles, and informative articles. The magazine was didactic. It provided amusement and imparted moral lessons while avoiding the piety so common in children's literature of the period. The magazine was ground-breaking. The ''Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature'' writes, "The calm security of the lives of the children in the stories, the affection they receive, and their childishness were something new in American writing." The writers who contributed to its pages included Eliza Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, Hannah Flagg Gould, Sarah Josepha Hale, Caroline Howard Gilman, and Anna Maria Wells. Child herself contributed as "Aunt Maria".

Response

The magazine was hugely popular. Within four months of its debut, the magazine had 850 subscribers. While stories stressed the Protestant ethic, they were never boring. Caroline Healy Dall wrote in the ''Unitarian Review'' in 1883:

"No child who read the ''Juvenile Miscellany'' ... will ever forget the excitement that the appearance of each number caused. ... The children sat on the stone steps of their house doors all the way up and down Chestnut Street in Boston, waiting for the carrier. He used to cross the street, going from door to door in a zigzag fashion; and the fortunate possessor of the first copy found a crowd of little ones hanging over her shoulder from the steps above. ... How forlorn we were if the carrier was late!"Karcher, p. 58

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Juvenile Miscellany 1826 establishments in Massachusetts 1836 disestablishments in Massachusetts Bimonthly magazines published in the United States Children's magazines published in the United States Monthly magazines published in the United States Defunct literary magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1826 Magazines disestablished in 1836 Magazines published in Boston