A young, tousled-haired boy about the age of seven is slumbering away in his bed, ensconced in a non-descript, middle class bedroom (fig. 1). He is jarred awake by the revelation that his bed is levitating, and slowly floating out his window and into space. So begins an episode of Winsor McCay's epic comic strip adventure, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which appeared in newspapers across the country between 1905 and 1914. Featured on the cover of the New York Herald's Sunday comic supplement (and syndicated nationwide), the comic presented the bedtime adventures of a small boy called Nemo. In the serial's debut, and in the weeks to follow, Nemo repeatedly attempted to reach the enchanted kingdom of Slumberland, only to have the journey preempted when he awakened and found himself safely at home in his bed. It was an ideal subject for a weekly comic in that the curtailed narrative induced readers to purchase the next installment. Such literature also taught its young readers an appreciation for the pleasures of both fantasy and delayed gratification.

A visit to an exotic world followed by a return to reality was a common trope in children's magazines and books, as evidenced by the widespread popularity of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz, and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. The cultural preoccupation with fantastic subjects did not go unnoticed. The writer Brian Hooker wrote in the October 1908 edition of Forum, "The present day is exhibiting a curiously vivid interest in fairy tales," and later pondered, "perhaps our very materialism is responsible for this new hunger after fancy." By the first decade of the 20th century images celebrating wonder and fantasy appeared in everything from picture books and comic strips, to department stores and amusement parks.

Little Nemo's bold visual style and epic story arc distinguished the comic from its competitors. Its ambitions included broadening the audience for comic strips by self-consciously referencing pictorial forms from an expansive range of high and low cultural sources. McCay's comic strips redefined the nascent medium and made an important contribution to the proliferation of fantastic imagery at the dawn of the 20th century. To best understand his cultural contributions it is useful to examine his aesthetic innovations, as well as the social and historical context in which his work found its audience.

Visual Analysis

McCay's work was characterized by its vivid use of color, skillful draftsmanship, intricate detail, and imaginative architectural forms. In this episode dated December 3, 1905, we can see how McCay expanded the narrative possibilities of the comic strip through his embrace of full-page design. Here he creates visual interest and momentum by varying the size and shape of the panels, culminating in the central circular panel, while unifying the entire page through symmetry and repetition. His graceful line work and use of flat areas of color are reminiscent of art nouveau poster art. It is also important to recognize that his fantastic imagery is rooted in the spectacular world of commerce and popular entertainment that ushered in the 20th century. For example, the emphasis on primary colors and the typographical flourishes found in the title panel are reminiscent of circus poster art. The comic's narrative, an imagined trip to the moon, was also the subject of an amusement park ride at Coney Island, a serialized novel published in St. Nicholas, and a 1902 film by Georges Méliès. McCay's comic strips produced a dream world shaped by the visual language of modern urban experience.

As the students read the comic strip, ask them to think about how words and images are combined to create the narrative. Talk about the essential components of a comic strip: the header/title, the panels, the gutters (the space between the panels), and the captions and/or speech balloons. How do these components divide time and space? How do the elements combine to advance plotlines? What is more instrumental to the flow of this narrative, the words or the pictures? Do either contradict or work against one another? How do text and image compliment, or complicate, the story? How are the different visual elements combined to create a unified, full-page design? Why does McCay vary the size and shape of the panels? How does this affect the flow of time within the comic strip? Emphasize scale, which will not be apparent from viewing the image online. Bring in a copy of the New York Times as a visual aid and explain that one Little Nemo comic strip took up the full page of a broadsheet newspaper (about 16 x 22 inches), as compared to newspaper comic strips today, which are compressed in size so as to fit as much content onto the page as possible. How does the size of the image affect the reading experience? The large scale of McCay's fantastical designs contributed to their transportive quality, as children could immerse themselves in scenes of faraway lands and magic kingdoms.

Historical Context

Weekly funny pages, directed at both children and adults, first appeared in newspapers in the 1890s, when the publishing barons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst vigorously competed with each other for readers. They soon discovered that the colorful comic supplements boosted circulation. The initial audiences for comics were urban, working class immigrants and the content of the newspapers reflected their readership. R. F. Outcault's The Yellow Kid and Rudolph Dirks' The Katzenjammer Kids drew inspiration from the various ethnic communities who populated the tenements of the lower east side. Common elements of such comics include urban settings, crowded frames, and the use of anti-authoritarian, anarchic humor similar to that found in the slapstick comedy of vaudeville routines, with an emphasis on the child as a trickster figure.

As newspapers became nationally syndicated the content of the comics became less urban and culturally specific so as to appeal to a wider audience. By 1903 comics transitioned from being an urban phenomenon to a national craze. Little Nemo attempted to bridge the gap between the serialized adventure stories found in high-brow illustrated magazines like St. Nicholas, and the low brow humor of the Sunday supplements. This was undoubtedly a strategic move on the part of McCay's employer, James Gordon Bennett Jr., who wished to distinguish the New York Herald as a middle-class alternative to its more sensational counterparts like Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal.

Images glorifying childhood as period of unfettered creativity dominated the visual landscape of early 20th-century American fiction, magazines, and comics. Concurrent with the rapid expansion of mass culture, these dreamscapes directed viewers to revel in fantasy and delight in ungratified longing, thereby inciting the pleasures of consumer desire in its audience of young dreamers. This contributed to a shared visual culture that celebrated fantasy and the imagination. For McCay, Slumberland was a retreat from modernity; yet his spectacular landscapes were peppered with allusions to popular culture. References to circus posters, Coney Island thrill rides, and show window displays abound in his designs. McCay's use of the medium was highly self-reflexive and ambivalent: his work articulated the complex ways in which fantasy and mass culture were entangled at the turn-of-the-century.

Teaching the Source

This striking image is a potential jumping off point for further discussion of the rapid rise of a mass popular culture in American cities in the early 20th century. In my art history course, after dividing into groups to talk about how the visual design and narrative work together, I will ask students to research and write a short report on another example of 20th century visual culture that explores some of the same themes. Examples can take the form of children's literature, early film, amusement parks, poster art, advertising, or illustration. Students present short papers on any number of topics, including L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Georges Méliès' film A Trip to the Moon, the architecture of Coney Island's Luna Park and Dreamland, Barnum & Bailey circus posters, and the commercial illustrations of Maxfield Parrish. Students found commonalities in themes, visual motifs, and subject matter, pointing to the many ways that popular art forms intersected and influenced one another at the dawn of mass culture.

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The best path to civilization is the education, training of girls. The first necessity of moral refinement for girls is to be educated, trained, and cultured. Every nation that wants to become civilized has to begin educating and training girls from an early age. Each nation, according to their own religious laws and practices, should provide it [education] for them with any means possible.

Indeed, these girls will become mothers themselves, and their children will socialize with one another and their habits and disposition will spread among each other. But if they have all been educated in a good manner and with moral refinement, then there can be established in that nation a higher civilization. In this manner, the nation will develop and complete its march of progress by becoming civilized.

On the other hand, if the girls [children] are trained and raised by an uneducated mother, then the bad moods, habits, and disposition will have a bad affect on the children. Along with the growth and mental maturity, an indecent manner will be formed and become a habit; and it will also spread among the children. Therefore, barbarism will develop among the people and they will never become a civilized nation. . .

Cartoons is a website produced by the British Cartoon Archive, a collection based at the University of Kent (England), dedicated to cartooning in newspapers and other forms of publication in Britain over the past century. It has a collection of around 150,000 cartoons drawn by approximately 300 cartoonists. This site provides students and teachers alike with a way of enlivening their approach to British political and social history as well as the history of children and youth. The website has a huge amount of material available, and it is well organized to help the researcher find cartoons from a particular cartoonist, or on a particular theme.

The alphabetical list of cartoonists in the Biographies section will include some names familiar to anyone brought up in Britain – and many others they will never have heard of. Fortunately the names of the most famous ones (and the most important newspapers that published them) are specified in the Search section, which helps to orientate the researcher. The site gives a brief biography of each artist, written with a nice light touch. For example, we learn that Barry Fantoni was thrown out of Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1958, accused of "wrecking the home of one of the teachers in a state of drunken madness." Fortunately for him, he was able to continue at the renowned Slade School of Art, and achieve fame and fortune as a pop artist as well as a cartoonist. A particular feature of the Archive is the Carl Giles Collection donated by the artist in 2005. This reviewer must confess to looking forward to seeing his cartoon in the Sunday Express each week during the 1950s and 1960s. His most famous creation was the Giles Family, a "bizarre fantasy," according to the biography, "of a working-class household living a comfortable middle-class life." The outstanding character was surely Grandma Giles, a ferocious looking character whose "anarchic vitality" led to her being heavily into drinking and betting. Also familiar to many will be the figure of Andy Capp, drawn by Reg Smythe under orders to appeal to readers in the north of England. Andy Capp, according to the biography of Smythe, emerged as the "flat-capped, pigeon-fancying, beer-swilling, work-shy northerner," with views on marriage going back to the "Neolithic Age."

The Search facility allows one to choose among numerous subjects. Each cartoon includes: a reference number, caption, embedded text (picking out detail not easily read in the reproduction), notes, the people depicted, and the subjects covered. The very abundance of the material may be a problem, especially as much of it will probably not appear useful to the modern reader. There are, for example, 6,099 entries under the heading of Children. In some cases, the cartoonist wishes to comment on events in contemporary society. W.K. Haselden, for example, turned out dozens of cartoons under this heading during the 1900s. Concerns over the declining birth rate in 1905 led the cartoonist to envisage a future in which babies become rare specimens, exhibited in cages and labelled "born in the managerie" (ref. WHO1490). In other cases, it is a matter of poking fun at politicians by depicting them as juveniles. "A row in the play-ground," by John Doyle, reduces politics in the 1830s to squabbling between Melbourne, Peel, Wellington and others (ref. mudyx9t). The cataloguers have provided numerous headings related to childhood and youth, such as girls, childhood romance, schools, schoolboys, juvenile delinquency, and mothers. Again the researcher will need to sift through the material to separate cartoons focused on that heading in particular from those with only a passing allusion.

The site includes advice on creating a group of cartoons as a teaching pack, to illustrate a particular theme. It provides a number of these but it is doubtless best to create your own, as the site advises. The site also points out in a section on Teaching Aids that "sophisticated searching" allows one to see, for example, what was happening on a specific day in history, by assembling all the cartoons that appeared in the newspapers on that day, or to grasp how politicians or major personalities (such as Princess Diana, with 321 entries) were perceived. This section promises five "resource packages" linked to themes in the British schools curriculum, and resources to help in the reading and analysis of cartoons. There is a section on Articles to help the teacher or researcher, though it remained obstinately stuck on "G" whenever consulted by this reviewer.

Overall, it is clear that a great deal of thought and effort has gone into making the vast collection of material available to the public, and into supporting the cartoons with relevant background information. The standard of presentation and the layout are excellent. It will need an awareness of the political stance of the newspapers involved to make much sense, and a feel for popular culture in Britain. Still, it is a cornucopia of delights.

Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788-1899 was created to publish records of the superior courts of New South Wales with the goal of recovering the records of colonial law. At present it concentrates on the decisions of the Supreme Courts and other courts of unlimited jurisdiction between 1788 and 1841.

This archival site is challenging to use, but worth the effort. There are several ways to locate information relevant to children. Searches using keywords such as "boy," "girl," "child," "children," and "family," produce a few hits; this should improve as more materials become accessible in digital form.

Interesting material on children is available, though, by browsing the subject index. A range of relevant topics emerge, including "child, failure to support," "children, defendants," and "children, evidence by." Other subjects include Aboriginal affairs, family law, infancy, infanticide, marriage of infants, children and oaths, Orphan School, and schools (and education laws).

"Other features" presents cases and groups of documents, such as Justice Burton's collected documents concerning Aborigines 1797-1840. This includes the key law that resulted in the "Stolen Generation," Original Document 5, "Proclamations &c Black Natives Establishment of Institution for Children Government and General Orders Government House Sydney: 10th December 1814." This law provided for the "civilizing" of the Aboriginal people by placing their children into state-run schools.

Photographs, recollections, legal records and commentary tell this harrowing story. Records document the school/orphanages that housed and educated Aboriginal children, warehousing them in military-style schools where they often lost touch with their identities and families. The schools trained boys for low-skilled work and girls for domestic service. An especially interesting feature is Dawn Magazine, "An introduction to the public face of the Aborigines Welfare Board (1952–1969) and the photos it reproduced."

Two factors about the public use of the site are noteworthy. First, many of the archives on Aboriginal communities are closed for 100 years due to sensitivity about the treatment of indigenous peoples of Australia who were deprived of their rights over their culture, lands, bodies, and children. The site also offers a finding aid for genealogical searches. New South Wales was the staging ground for the settlement of Australia by convicts brought from overcrowded British prisons. Many contemporary Aussies may be able to trace their genealogy back to those original settlers through the site.

This is a site that will increase in usefulness on children and other topics as the archive becomes more complete. In the meantime, dedicated searching will reveal significant material on the laws and implementation of those laws affecting many aspects of the lives of children.

DON’T GIVE TO MUMMERS

Charity Workers Advise Us Not to Yield to Thanksgiving Beggars

To the Public:

Thanksgiving Day is an American institution–one of the few which we have originated and which has become really National. Its primary associations are religious and serious. The strengthening of family ties and the building up of character are among its natural purposes. Good cheer and hospitality rather than a reckless carnival spirit have always been its distinguishing characteristics.

Here in New York City, however, we are in danger of falling into a custom which is inconsistent with the whole spirit of Thanksgiving and a strange perversion of its highest purposes. This is the habit of giving pennies and larger coin to children who put on fantastic clothing and in this disguise impudently ask every passerby for money. Surely it needs no argument to show that to teach young children to become beggars is no right use of our National Day of prayer and thanksgiving.

There are many excellent citizens who thoughtlessly respond to these appeals because they think they are giving innocent pleasure to their neighbors’ children as perhaps their neighbors are similarly giving to their own. There are no doubt many innocent children who can take part in such pranks with no great harm, because on other days in the year they are under proper discipline, and quickly forget the impressions made on them by what they consider a new kind of game. But reflection will convince any good citizen that for a large proportion of those to whom they give money it is a dangerous game. Often such impressions do not pass away from the mind of the child–especially if they are renewed and deepened on each succeeding Thanksgiving Day.

In the interest of our children and in the interest of a national observance of this holiday, we appeal to parents to restrain their children from this foolish and mischievous use of the day, and to citizens to refrain from encouraging this pernicious custom.

ROBERT W. DE FOREST,
President Charity Organization Society.

R. FULTON CUTTING,
President New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor.

LEOPOLD PLAUGHT,
President United Hebrew Charities

WILLIAM CHURCH OSBORN,
President Children’s Aid Society.

DAVID H. GREER,
Bishop of the Diocese of New York

D.J. McMAHON,
Supervisor of Catholic Charities

FRANK MASON NORTH
Chairman Commission on Church and Social Service