Daniel Defoe's novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, published in 1722, is a useful historical text for examining the everyday lives of female children as well as the possibilities of girlhood in 18th-century British… [more]

The book-length narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs who was born a slave in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1813. Harriet was unaware of her slave status until at age six, her mother died… [more]