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Collaborative Childhoods: Children’s Homemade Magazines of Pre-Raphaelite and Bloomsbury Circles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2026

Virginia Zimmerman Open the ORCID record for Virginia Zimmerman [Opens in a new window]
Virginia Zimmerman*
Affiliation:
Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, United States
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Abstract

This essay examines five children’s homemade manuscript magazines and advances an argument that creative collaboration was an important feature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century childhood, especially for middle-class young people associated with artistic circles. Focusing on children connected to the Pre-Raphaelite and Bloomsbury circles, the essay shows how select children formed their own artistic circles, modeled on those of the adults in their lives. The magazines are The Scribbler (1878–80) by the children of William Morris with assistance from the children of Philip Burne-Jones; Our Paper (1870–87) by the children and cousins of the Strachey family; The Gem (1898) by Margaret Keynes with her brothers Geoffrey and John Maynard; the Hyde Park Gate News (1891–95) by the Stephen children, later Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell; and the Charleston Bulletin (1921–27) by Vanessa Bell’s sons, Julian and Quentin Bell. Through serialized stories, correspondence, competitions, and abundant editorial commentary, child-authors and editors asserted a textual agency as they documented and created collaborative artistic communities.

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Type
Research Article
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Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Fall 2025 , pp. 328 - 361
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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