
Remembered Reading
Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood
Mel Gibson
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Monograph - paperback
Girls’ comics were a major genre from the 1950s onwards in Britain and the most popular titles sold between 800,000 and a million copies a week. However, this genre was slowly replaced by magazines which now dominate publishing for girls. 'Remembered Reading' is a readers’ history which explores the genre, and memories of those comics, looking at how and why this rich history has been forgotten. The research is based around both analysis of what the titles contained and interviews with women about their childhood comic reading. In addition, it also looks at the other comic books that British girls engaged with, including humour comics and superhero titles. In doing so it looks at intersections of class, girlhood, and genre, and puts comic reading into historical, cultural, and educational context.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Chapter One. Picture This: Working with Readers, Comics and Memory
Chapter Two. The Rise and Fall of the British Girls' Comic: The Comic and Post-war Constructions of Girlhood
Chapter Five. You Can't Read Them, They're For Boys! Girls Reading Boys' and Mixed Gender Comics
Conclusion
Appendix 1. A Note on Interviews with Children in Accounts of Reading in the 1960s
Appendix 2. Comics and Magazines Checklist
Bibliography
Format: Monograph - paperback
Size: 230 × 170 mm
224 pages
ISBN: 9789462700307
Publication: June 30, 2015
Series: Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels 3
Languages: English
Stock item number: 99598
Mel Gibson is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at Northumbria University.
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Remembered Reading is a remarkably informative work that produces knowledge in dynamic and original ways. By blending critical reflections with the voices of actual readers who bring key information regarding their own female identity to bear on the more abstract study of comics, Gibson makes a strong and original case for a new British history of cultural production as seen through the female experience and for a new canon of British comics that acknowledges the centrality of comics for women. Any future study of British comics after the Second World War will have to consider the materials and argument integrated into this important contribution to comics studies.
Ana Merino, European Comic Art Volume 9 Number 2, Autumn 2016: 100-;109
doi:10.3167/eca.2016.090206
'Remembered Reading' is a masterful achievement on an underserved topic, supported by many years of research and varied approaches.
Margaret Galvan, City University of New York, Europe Now Journal, nov 2016
What is important about 'Remembered Reading' is that it is a readers' history which explores the genre, memories of these comics by female readers who had themselves often forgotten their commitment to girls' comics. [...] Her intent is not to present an alternative analysis of classic girls' comics but to explore in more depth the range of comics read by girls and the diversity of their reading practices. Gibson is interested in the memories and the lived experience of comics reading, and how that led to ideas of class and notions of self. [...] It is crucial to document this history of girls' comics as some of the pioneers have passed on.
Lim Cheng Tju, International Journal of Comic Art Vol 18 No 1 (Spring/Summer 2016)
Through 'a readers' history of comics', Remembered Reading not only invites readers and scholars to (re)discover the forgotten genre of British girls' comics, but also puts forward compelling new ways to think about the history and memory of the medium.
Benoît Crucifix, 'A Readers' History of Girls' Comics: A Review of Remembered Reading' (2016) 6(1): 5 The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.16995/ cg.78
In looking at how people talked and thought about girls comics in the past, and how people talk and think about them still, this book is a great review both of the memories of the former girl readers, and of the criticism -; often ill-informed or inadequate -; made of these comics.
Jenni Scott (comixminx), https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/remembered-reading-by-mel-gibson-book-review/