Childhood, Culture, and Class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860-1931

by Carolyn Steedman

At the end of the 19th century, Margaret McMillan, charismatic member of the Independent Labour Party and socialist propagandist, played a key role in the betterment of children through her writing, her political activism, and her work for the children of Bradford and London. Her passionate belief that children's lives could be transformed by fresh air, cleanliness and emotional nurturing led her to champion their cause through her prolific writing and speaking, and to create, in the slums of Deptford, a garden for underprivileged children, through whom she reclaimed her own lost childhood. Taking McMillan's life and work as her starting point, Carolyn Steedman explores a profund tranformation in Western sensibility, and looks at the psychological and political fate of this woman who devoted her life to children.

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Carolyn Kay Steedman, FBA (born 20 March 1947) is a British historian, specialising in the social and cultural history of modern Britain and exploring labour, gender, class, language and childhood. Since 2013, she has been Emeritus Professor of History at University of Warwick, where she had previously been a Professor of History since 1999.

Steedman graduated from the University of Sussex with an undergraduate degree in English and American Studies in 1968, and then completed a master's degree at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1974. She was a teacher from then until 1982, when she joined the Institute of Education in the University of London as a researcher; for the 1983–84 year, she was a Fellow there, before lecturing at the University of Warwick, where she was appointed Senior Lecturer in 1988, Reader in 1991 and Professor of Social History in 1995. For the year 1998–99, she was Director of Warwick's Centre for Study of Social History. Steedman returned to Newnham College to complete her doctorate, which was awarded in 1989.

In 2011, Steedman was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.