Harper's Young People, Vol. 01, Issue 04, Nov. 25, 1879

A frozen moment in late Victorian childhood, this fourth issue of Harper's Young People invites modern readers into the world that entertained American children in 1879. Here, in its pages, young readers of the Gilded Age found serialized adventures, short fiction, jokes, anecdotes, and striking illustrations that spoke to their hopes and humors. Harper & Brothers, the same house that published Harper's Magazine and Bazaar, assembled this weekly cocktail of wonder and instruction for the young. For historians and curious readers, it's something rarer than nostalgia: a genuine artifact revealing what stories Americans told their children over a century ago, and what has changed and what has stayed stubbornly, beautifully the same.