What you read and where you read it, how you get it, how you keep it: Children, comics and historical cultural practice

Abstract

This article looks at the historical cultural practices of children in relation to reading comics during the 1950s to the 1980s in Britain. During this period the cultural practice of younger readers was touched upon by critics, but predominantly as part of a media effects discourse locating comics as dangerous, as the work of George Pumphrey (1954, 1955, 1964) demonstrates. The article extends and critiques this work by drawing on interview with adults about their memories of their childhood cultural practices around comics, touching on acquisition, collection, social uses, gendered identity and reading practices. It will also, consequently, flag up some key understandings of the audiences and meanings of comics within UK culture at that time.