Status Updates From Playtime: A History of Aust...

Australia in this period has a highly literate popn - 90% of 5-14 y in 1911 can read & write. There are lots of libraries, and children’s pages in all major newspapers - originally written for children, eventually by children (letters, essays, jokes, limericks, stories & drawings). Playing editor of children’s mags booms. Hobby printing presses become common from the 1890s on - these children pursue “the Inky way”.

Playtime is a history of Australian Childhood covering the period 1890-1945. An era picked because it pre-dates the arrival of television, mass ownership of cars and the concept of a ’teenager’. There has been a long boom in Australia - the Gold Rush of 1850s produced a society of high living standards & high prop'n of children (1870s child <15 make up 42% of the population & by 1901 it is 35% - so lots of children).