page_title: Children's literature
section_title: Magazines and comics
hierarchical_section_title: Children's literature / National traditions / United Kingdom / Magazines and comics
caption_attribution_description: Statue of Minnie the Minx in Dundee, Scotland city centre
context_page_description: Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are made for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader.
  Children's literature can be traced to stories such as fairy tales that have only been identified as children’s literature in the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, that adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. Children's literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke.
context_section_description: An important aspect of British children's literature has been comic books and magazines. Amongst the most popular comics have been The Beano and The Dandy (both published in the 1930s). British comics in the 20th century evolved from illustrated penny dreadfuls of the Victorian era (featuring Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin and Varney the Vampire). First published in the 1830s, according to The Guardian, penny dreadfuls were "Britain's first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young."
  Important early magazines or story papers for older children were the Boy's Own Paper, published from 1879 to 1967 and The Girl's Own Paper published from 1880 until 1956. Other story papers for older boys were The Hotspur (1933 to 1959) and The Rover, which started in 1922 and was absorbed into Adventure in 1961 and The Wizard in 1963, and eventually folded in 1973. Many prominent authors contributed to the Boy's Own Paper: cricketer W.G. Grace wrote for several issues, along with authors Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and R. M. Ballantyne, as well as Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement.
  Many contributors to The Girl's Own Paper were not known outside the paper's pages, but they also included Noel Streatfeild, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Sarah Doudney (1841–1926), Angela Brazil, Richmal Crompton, Fanny Fern, and Baroness Orczy.
  The Eagle was a popular British comic for boys, launched in 1950 by Marcus Morris, an Anglican vicar from Lancashire. Revolutionary in its presentation and content, it was enormously successful; the first issue sold about 900,000 copies. Featured in colour on the front cover was its most recognisable story, "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future", created with meticulous attention to detail. It was first published from 1950 to 1969, and relaunched from 1982 to 1994. Its sister comic was Girl, whose early issues from 1951 featured the strip "Kitty Hawke and her All-Girl Air Crew".
caption: Statue of Minnie the Minx, a character from The Beano. Launched in 1938, the comic is known for its anarchic humour, with Dennis the Menace appearing on the cover.
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