Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority, 1780–1930
Description
Strange, deformed, and beautiful, the child acrobat Mignon sprang onto the public stage in 1795. A figment of Goethe’s fiction, he appeared in countless forms and guises over the next century. The meaning of this compelling creature is the focus of Steedman’s account of how 19th-century notions of childhood gave birth to the modern idea of a self.
