Teenage
The Creation of Youth, 1875-1945
‘Adolescence is a new birth’
G.Stanley Hall, Adolescence, 1904
Boy. “Parents don’t know anything about their children and what they’re doing.”
Girl. “They don’t want to know.”
Girl. “We won’t let them know.”
Boy. “Ours is a speedy world and they’re old”.’Robert S.Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd: Middletown: A Study in American Culture (1929)
“Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945″ was researched and written between 1999 and 2006, but had its genesis in the late 70′s when I was approached by Granada Television to develop a TV series based on Dick Hebdige’s “Subcultures”. A pilot called “Teenage” was produced during 1981 but was never shown.
Despite the cancellation of the series, the subject stayed with me and I amassed all the detail I could about the history of youth culture. A key moment in the development of the book occurred when I found a copy of G.Stanley Hall’s monumental, two volume “Adolescence” – if there is one founder of the Teenage, it is him.
For more on this, see the Introduction.
Spanning seventy years and two World Wars, “Teenage” contains various dialectics: between the US, the UK and Europe; between the wish of regimes to control youth and the wish of youth to create their own culture; between the way that adults discuss youth and the actual voices of youth themselves.
These are principally heard in the diary entries throughout the book – whether Marie Bashkirtseff, Karen Horney or Anne Frank. In one sense, the book charts the struggle of adolescents to be heard on their own terms. It also makes the point that what we now think of as youth culture is not just a post-war phenomenon.
“Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945″ was published in the UK and the US in Spring 2007. It has since been translated into German and published by Campus Verlag in Autumn 2008. A CD compilation of songs mentioned in the book (see compilations section) was released by Trikont in March 2009.
- Unused Chapter: Youth in Evolving Revolutions
- Italy and Russia in the 1930′s.
- 50 Top Teenage Tunes
- Compiled for the Observer Music Monthly in April 2007
- Technikart Interview
- this interview was done with Benoit Sabatier of Technikart magazine in July 2007