Abstract
In the middle of the nineteenth century, American adults worried about a dramatic change in the media environment, one that made a huge quantity of sensational, cheap fiction available to children. Many adults reacted strongly and negatively to changes in children’s access to this fiction, believing that it would alter children’s attitudes and behaviors in negative ways. These concerns were closely tied to, and influenced by, changes taking place in society at the time that were contributing to shifts in family structure and relationships. Much as today, when adults are ambivalent about the proliferation of inexpensive digital media and children’s increasing access to those media, nineteenth-century adults were not sure what to think about the changes taking place in the media environment of their children, or what the impact of those changes might be.