Popularization of literature on parenting and books for children's reading on the pages of the newspaper Tomskiy spravochnyy listok (1894)

Abstract

The article considers book reviews published in the newspaper Tomskiy spravochnyy listok in 1894, the first year of its publication. The publisher of the newspaper was Petr Makushin, a well-known Siberian bookseller, philanthropist, educator and entrepreneur, founder of the largest bookshop in Siberia. Tomskiy spravochnyy listok appeared due to the fact that Makushin was not allowed to found a public-political newspaper (Sibirskaya gazeta, which he had published before, was closed “for a harmful direction”). Thus, the release of the Tomskiy spravochnyy listok was a compromise solution in the dispute between Makushin and the General Administration of Press. The program of Tomskiy spravochnyy listok was very short: it was allowed to publish reference information and advertising, government orders, telegrams, local chronicles, reports and bibliographic news. The latter was an important section of the newspaper, in which authors could not only recommend books for reading, but also express their views on them and on the problems raised on the pages. The aim of this article is to discover the peculiarities of the reviews published in the newspaper Tomskiy spravochnyy listok, including those dedicated to publications for children's reading and upbringing. In order to reach this aim, the authors determined the place of book reviews in the structure of the newspaper, composed the corpus of analysed publications, revealed their thematic spectrum, determined the methods of popularising children's literature and books on parenting. The main methods of research are comprehensive analysis of periodicals, historical typology and structural-thematic analysis. The section “Bibliography” simultaneously performed several functions in the newspaper: informational, advertising, informative-educational, publicist. Individual reviews were highly publicistic, consistent with the general Russian trend to bypass censorship prohibitions on discussing important public issues through literary criticism. The thematic range of Tomskiy spravochnyy listok reviews was quite wide, although most of the books considered were of a scientific-popular character. This trend was also characteristic of children's reading books, which were not regarded as entertainment but as a means of education and self-education. Reviewers of Tomskiy spravochnyy listok drew attention to the necessity of raising a moral younger generation, development of their practical skills, preservation of health and inculcation of useful habits, including work. Further research of materials of Tomskiy spravochnyy listok, which in 1895 transformed into the newspaper Tomskiy listok and in 1897 into the newspaper Sibirskaya zhizn', will show the development of “children's theme” on the pages of this leading periodical of Siberia.