The advertising and marketing of the Edwardian prize book: gender for sale

Great Britain developed a new way of thinking increasingly based upon the possession of material goods. The Great Exhibition of 1851 marked a pivotal moment crystallizing the transformation of the advertising industry and forming a commodity culture. Later advertising became the coordinating frame within which very different forms of social life were grouped. This article is concerned with a particular aspect of advertising: the prize book, a book given as an award by an educational or religious institution to disseminate approved fiction to children. Prize-book catalogues from six major prize-book publishing houses of the early twentieth century are used to explore how prize books were marketed to educators in Edwardian Britain, how boys and girls were framed by the advertisements, and how differences existed between secular and religious publishers, revealing insights into gender ideologies in the Edwardian period.