Painting of three young children lying in a grassy field.

Arcadia, by Thomas Eakins, c. 1883. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967.

Youth

Volume VII, Number 3 | summer 2014

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The Blue Boy, by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1770.

Preamble

Fortune’s Child

By Lewis H. Lapham

Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure.

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The Long Goodbye

By Michael Wood

A reconsideration of Gustave Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education—and the very idea of growing up.

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Map showing coming-of-age rituals from around the world.

Map

Rites of Passage

Coming-of-age rituals from around the world.

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Miscellany

Thomas Edison received three months of formal education at the age of eight before his mother homeschooled him. Benjamin Franklin quit school at age ten, Charles Dickens at twelve.

c. 885 | Kyūshū

Count Your Blessings

A medieval guilt trip encourages children to be grateful for their suppers.More

1787 | England

The Proper Nutriment

Whenever a child asks a question, it should always have a reasonable answer given it.More

c. 1771 | Loir-et-Cher

Postgraduate Education

The resemblance of children in schools or colleges is the effect of constraint.More

Charts & Graphs

List of celebrities and when they lost their virginity.

Losing It

How Tolstoy, Casanova, and others lost their virginity.

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Black and white photograph of Polish-born English writer Joseph Conrad.

Portrait of Japanese political figure and scholar Sugawara no Michizane.

Portrait of Chinese painter and poet Xu Wei.

Black and white photograph of English poet Wilfred Owen.

Black and white photograph of former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt.

Image from Codex Manesse depicting a tournament of knights.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870

Black and white print of English politician, essayist, and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Thomas Babington Macaulay & W.H. Auden

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