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Reading as both a private and public activity connects people through threads of narrative, opening up windows to the past. For much of early twentieth century America, reading was also one of the most popular forms of leisure and entertainment, a place where heroes could be realized and immortalized. While popular fiction, literature of mass consumption, might be considered kitsch or trashy-trendy, sharp historical analysis can persuade even the most suspect of its value to recognize that it offers a critique of contemporary readers and producers, and larger themes that shaped the cultural climate of the moment. Issues of empowerment, under-representation, turmoil, and change are represented overtly and covertly on the pages of a book, making pulp-narrative rich with layers for the patient and enthusiastic reader to uncover and create a picture of life as it was. At the time of the arrival of the girl aviator, it’s no coincidence to learn that classics once written and published for girls and young women had been losing popularity to the newer books written for boys and young men.4 Flight reinvigorated storylines with new possibilities for adventure, writers of the moment captured a sense of excitement, and girls were determined to be part of the fun. The climate was ripe for the development of a new popular narrative and the concept of an airborne heroine offered the perfect format.
The year 1910 officially marked the arrival of airplanes into popular fiction and such titles emerged as: The Aeroplane Boys 5, The Aviator Series6 , Boy Aviators7 , and Cloud Patrol 8. It was during the period, between 1910 and 1929 that the gender-line, once strikingly clear in popular fiction as well as in the larger social context became increasingly muddled. With new modes of transportation, girl protagonists had already begun to exert new independence. They drove in the Motor Girls and Motor Maids series and captained boats in the Outdoor Girls series, and began a career and love affair with flight, first in the Flying Girl and The Girl Aviators series. Newly recharged storylines and the arrival of the airborne heroine demonstrate that reading trends during these years were strongly representative of larger questions, possibilities, and ambitions regarding women’s places in the world.
4 Reflecting on these changes, one member of the writing world commented: One of the first hard facts which successful publishers of the fifty-cent juvenile series learn is that their best-seller boys’ series always run into far higher figures than their best-seller girls’ series. For girls are avid, unashamed readers of boys’ books “The Fifty Cent Juveniles” Edna Yost. Publishers’ Weekly, June 18, 1932.
Discussions over this transition occurred frequently in the publishing community. Representing this need in 1934, titling her article, in Publishers’ Weekly, “Keep Up with the Trend” Margaret V. Buddy writes:
Classics for girls have not survived so successfully. The new feminism has altered the outlook of the very young women as well as that of their mothers and they demand books about girls who do things. They have no patience with the ‘Little Colonel’ and ‘The Five Little Peppers’ in their placid homes and routine lives. Their heroines must be young reporters or amateur detectives who face danger with clear eyes and level heads and win out where those older and wiser have failed…Heroines of siege and battle are more understandable and attractive to them than the home girl of the eighties
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5 The Aeroplane Boys, is an eight volume series published by Reilly & Britton between 1910 and 1914.
6 The Aviator Series, is a three volume series published by Salfield in 1921 and written by Captain Frank Cobb, consisting of the following titles: Battling the Clouds, An Aviator's Luck and Dangerous Deeds.
7 Boy Aviators, is an eight volume aviation series, written by John H. Goldfrap under the Captain Wilbur Lawton pseudonym, published by Hurst & Company between 1910 and 1915.
8 Cloud Patrol is a three volume series, written by Irving Crump, published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1929 and 1931. All three titles were later reprinted as part of Grosset & Dunlap's Flying Stories and titles in this series include: The Cloud Patrol, Pilot of the Cloud Patrol and Craig of the Cloud Patrol.
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