The notion of teenagers as a separate group of readers with their own tastes and
demanding a style of writing that is directed specifically at them was not adopted by
publishers until relatively recently and, even then, it took a long time to establish an
identity and, perhaps most importantly of all, to find a suitable space in libraries and
bookshops. Naming this invention was a further difficulty. ‘Teenager’, ‘Young Adult’...
what was this audience to be called?
And then there was the further problem that everyone knew that readers younger than
the magic age of 13 would be reading these books. Did publishers have a responsibility
not to include ‘unsuitable’ material for them, or was it enough to have overt labelling
warning that this was intended for teenagers? As books for teenagers became
increasingly daring in terms of explicit writing about sex in the 1970s and violence in
the 1990s the naming and marketing of the books was a significant issue.
Before the concretisation of teenage fiction into named series, acknowledgement that
teenagers wanted books about their own experiences had come gradually and had
started (not surprisingly because ‘teenagers’ themselves were first recognised there) in
the USA. Post-war teenagers were a far more vociferous and independent group than
their predecessors and their experiences had never been explored in fiction. ‘Teenage’
became a separate fashionable entity, and so did its fiction. From the mid-1950s on, and
increasingly with the social liberation of the 1960s and 1970s, books for ‘young adults’
were making their mark, attracting serious writers who recognised the potential market
of intelligent, sophisticated readers who needed books that would acknowledge their
growing awareness of the complex emotions and events they were experiencing. Writers
needed to understand the dilemmas that were posed to this generation by their new
freedoms and to offer sensible discussion of choices without too much moral
instruction.
Initially, the prime thrust of books for the new teenage market was romance, the range
of books reflecting contemporary mores and as well as eternal truths. Fifteen by Beverley
Cleary, one of the first novels directed wholly at teenagers, was published in 1956 in the
USA but not until 1962 by Penguin in Britain—and then as the second title in their
newly launched series for teenagers, Peacocks. It is an unpretentious, straightforward
romance, which is unashamedly about a girl’s desire for a boyfriend, the arrival of said
boyfriend and their ensuing, developing relationship during the year. Cleary treads a
delicate path between the mundane and the romantic, and the book’s very ‘decency’
made it possible for it to fit on to the Peacock list of the time.
The reserve and modesty of books such as Fifteen was followed by a wave of books
which were considerably more sophisticated and complex. While many still dealt with
the very first steps in a relationship, others were tackling the more serious problems like
teenage pregnancy, always a possible result of too much teenage romance. K.M.Peyton is
a romantic writer to her fingertips but she is also a realist. Her stories about the
delinquent Pennington who has a rare talent for playing the piano started in
Pennington’s Seventeenth Summer (1970) with not much more than background
romance. But they progressed through The Beethoven Medal (1971) in which Pennington
continues on his wayward and brilliant career to Pennington’s Heir (1974) in which
girlfriend, now very young wife, Ruth struggles with a baby and nappies under the
shadow of the grand piano, against a background of crashing minor chords. Realistic
384 TYPES AND GENRES