Young adult literature (YA) is literature written for readers aged 12 to 18. It may include themes found in adult fiction, such as family dysfunction, substance abuse, alcoholism, and sexuality.
The earliest known use of term young adult occurred in 1942. Librarians developed the category of young adult literature to help bridge the gap between children's literature and adult literature. According to a study conducted in 2023, 55% of young adult literature consumers were over 18 years of age. 78% of adult consumers purchased with the intent to read themselves. Of these adult buyers, 51% were between ages 30 and 44. This highlights the fact that readers of young adult literature are often adults.
Definitions
According to author and academic Michael Cart, the term young adult literature "first found common usage in the late 1960s, in reference to realistic fiction that was set in the real (as opposed to imagined), contemporary world and addressed problems, issues, and life circumstances of interest to young readers aged approximately 12–18". However, "The term 'young adult literature' is inherently amorphous, for its constituent terms 'young adult' and 'literature' are dynamic, changing as culture and society — which provide their context — change", and "even those who study and teach it have not reached a consensus on a definition".Victor Malo-Juvera, Crag Hill, "The Young Adult Canon: A Literary Solar System", in Critical Explorations of Young Adult Literature London: Routledge, 2019, p. 2.
Victor Malo-Juvera and Crag Hill, in "The Young Adult Canon: A Literary Solar System", note that in 2019 there was no consensus on the definition of young adult literature and list a number of definitions, including:In Critical Explorations of Young Adult Literature. London: Routledge, 2019, p. 2.
Books that readers aged 12 to 20 chose independently Literature written for young people aged 11 to 18 and books marked as "young adult" by a publisher Literature including a teenager who is the main character and who, as the center of the plot, engages in problems related to and relatable to the lives of teenagers Novels told by "a teen protagonist speaking from an adolescent point of view, with all the limitations of understanding that implies"
This provides an overall consensus in the literary world that the definition of young adult literature is unique to the author, reader, and publisher. There are common themes and tropes seen across young adult literary work that lead a piece to be classified as young adult literature as a general classification with some aspects that may fall into adult literature as well as children's literature.
History
Librarians first defined this new category of fiction, in particular librarians from the New York Public Library. The NYPL's first annual Books for Young People list was sent in 1929 to schools and libraries across the country. Then "In 1944 [...] NYPL librarian Margaret Scoggin changed the name of her library journal column from 'Books for Older Boys and Girls' to 'Books for Young Adults', and the genre was christened with a name that has lasted to this day". Initially the YA genre "tended to feature the same" boy and girl love story. But in the 1960s the novels developed to more fully examining the lives of adolescents. Particularly noteworthy was S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders."The Evolution of YA: Young Adult Fiction, Explained." The Evolution of YA: Young Adult Fiction, Explained [Featuring Lindsay Ellis], 25 June 2018. Gale In Context: Middle School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/JWHCDX883772507/MSIC?u=sain66118&sid=bookmark-MSIC&xid=b66a28c2. Accessed 18 May 2023.
Pre-20th century
French historian Philippe Ariès argues, in his 1962 book Centuries of Childhood, that the modern concept of childhood only emerged in recent times. He argues that children were in the past not considered as greatly different from adults and were not given significantly different treatment. Furthermore, "Teenagers weren't a designated demographic in most respects until around World War II, due in part to advances in psychology and sociological changes, like the abolishment of child labor". With this development came the marketing of "clothes, music, films, radio programs, and ... the novel" for young adults.
On the other hand, Sarah Trimmer, in 1802, recognized young adults as a distinct age group, describing "young adulthood" as lasting from ages 14 to 21. In her children's literature periodical, The Guardian of Education, Trimmer introduced the terms "Books for Children" (for those under fourteen) and "Books for Young Persons" (for those between fourteen and twenty-one), establishing terms of reference for young adult literature that still remain in use.
"At the beginning of the eighteenth century", according to M. O. Grenby:
A number of works by eighteenth and nineteenth-century authors, though not written specifically for young readers, have appealed to them. Novels by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Edith Nesbit.Susan Broomhall, Joanne McEwan, Stephanie Tarbin. "Once upon a time: a brief history of children's literature", The Conversation (website), 28 May 2017
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, published in 1865 and one of the best-known works of Victorian literature, has had widespread influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. It is credited as helping end an era of didacticism in children's literature, inaugurating an era in which writing for children aimed to "delight or entertain". The tale has had a lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It was inspired when, on 4 July 1862, Lewis Carroll and Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed in a boat with the three young daughters of scholar Henry Liddell: Lorina (aged 13); Alice (aged 10); and Edith Mary (aged 8). During the trip Carroll told the girls a story that he described in his diary as "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" and which his journal says he "undertook to write out for Alice". She finally got the manuscript more than two years later. A shortened version for young children, The Nursery "Alice", was published in 1890.
A number of novels by Robert Louis Stevenson were first published in serial form, in a weekly children's literary magazine, Young Folks, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Black Arrow. This magazine was for boys and girls of an older age than many of its contemporaries.
Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer is described by publisher Simon & Schuster as "The classic tale of a young boy's adventures on the Mississippi in the nineteenth century".Simon & Schuster The same description can be applied to its sequel, Huckleberry Finn. The protagonist is an early adolescent who is navigating the hardships of society with an entertainment aspect of adventure that ties in history with literary merit.
20th century
According to journalist Erin Blakemore, "Though young adult literature had existed since at least Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, which was published in the 1930s, teachers and librarians were slow to accept books for adolescents as a genre".
In 1942, Seventeenth Summer – called by some the first young adult novel – by seventeen-year-old Maureen Daly, was published. Its themes were especially relevant to teenagers, underaged drinking, driving, dating, and angst. Another early example is the Heinlein juveniles, which were science fiction novels written by Robert A. Heinlein for Scribner's young-adult line, beginning with Rocket Ship Galileo in 1947. Scribner's published eleven more between 1947 and 1958, but the thirteenth, Starship Troopers, was instead published by Putnam. The intended market was teenaged boys. A fourteenth novel, Podkayne of Mars (1963), featured a teenaged girl as the protagonist.
In the 1950s, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) attracted the attention of the adolescent readers although it was written for adults. The themes of adolescent angst and alienation in the novel have become synonymous with young adult literature.
The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–5) by J. R. R. Tolkien are highly successful fantasy novels selling over 150 million copies by 2007. Often read to young children and read by both children and adults, Jessica Yates, "Tolkien as a Writer for Young Adults". Excerpted from St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, ed. Dave Collins (Gale Research, 1999). Reprinted by kind permission of The Gale Group. Tolkien Society; Ursula le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, New York: Perigee, 1980, p. 173. Le Guin describes reading Lord of the Rings, in three days, reading it to her nine year old, and that her teenagers were now reading it on their own. they are found in the teen or young adult section of American public libraries.New York Public Library; Boston Public Library
A Wrinkle in Time, written by Madeleine L'Engle in 1960, received over twenty-six rejections before publication in 1962, because it was, in L'Engle's words, "too different", and "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was really difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adults' book, anyhow?"
In 1957 the Young Adult Library Services Association – initially called the Young Adult Services Division following a reorganization of the American Library Association – had been created. YALSA evaluates and selects materials for young adults, with the most active YASLA committee being the book selection committee.
Michael Cart argues that the 1960s was the decade when literature for adolescents "could be said to have come into its own".Cart, p. 43, A significant early example of young adult fiction was S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders (1967). The novel features a truer, darker side of adolescent life that was not often represented in works of fiction of the time.Jon Michaud, "S. E. Hinton and the Y.A. Debate", The New Yorker, 14 October 2014Constance Grady,"The Outsiders reinvented young adult fiction. Harry Potter made it inescapable.," Vox (website), 26 January 2017 Written during high school and written when Hinton was only 16, The Outsiders also lacked the nostalgic tone common in books about adolescents written by adults.Dale Peck, 'The Outsiders': 40 Years Later, New York Times, 23 September 2007. The Outsiders remains one of the best-selling young adult novels of all time. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, five other very popular books were published: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), an autobiography of the early years of American poet Maya Angelou; The Friends (1973) by Rosa Guy; the semi-autobiographical The Bell Jar (US 1963, under a pseudonym; UK 1967) by poet Sylvia Plath; Bless the Beasts and Children (1970) by Glendon Swarthout; and Deathwatch (1972) by Robb White, which was awarded 1973 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery by the Mystery Writers of America.Cart, p. 77. The works of Angelou and Plath were published as adult works but The Bell Jar deals with a nineteen year old's "teenage angst", and Angelou's autobiography is one of the ten books most frequently banned from high school and junior high school libraries and classrooms.Lupton, p. 5.