« Cher Pif… ». Le courrier des lectrices et des lecteurs de Pif Gadget

Abstract

Readers’ mail can be a valuable source for understanding the history of the children's press. In spite of a highly regulated discursive system, the readers’ mail is a space where we can apprehend traces of what constituted the reading practices of comics and, more broadly, the social practices of the youth press: group reading, family reading, compulsive or casual reading, involvement in rewrites or fanfics... Based on a sample of issues of Pif Gadget, this article shows that the readership of the children's press is more diverse than amateur accounts suggest; in particular, it shows a clearly more feminised readership. The aim of this study is to lay the foundations for a more in-depth history of the illustrated magazines, focusing not (only) on their content but on the intense social life in which they are embedded.

Keywords

• Pif Gadget
• youth press
• comic book
• correspondence
• pop culture
• cultural history