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Adolescence and Youth in Nineteenth-Century AmericaThe modern concept of adolescence was created by Hall and his colleagues at Clark University in the I89os and given full expression in Hall's two volume Adolescence.I Hall described adolescence as a second birth, marked by a sudden rise of moral idealism, chivalry, and religious enthusiasm. In the context of Hall's celebrated theory of recapitulation-the idea that the child passes in succession through the various historical epochs already traversed by man-the adolescent became a kind of noble savage. His activities were inevitable reflections of psychic echoes out of a distant past.2 Weird and pseudo-scientific in retrospect, Hall's concept had a profound impact in his day. A parade of books on the teen years, the "awkward age," the high school, and the juvenile delinquent followed, while a virtual profession of advisers on the tribulations of youth emerged.3One can also argue that adolescence has become a unique topic of interest in the twentieth century because of social conditions peculiar to our own time-specifically, the emergence of a yawning time gap between the onset of sexual maturity and the full incorporation of young people into the economic life of the adult world. Before we can rest content with this explanation, however, we have to confront the historical fact of numerous references to adolescence or youth long before Hall's time.In the Middle Ages speculations about the "ages of man" had usually included a stage of youth or adolescence, and, at times, two separate stages. Such speculation had often centered more on the Joseph F. Kett is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of The formation of the American Medical Profession (New Haven, 1968), and of articles on social and scientific history. I G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education (New York), I904, 2v. 2 Ibid., I, viii-x; II, Chs. II, I2. 3 Hall's influence was vast, but a representative sample of the literature on adolescence after I900 would include: Irving King, The High School Age (Indianapolis, 1914); Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York, 1909); Michael V. O'Shea, Social Development in Education (Boston, I909). O'Shea was a good example of the entrepreneur of adolescence; his papers (Wisconsin Historical Society) consist mainly of correspondence with publishers i...