The British Working Class Reader 1790–1848


Book Description

Begins with an assessment of the literacy and the types of reading undertaken by the British working class from 1790-1848. Also presents a look at the challenge this literacy presented for the upper classes.




When Russia Learned to Read


Book Description

The rise of literacy in late nineteenth-century Russia, and its influence on "high literature" and low, and on economic development




Subjectivities


Book Description

This comparative analysis draws on working-class autobiography, public and boarding school memoirs, and the canonical autobiographies by women and men in the United Kingdom to define subjectivity and value within social class and gender in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Gagnier reconsiders traditional distinctions between mind and body, private desire and public good, aesthetics and utility, and fact and value in the context of everyday life.




A Fictive People


Book Description

This text aims to explode two notions that are commonplace in American cultural histories of the 19th century: that the spread of literature was a simple force for the democratization of taste, and that there was a body of 19th-century literature that reflected "a nation of readers."




Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain, 1914-1950


Book Description

Before the advent of television, reading was among the most popular of leisure activities. Light fiction--romances, thrillers, westerns--was the sustenance of millions in wartime and in peace. This lively and scholarly study examines the size and complexion of the reading public and the development of an increasingly commercialized publishing industry through the first half of the twentieth century. Joseph McAleer uses a variety of sources, from the Mass-Observation Archive to previously confidential publishers' records, to explore the nature of popular fiction and its readers. He analyzes the editorial policies which created the success of Mills & Boon, publishers of romantic fiction, and D. C. Thomson, the genius behind The Hotspur and other magazines for boys, and also charts the rise and fall of the Religious Tract Society, creator of the legendary Boy's Own Paper, as a popular publisher.




Literacy and Popular Culture


Book Description

In 1750, half the population were unable to sign their names; by 1914 England, together with handful of advanced Western countries, had for the first time in history achieved a nominally literate society. This book seeks to understand how and why literacy spread into every interstice of English society, and what impact it had on the lives and minds of the common people.







Selected Studies in Bibliography


Book Description




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