Description
'Reading has a history. But how can we recover it?' This volume brings together original research essays focusing on the history of reading in the British Isles, using evidence ranging from library records to Mass Observation surveys to highlight the social factors that influence a seemingly private, individual activity.
Table of Contents
List of Figures List of Tables Foreword; S.Eliot Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; K.Halsey & W.R. Owens PART I: READING COMMUNITIES 'The Talent Hid in a Napkin': Castle Libraries in Eighteenth-Century Scotland; M.Towsey Caroline and Paul: Biblical Commentaries as Evidence of Reading in Victorian Britain; M.Ledger-Lomas Reading the 'religion of socialism': Olive Schreiner, the Labour Church and the Construction of Left-wing Reading Communities in the 1890s; C.Gill PART II: READING AND GRATIFICATION Learning to Read Trash: Late-Victorian Schools and the Penny Dreadful; A.Vaninskaya 'Something light to take my mind off the war': Reading on the Home Front during the Second World War; K.Halsey PART III: READING AND THE PRESS What Readers Want: Criminal Intelligence and the Fortunes of the Metropolitan Press during the Long Eighteenth Century; R.Crone The Reading World of a Provincial Town: Preston, Lancashire 1855–1900; A.Hobbs 'Putting Literature Out of Reach'? Reading Popular Newspapers in Mid-twentieth Century Britain; A.Bingham PART IV: READERS AND AUTODIDACTICISM James Lackington (1746–1815): Reading and Personal Development; S.Bankes Henry Head (1861–1940) as a Reader of Literature; S.Jacyna In a Class of their Own: the Autodidact Impulse and Working-Class Readers in Twentieth-century Scotland; L.Fleming, D.Finkelstein & A.McCleery Further Reading and Weblinks Index
