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Literacy in England, Scotland, and Wales, 1500–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

W. B. Stephens
W. B. Stephens*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

The bulk of the work on the history of literacy in Britain in recent decades has been in the period after 1500, concentrated largely on England (sometimes embracing Wales) and to a lesser extent Scotland. This essay attempts to outline the main trends in such studies and to assess their achievements.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Winter 1990 , pp. 545 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1. This survey is not intended to form a comprehensive bibliography; perusal of the publications noted, however, will reveal many others. No substantial work has, to my knowledge, been undertaken on Ireland, which is not covered here. The medieval period is also not included, but see Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (London, 1979); Orme, Nicholas, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London, 1989); Adamson, John W., The Illiterate Anglo-Saxon and Other Essays on Education, Medieval and Modern (Cambridge, 1946), chs. 1, 3; Thompson, James W., The Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, Calif., 1939); Parkes, Malcolm B., “The Literacy of the Laity,” in The Medieval World, vol. 2, Literature and Western Civilization, ed. Daiches, David and Thorlby, Anthony (London, 1973), 555–79; Hoeppner Moran, J., “Literacy and Education in Northern England, 1350–1550: A Methodological Inquiry,” Northern History 17 (1981): 1–23; Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983); Cross, Claire, “Lay Literacy and Clerical Misconduct in a York Parish during the Reign of Mary Tudor,” York Historian 3 (1980): 10–15.Google Scholar

2. Bennett, Henry Stanley, English Books and Readers, 1475 to 1557: Being a Study in the History of the Book Trade from Caxton to the Incorporation of the Stationers' Company (Cambridge, 1952); idem, English Books and Readers, 1558 to 1603: Being a Study in the History of the Book Trade in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge, 1965); idem, English Books and Readers: 1603 to 1640: Being a Study of the Book Trade in the Reigns of James I and Charles I (Cambridge, 1970).Google Scholar

3. Webb, Robert K., The British Working Class Reader, 1790–1848: Literacy and Social Tension (London, 1955); Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900 (Chicago, 1957). See also, e.g., Williams, Raymond, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1961), pt. 2, chs. 2, 3; Kaufman, Paul, Libraries and Their Users: Collected Papers in Library History (London, 1969); Neuburg, Victor C., Popular Education in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1971). For Ireland, see Cole, Richard C., Irish Booksellers and English Writers, 1740–1800 (London, 1986); Adams, J. R. R., The Printed Word and the Common Man: Popular Culture in Ulster, 1700–1900 (Belfast, 1987).Google Scholar

4. For example, Shepard, Leslie, The History of Street Literature (Newton Abbot, 1973); Collinson, Robert L. W., The Story of Street Literature: Forerunner of the Popular Press (London, 1973); Neuburg, Victor E., “The Literature of the Streets,” in The Victorian City: Images and Realities, ed. Dyos, H. J. and Wolff, Michael (London, 1973).Google Scholar

5. For example, Hollis, Patricia, The Pauper Press: A Study in Working-Class Radicalism of the 1830s (London, 1970); Aspinall, Arthur A., Politics and the Press, c. 1780–1850 (London, 1949); Wiener, Joel H., The War of the Unstamped: The Movement to Repeal the British Newspaper Tax, 1830–1836 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969); Perkin, H. J., “The Origins of the Popular Press,” History Today 7 (July 1957): 425–35.Google Scholar

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8. O'Day, Rosemary, Education and Society, 1500–1800: The Social Foundations of Education in Early Modern Britain (London, 1982), ch. 2 and works listed there; Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 98–101; Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 52–53; O'Day, Rosemary, “Church Records and the History of Education in Early Modern England, 1558–1642,” History of Education 2 (1973): 115–32; Schofield, , “Dimensions,” 438–39; Cressy, David, “Educational Opportunity in Tudor and Stuart England,” History of Education Quarterly 16 (Fall 1976): 301–20.Google Scholar

9. Spufford, Margaret, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1981), 37; Laqueur, Thomas, “The Cultural Origins of Popular Literacy in England, 1500–1850,” Oxford Review of Education 2 (no. 3, 1976): 257, 259; Galenson, David W., “Literacy and Age in Preindustrial England: Quantitative Evidence and Its Implications,” Economic Development and Social Change 29 (1980–81): 813–29; Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 101–2, 118.Google Scholar

10. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, esp. ch. 4.Google Scholar

11. Stone, Lawrence, “Literacy and Education in England, 1640–1900,” Past and Present 42 (Feb. 1969): 69–139. Cipolla's, Carlo M. Literacy and Development in the West (Harmondsworth) appeared in the same year.Google Scholar

12. For example, Sargant, William L., “On the Progress of Elementary Education,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 30 (1867): 80–137; Fletcher, Joseph, “Moral and Educational Statistics of England and Wales,” ibid. 10 (1847): 193–233; Hill, Frederic, National Education: Its Present State and Future Prospects (London, 1836), 1: 247ff.Google Scholar

13. Stephens, W. B. and Unwin, R. W., Materials for the Local and Regional Study of Schooling, 1700–1900, British Records Assoc, Archives and the User, no. 7 (London, 1987); Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 21, 276.Google Scholar

14. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, esp. chs. 2, 3, 5.Google Scholar

15. For arguments for and against the use of signatures as evidence of literacy, see citations in Stephens, W. B., Education Literacy, and Society, 1830–70: The Geography of Diversity in Provincial England (Manchester, 1987), 269 nn. 1–2; Houston, Robert A., “The Development of Literacy: Northern England, 1640–1750,” Economic History Review 2d ser., 35 (May 1982): 200–201. And see, especially, Schofield, , “Measurement,” 318–24; Houston, , Scottish Literacy, ch. 5; Neuburg, Victor E., “Literacy in Eighteenth-Century England: A Caveat,” Local Population Studies Magazine and Newsletter 2 (Summer 1969): 44–46.Google Scholar

16. See, e.g., Gardner, Phil, The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England: The People's Education (London, 1984), 20.Google Scholar

17. See, e.g., Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974); Spufford, Margaret, “The Schooling of the Peasantry in Cambridgeshire, 1575–1700,” Agricultural History Review 18 (1970), Supplement, 112–47; Contemporary investigations and records show that reading was more common than writing: e.g., those reported in Webb, Robert K., “Working Class Readers in Early Victorian England,” English Historical Review 65 (1950): 331–51; Webb, Robert K., “Literacy among the Working Classes in Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review 33 (1954): 100–114; Campbell, John, “Occupation and Literacy in Bristol and Gloucestershire, 1755–1870,” in Studies in the History of Literacy: England and North America, ed. Stephens, W. B. (Leeds, 1983).Google Scholar

18. Schofield, , “Measurement,” 318.Google Scholar

19. Not until 1855 for Scotland.Google Scholar

20. For 1839–41 and from 1885 aggregates for counties were published.Google Scholar

21. See, e.g., Houston, , Scottish Literacy, appendix; Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order; Cressy, David, “Literacy in Seventeenth-Century England: More Evidence,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (Summer 1977): 141–50.Google Scholar

22. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 65–68, 71–78, and appendix; Stone, , “Literacy and Education,” 99–100; Stephens, W. B., “Illiteracy and Schooling in the Provincial Towns, 1640–1870: A Comparative Approach,” in Urban Education in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Reeder, David A. (London, 1977), 29–30; Stone, Lawrence, “Literacy in Seventeenth Century England,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 (Spring 1978): 799–800.Google Scholar

23. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, appendix.Google Scholar

24. The following draws on: Cressy, David, “Levels of Illiteracy in England, 1530–1730,” Historical Journal 20 (Mar. 1977): 1–23; Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, esp. chs. 4, 6, 7; Cressy, David, “Literacy in Pre-Industrial England,” Societas 4 (Summer 1974): 229–40; Stone, , “Literacy and Education”; Houston, , “Development of Literacy”; Houston, Robert A., “Illiteracy in the Diocese of Durham, 1663–89 and 1750–62: The Evidence of Marriage Bonds,” Northern History 18 (1982): 239–51; O'Day, , Education and Society, 13–20; Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, appendix D; in addition to works cited below.Google Scholar

25. For estimates of proportions of readers at this time, see O'Day, , Education and Society, 13–14.Google Scholar

26. See also Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 57.Google Scholar

27. Houston, , “Development of Literacy,” 204.Google Scholar

28. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 56–58, 84, 104–5; Houston, , “The Literacy Myth?: Illiteracy in Scotland, 1630–1760,” Past and Present 96 (Aug. 1982): 88–89, 98–99; Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, 271n.Google Scholar

29. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 75; Stone, , “Literacy and Education,” 100; Cressy, David, “Social Status and Literacy in North East England, 1560–1630,” Local Population Studies 21 (Autumn 1978): 19–23; O'Day, , Education and Society, 18.Google Scholar

30. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 74–75.Google Scholar

31. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 89–98; Houston, , “Literacy Myth?” 85–87.Google Scholar

32. Schofield, , “Dimensions,” 444; Houston, , “Development of Literacy,” 199, 208–13; Laqueur, , “Cultural Origins,” 256–57; Houston, , “Illiteracy in the Diocese of Durham,” esp. 243–44; Vann, Richard T., “Literacy in Seventeenth-Century England: Some Hearth-Tax Evidence,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5 (Autumn 1974): 289–90.Google Scholar

33. Houston, , Scottish Literacy. Google Scholar

34. Schofield, , “Dimensions,” 449; Stephens, , “Illiteracy and Schooling,” 30–33.Google Scholar

35. Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, 16–17 and passim. For Scotland, see the annual Reports of the Registrar General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Scotland.Google Scholar

36. Stephens, , “Illiteracy and Schooling,” 34–46; Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, esp. 28–42.Google Scholar

37. Cressy, , “Levels of Illiteracy,” 5–9; Cressy, David, “Occupations, Migration, and Literacy in East London, 1580–1640,” Local Population Studies 5 (Autumn 1970): 53–60; Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, esp. ch. 6; Houston, , “Illiteracy in the Diocese of Durham”; Houston, , Scottish Literacy, esp. ch. 2; Houston, Robert A., “Literacy and Society in the West, 1500–1850,” Social History 8 (Oct. 1983): 271.Google Scholar

38. Schofield, , “Dimensions,” 209.Google Scholar

39. See, e.g., Bradshaw, John, “Occupation and Literacy in the Erewash Valley Coalfield, 1760–1880”; Campbell, , “Occupation and Literacy”; Grayson, Jacqueline, “Literacy, Schooling, and Industrialization: Worcestershire, 1760–1850,” 61–67; Unwin, Robert, “Literacy Patterns in Rural Communities in the Vale of York, 1660–1840,” 74–79: all in Stephens, , Studies in the History of Literacy; Houston, Scottish Literacy, esp. ch. 2.Google Scholar

40. See, e.g., Bradshaw, , “Occupation and Literacy,” 12–13.Google Scholar

41. Cf. Bogue, Allan G., “United States: The ‘New’ Political History,” in Quantification in American History: Theory and Research, ed. Swierenga, Robert P. (New York, 1970), 50.Google Scholar

42. Cf. Graff, Harvey J., ed., Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader (Cambridge, 1981), 9; Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 211.Google Scholar

43. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 95–96.Google Scholar

44. Schofield, , “Dimensions,” 209.Google Scholar

45. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 224–28; Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 3–6, 15, 44–45, 85, 182–83; Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society.Google Scholar

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47. See, e.g., Webb, , “Literacy and the Working Classes in Nineteenth Century Scotland,” 101; Harrop, Sylvia A., “Adult Education and Literacy: The Importance of Post-school Education for Literacy Levels in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” History of Education 13 (Sep. 1984): 191–205.Google Scholar

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49. O'Day, , Education and Society, 19–20; Cressy, , “Levels of Illiteracy,” 10–23; Cressy, , “Literacy in Pre-Industrial England,” 237.Google Scholar

50. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 129.Google Scholar

51. Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, passim; Stephens, W. B., Regional Variations in Education during the Industrial Revolution, 1780–1870: The Task of the Local Historian (Leeds, 1973).Google Scholar

52. Houston, , “Literacy Myth?” 88.Google Scholar

53. Cf. Laqueur, Thomas W., “Working-Class Demand and the Growth of English Elementary Education,” in Schooling and Society: Studies in the History of Education, ed. Stone, Lawrence (Baltimore, 1976); Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 235.Google Scholar

54. Sargant, , “On the Progress of Elementary Education,” 85.Google Scholar

55. Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, 267 and passim.Google Scholar

56. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 119.Google Scholar

57. Spufford, , “First Steps in Literacy,” 408–9, 412–13; cf. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 137–41.Google Scholar

58. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, 123; Cressy, , “Social Status and Literacy,” 20, 23.Google Scholar

59. See, e.g., Sanderson, Michael, “Social Change and Elementary Education in Industrial Lancashire, 1780–1840,” Northern History 3 (1968): 131–54; Sanderson, Michael, “Education at the Factory in Industrial Lancashire, 1790–1840,” Economic History Review 2d ser., 20 (Aug. 1967): 266–79.Google Scholar

60. Stephens, , Regional Variations, 8–9; Stephens, W. B., “Early Victorian Coventry: Education in an Industrial Community, 1830–1851,” in Perspectives in English Urban History, ed. Everitt, Alan Milner (London, 1973), 178–79; Wardle, David, Education and Society in Nineteenth-Century Nottingham (Cambridge, 1971), 16, 47; Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, 48–52, and sections on “Attitudes to Education,” “Child Labour.”Google Scholar

61. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 74; Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, see index under “schools, lace,” “schools, glove,” “schools, plait.”Google Scholar

62. Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, 26–27, 49, 92–94, 129, 155–60, 181, 199, inter alia; Laqueur, Thomas W., Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780–1850 (London, 1976), esp. chs. 5, 6.Google Scholar

63. But see Sanderson, Michael, Education, Economic Change, and Society in England, 1780–1870 (London, 1983), 9–16; Sanderson, , “Social Change”; Sanderson, , “Education and the Factory”; Stephens, , “Illiteracy and Schooling,” 27–48; Stephens, , Regional Variations; Harrop, Sylvia A., “Literacy and Educational Attitudes as Factors in the Industrialization of North-East Cheshire, 1760–1830,” in Studies in the History of Literacy, ed. Stephens, ; Schofield, , “Dimensions,” 452–54; Tranter, I., “The Labour Supply, 1780–1860,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 1, 1700–1860, ed. Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald (Cambridge, 1981), 22–25; Houston, , “Development of Literacy,” 215; Stephens, W. B., “Elementary Education and Literacy, 1770–1870,” in A History of Modern Leeds, ed. Fraser, Derek (Manchester, 1980), 223–26; Sanderson, Michael, “Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England,” Past and Present 56 (Aug. 1972); Laqueur, Thomas, “Debate,” and Sanderson, Michael, “A Rejoinder,” in Past and Present 64 (Aug. 1974), where Laqueur notes pre-1780 declines in literacy levels as an indication that fall-off was not related to industrialization. This must remain a matter of debate, as are indeed the chronological parameters of the Industrial Revolution.Google Scholar

64. Stephens, , “Illiteracy and Schooling,” 29; Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 31.Google Scholar

65. Many of the researches of Houston and Cressy noted above testify to this. And cf. Hassell Smith, A., “Labourers in Late Sixteenth-Century England: A Case Study from North Norfolk, Part I,” Continuity and Change 4 (May 1989): 11–52.Google Scholar

66. Cf. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 148–57, esp. 155; Laqueur, , “Cultural Origins,” 259, 261–63; Evans, Nesta R., “Testators, Literacy, Education, and Religious Belief,” Population Studies 25 (Autumn 1980): 46–47; Vann, , “Literacy in Seventeenth-Century England,” 290. For the relationship between attendance at public worship and school attendance in certain towns in 1851, see Stephens, , “Illiteracy and Schooling,” 46–47.Google Scholar

67. Spufford, , Contrasting Communities, 203–4; Laqueur, , “Cultural Origins,” 257.Google Scholar

68. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 158–60; Houston, , “Literacy Myth?” 100–101.Google Scholar

69. Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society, 57.Google Scholar

70. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 75–83; Stephens, , Regional Variations, 10.Google Scholar

71. Stone, , “Literacy and Education,” 119; Laqueur, , “Cultural Origins,” 270; Schofield, , “Measurement,” 313; Cressy, , “Levels of Illiteracy,” 8–9.Google Scholar

72. Cf. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 209.Google Scholar

73. Houston, , “Literacy and Society,” 285. Possibly the same applied in remote Welsh-speaking areas of Wales, but Welsh written literature was more extensive than Gaelic.Google Scholar

74. Thompson, E. P., “Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle without Class?” Social History 3 (May 1978): 155; Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 194–97.Google Scholar

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77. Spufford, , “First Steps in Literacy”; David Levine in “Education and Family Life in Early Industrial England,” Journal of Family History 4 (Winter 1979): 375, finds that maternal ability to sign was more likely to result in literate offspring than paternal ability to do so, but rejects the inference of maternal tuition because he finds also the offspring of illiterate women more likely to sign than those of illiterate men. It is, however, possible that many non-signing mothers could read and instruct in reading, providing a first step toward writing.Google Scholar

78. Levine, , “Education and Family Life,” 378.Google Scholar

79. Houston, , Scottish Literacy, 122.Google Scholar

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81. Stephens, W. B., “American Local History through English Eyes,” The Historian (London), 3 (Summer 1985): 22–25.Google Scholar

82. Cf. Graff, , Literacy and Social Development, 12–13; Houston, , “Literacy and Society in the West,” 289.Google Scholar

83. See above. Cf. Graff, , Literacy and Social Development, 8.Google Scholar

84. Schofield, , “Dimensions,” 446–51.Google Scholar

85. Stephens, , Education, Literacy, and Society. Google Scholar

86. See, e.g., Gratton, J. M., “Aspects of Literacy and Nineteenth-Century Society: The Environs of Liverpool,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 17 (July 1985): 13–29.Google Scholar

87. Vincent, David, Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1989). It has not been possible here to do full justice to this book. I have reviewed it in the British Journal of Educational Studies 38 (Aug. 1990): 295–98.Google Scholar

88. Hennock, E. P., review in Journal of Educational Administration and History 20 (Jan. 1988): 92–93. Such work does exist in Mitch, David F., “The Spread of Literacy in Nineteenth-Century England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1982); Gratton, J. M., “Literacy, Educational Provision, and Social Structure in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Liverpool's Suburban Periphery” (M.Ed. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1982); Bradshaw, John T., “Industrialization, Schooling, Occupation, and Literacy in the Erewash Valley Coalfield, 1760–1870” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1989).Google Scholar

89. Levine, , “Education and Family Life”; Levine, David, “Illiteracy and Family Life during the First Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Social History 14 (Fall 1980–81): 25–44.Google Scholar

90. See, e.g., Vincent, David, ed., Testaments of Radicalism: Memoirs of Working Class Politicians, 1790–1855 (London, 1977); Vincent, David, Bread, Knowledge, and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London, 1981); and the works of Spufford, M. cited above.Google Scholar

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92. This was not, however, always so even before the nineteenth century: “News from the Cambridge Group for the Study of Population and Social Structure,” Local Population Studies Magazine and Newsletter 2 (Spring 1969): 9; Cressy, , “Literacy in Pre-Industrial England,” 233–35.Google Scholar

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