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1 results

  • 7 - Reading

  • Edited by David McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    05 March 2009, pp 281-323

  • Summary

    Reading is constrained by the protocols of reading embedded within texts, as well as by modes of access or communication, such as oral recitation. This chapter investigates the quantitative evidence of reading skills compiled by the state during a period in which mass literacy was encouraged as a sign of social cohesion. It also focuses on the autobiographical sources which give some sense of how these skills were deployed to meet various individual and communal needs. The Victorians counted what they assumed to be reading and writing in order to pattern a society which threatened constantly to escape their comprehension. The high base-line of reading material in the home reflected the longstanding Protestant tradition of vernacular spiritual literature as well as the efforts of the eighteenth-century chapmen. The public library was only one of a vast array of new spaces designed for reading that opened up during the period.