Reviews

The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public by Richard D. Altick

baghaii's review against another edition

4.0

This book is about the history of literacy in England mostly during the 1700s and the 1800s. Early books were really expensive, not just because there were only a limited number of people who could read so print runs were very small, but also because England had certain really harmful taxes during this period. In the 1700s, books that had print runs of 300 were considered successful.

Radical pamphleteers did not pay their paper taxes so they were reaching more people than the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Over about 150 years, literacy spread widely through England, and people preferred to read things that did not require deep concentration.