The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public

by Richard D. Altick

New book, clean pages and cover.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Books About Books, 19th Century, British Literature, Reference, Literary Criticism

440 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Richard Altick was Regent’s Professor of English, Emeritus, at The Ohio State University and the author of numerous important works in the field of literary studies.

Reviews

[Karen· · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive, systematic, scholarly, written by a Professor Emeritus, you'd be forgiven for assuming that it is going to be as dry as chalkdust. Quite the contrary! Prof. Altick had a smoothly elegant style, a gentle irony and a nice eye for the telling anecdote that make this an absolute joy. The two chapters on the emancipation of the press from the trammels imposed by a ruling class faced with their nemesis: that society would be undermined by the exposure of the 'lower orders' to radicalization or corruption by means of cheap newspapers, those two chapters alone would make the purchase of this book worth the price. Utterly gripping! A tale of daring-do! He takes such relish in describing the open defiance of stamp duty and punitive tax on newspapers that was specifically designed to repress anti-governmental and anti-religious publications. In July 1831 Henry Hetherington issued his Poor Man's Guardian, and was swiftly joined by more radical and unstamped papers. The government sought to crush them by wholesale arrests and convictions:

But persecution simply fanned the flames of all who sympathized with the aims to which it was giving such satisfactory publicity, and for a time their surreptitious distribution of the forbidden papers resembled a high-spirited game. Hetherington once sent into the streets a corps of porters groaning under heavy bundles of wastepaper, to be pounced upon by the waiting police, while the true copies of that week's Poor Man's Guardian were spirited out the back door and across the rooftops.

It's easy to see where Prof.Altick would have wanted to be transported by the Tardis.

This was in fact a pioneering work, first published in 1957, which laid the preliminary framework for the study of the history of the book. It directly inspired the foundation of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. Groundbreaking indeed, creating as it did a whole field of research, and setting its parameters.

Reading is so much more than the mere ability to wrench sense from letters on a page. There is the question of the availability of leisure time, light, a bit of peace and quiet, the appeal of reading in competition with or in view of the lack of alternative entertainment, and last, but by no means least, the availability of affordable and attractive reading material. I think one of Professor Altick's most endearing qualities is his unfailing respect for the love of a good story. He recognizes it both in his analysis of the Victorian publishing trade and in his own writing too. It remains a classic, an essential for understanding where we are today. And there's a certain irony to reading about the 'lively ferment' the 'novelty' of such papers as the News of the World so soon after its final demise last year, embroiled in scandal and shame. It's hard to escape the feeling that Dickens got it so right: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

[Darcy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Altick's survey of the history of reading in the 19th century has remained a mainstay for anyone interested in the literature, print culture, or social history of the Victorian era. It is also a remarkably accessible study, given that so much of it is based on texts no longer read much even by Victorianists. The book examines a number of influences that contributed to reading practices among the working classes. Perhaps most importantly, Altick reveals that our own assumptions towards public education as a necessary good developed out a 19th century context that was more ambivalent towards literacy for the working classes and saw reading as potentially subversive and dangerous. As the ruling classes found themselves confronted with first the French Revolution and then later the Napoleonic Wars, the idea of teaching the rumbling working classes to read such works as Thomas Paine's Common Sense was hardly an attractive one. Literature might have the power to soothe the working classes into a state of complacency, in which the ills of alcohol, lust, and crime would have no appeal, but it might also have the power to rouse dissatisfied, hungry crowds into a frenzy. Erring on the side of protecting their own interests, the ruling classes frustrated attempts at public education, voting reform, and the repeal of the "taxes on knowledge" (i.e., stamp and paper duties that made it all but impossible for working and lower-middle class people to buy reading material) until essentially the mid-century.

The subject matter is replete with anecdotal material of the type that opens all kinds of doors into how people actually lived, versus how we often see them represented as living. So, for example, Altick explains that a number of factors held back the working classes from reading, even if they were literate and had access to reading materials. Candles, for example, were expensive and houses were crowded; for a single reader to monopolize a candle (instead of a rush lamp, which gave off weaker light) was expensive and unlikely. The chances of using natural light were slim, as well, given the taxes on windows. The issue of windows is obliquely referred to later, as well, when Altick recounts a window as one of a family's prized possessions--the window was removed from the house each time the family relocated.

Altick's sympathies are clearly with the working classes and those who fought for their rights. It is a bias that is particularly clear in the footnotes, where Altick allows his ironic, dry humor freer reign. In discussing the evangelical push for public education, and the arguments repeatedly used in favor of reading as a bulwark against crime and sin, Altick notes:

"Contemporary advocates of adult schools found it easier to dwell upon the reformation in manners and morals that the institutions accomplished. A man who had lived with a woman for twenty years, suddenly becoming 'convinced of the sinfulness of his conduct,' married her. Another man, eighty-eight years old, who had learned to spell words of two syllables, was reported to be 'much improved in his moral character' since he had gone in for education--though one doubts that a man of his age was capable of vice on any really impressive scale." (149)

Altick is clearly exasperated at points by the prejudices and biases that resisted public education, the spread of literacy, and the suppression of the working classes, and most particularly by those who professed to support the rights of the laborers. But the book ends with an utterly optimistic view that contemporary scholars today will find in the past the methods of avoiding similar mistakes in the future. It is a hope, although most likely felt by current academics, not often expressed in academic titles. Altick's style and tone are figments of a bygone era of scholarship and yet the work has endured, and rightfully so.

[Sepideh · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Cioran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come for the exciting tale of people dying to read a good book or periodical. The venerable elites who say to them: building public libraries will just make you lazy and not work. Just daydreaming to the novels. Stay for the chilling fact that even in these good old days, even when the masses won the struggle and got their affordable quality reading, what most people wanted to read rich or poor, was the literary equivalent of 10 second YouTube videos. Although Jonathan Rose has a little bit something to say about that in Rereading the English Common Reader.

[Max Borgens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting reading on reading, informative but without drowning the reader in too much details and statistics. The author succeeds in keeping us captivated throughout the book, which is partly due to the fact that he mixes official statistics with personal experiences based on memoirs from the working-class. Every aspect was tackled: literacy, the conditions of reading, the places where people could buy books, what novels were among the most popular... A must-have for all who are interested in the history of books.

[Christina Eastwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting survey of mass reading but lacking in understanding of the way Evangelicals thought (think!) To write, for instance, "So insistently did the evangelicals emphasize the spiritual necessity of reading that the old seventeenth-century bibliolatry revived." is to misunderstand the whole history of Protestantism, indeed of Christianity.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific look at how libraries and periodicals exploded in the nineteenth century. Solid, old-school writing, free of -isms and hand-wringing, and jargon.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fairly interesting social history about reading in the 19th century. Mostly it focused on the different movements to get people reading, and the debates and attempts to control what they should and shouldn't be reading. It had a lot of quite fascinating information in it. It was written in 1957 so was totally free of any of the post-modern interpretations of reading which I quite liked. It did however seem a little anecdotal in it's evidence of what people were reading. But there was also a fair ammount of figures to contrast things with, in particular the cost of books and periodicals related to wages and other products. (At one point a book cost the same as a month's supply of beer! Thank god we don't have to make that choice today!) The book started looking at the early 18th century and the birth of the "trashy" novel. There were some great quotes about the evils of library a one from Sir Anthony Absolute who said, "A circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge" (64) One letter in the Evening Standard in 1891 complained of clerks wasting their time "devoring all the most trivial literary trash...whilst many a home is neglected and uncared for owing to the all-absorbed novel-reading wife" he went on to say that "he'd rather see a young man hanging about a public house than spending his time in these places" (232-233). There was also an interesting bit about the start of W.H. Smiths. Apparently there were bookstalls at the stations that were run by the widows and injured employees of the railways that would sell magazines, beer, sandwiches and sweets to travelers and from the 1840s novels. These novels were "not only cheap but nasty, predominately translated from the French; it was said in fact that people went to railway stations for the books they were ashamed to seek in respectable shops"(301). Smiths won the right to replace these sellers with their own shops in response to such criticism. I learned a lot about the different types of libraries that were set up in the 19th century, education, the different trends in the cost of books, and the way the "betters" tried to control the masses through reading. It reminded me a lot of the arguments Gaskell used in My Lady Ludlow. One interesting point was raised in the argument in the 1840s that building schools would completely illiminate crime, and that the more schools were built the more prisons would be closed as they tried to link ignorance with the crime rate (142). All in all the book did an excellent job of conteracting the simplistic view that more effective methods of printing, led to cheaper books which read to more people reading. It analysed the cost of paper, the need to educate people so they could read, and the effect of buying verses loaning books, as well as the rise of newspapers and periodicals. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the social history of reading or the history of libraries. Though I feel like I should go and read something written in the past 10 years to make sure it's not all been completely changed in modern scholarship.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

As far as I know, this is the best historical account we have of the English common reading public in the nineteenth century and, more than fifty years later, it's still relevant and it still raises important questions and opens avenues for inquiry for scholars like me.

[Bettie]

spotted on Karen and Clare profiles.