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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history
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Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England (Hardcover)
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Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England (Hardcover)
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Many scholars have written about eighteenth-century English novels,
but no one really knows who read them. This study provides
historical data on the provincial reading publics for various forms
of fiction--novels, plays, chapbooks, children's books, and
magazines. Archival records of Midland booksellers based in five
market towns and selling printed matter to over thirty-three
hundred customers between 1744 and 1807 form the basis for new
information about who actually bought and borrowed different kinds
of fiction in eighteenth-century provincial England.
This book thus offers the first solid demographic information
about actual readership in eighteenth-century provincial England,
not only about the class, profession, age, and sex of readers but
also about the market of available fiction from which they made
their choices--and some speculation about why they made the choices
they did. Contrary to received ideas, in the provinces were the
principal customers for eighteenth-century novels, including those
written by women. Provincial customers preferred to buy rather than
borrow fiction, and women preferred plays and novels written by
women--women's works would have done better had women been the
principal consumers. That is, demand for fiction (written by both
men and women) was about equal for the first five years, but
afterward the demand for women's works declined. Both men and women
preferred novels with identifiable authors to anonymous ones,
however, and both boys and men were able to cross gender lines in
their reading. Goody Two-Shoes was one of the more popular
children's books among Rugby schoolboys, and men read the Lady's
Magazine. These and other findings will alterthe way scholars look
at the fiction of the period, the questions asked, and the
histories told of it.
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