Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France: Workers, Women, Peasants

In the nineteenth century, the reading public expanded to embrace new categories of consumers, especially of cheap fiction. These new lower-class and female readers frightened liberals, Catholics and republicans alike. The study focuses on workers, women and peasants, and the ways in which their reading was constructed as a social and political problem, to analyse the fear of reading in nineteenth century France. The author presents a series of case-studies of actual readers, to examine their choices and their practices, and to evaluate how far they responded to (or subverted) attempts at cultural domination.

• | Author: M. Lyons
• | Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• | Publication Date: Jul 24, 2001
• | Number of Pages: 208 pages
• | Binding: Hardback or Cased Book
• | ISBN-10: 0333921267
• | ISBN-13: 9780333921265