Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France
Workers, Women, Peasants
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Palgrave Macmillan
Published:24th Jul '01
Should be back in stock very soon
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.
'Martyn Lyons recalls for us the importance of understanding the fragility of lives, the dreams or sufferings of men and women of the past, and the respect we have to pay to the dead souls. The book is well crafted, written with sensitivity and humour, raising historical issues and intellectual questions which are not at all confined to nineteenth-century France.' - Roger Chartier
'...Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France is a valuable contribution, and it deserves a wide audience of French historians.' - H-France Book Reviews
'...a valuable contribution to its field...' - James Smith Allen, Libraries & Culture
ISBN: 9780333921265
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
208 pages