The History of Reading, Volume 2: Evidence from the British Isles, c.1750-1950

List of Figures List of Tables Foreword; S.Eliot Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; K.Halsey & W.R. Owens PART I: READING COMMUNITIES 'The Talent Hid in a Napkin': Castle Libraries in Eighteenth-Century Scotland; M.Towsey Caroline and Paul: Biblical Commentaries as Evidence of Reading in Victorian Britain; M.Ledger-Lomas Reading the 'religion of socialism': Olive Schreiner, the Labour Church and the Construction of Left-wing Reading Communities in the 1890s; C.Gill PART II: READING AND GRATIFICATION Learning to Read Trash: Late-Victorian Schools and the Penny Dreadful; A.Vaninskaya 'Something light to take my mind off the war': Reading on the Home Front during the Second World War; K.Halsey PART III: READING AND THE PRESS What Readers Want: Criminal Intelligence and the Fortunes of the Metropolitan Press during the Long Eighteenth Century; R.Crone The Reading World of a Provincial Town: Preston, Lancashire 1855-1900; A.Hobbs 'Putting Literature Out of Reach'? Reading Popular Newspapers in Mid-twentieth Century Britain; A.Bingham PART IV: READERS AND AUTODIDACTICISM James Lackington (1746-1815): Reading and Personal Development; S.Bankes Henry Head (1861-1940) as a Reader of Literature; S.Jacyna In a Class of their Own: the Autodidact Impulse and Working-Class Readers in Twentieth-century Scotland; L.Fleming, D.Finkelstein & A.McCleery Further Reading and Weblinks Index