History of reading: An introduction to reading in the past

Introduction

The 11 essays comprising this course cover a wide range of topics in the history of reading, each designed to whet your appetite to explore the subject further, by searching the UK Reading Experience Database RED yourself. We have designed this course for you to dip in and dip out of, allowing you to select the area that interests you most. Click on the links below to select the essays you’d like to read.

1. Reading the English Bible
2. Charles Dickens and his readers
3. Jane Austen’s readers
4. A famous novel and its readers: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847)
5. Childhood reading in the 1870s and 1880s: the recollections of Molly Hughes
6. Reading and World War I
7. Reading places
8. Reading while traveling
9. Samuel Pepys: diarist, book collector, and reader
10. Robert Louis Stevenson’s reading
11. Reading culture in the Victorian underworld

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• Recognize an increased interest in exploring the history of reading
• Understand a range of examples of research into the history of reading
• Use RED to follow up on any personal interests in the history of reading.