pickThe author uses diaries, library records, and other papers as well as elocution guides to reconstruct who was reading what in the 18th century and how. Reading was much more of a shared activity with people reading aloud to each other from newspapers, periodicals, non fiction, joke books, and religious works, and a good reading voice was essential.
I'm having to do a first post on some of the books I've started reading concurrently in order for them to show up properly as I can mark them as current reads! The list is just growing and growing and growing... I'm very whim-driven at the moment, just reading a little of multiple books at the same time, and that's fine.
I'm finding this one more interesting than I thought, even while it's still just describing how the census was set up!
“My first encounter with the originality of Canadian French-speaking cultures came at an early age, when living in Ottawa during the 1950s. It was immediately apparent that the French taught in English- language public schools belonged to a world apart from the everyday French spoken in the streets.” #FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
#PemberLittens 20th Anniversary showing of Pride and Prejudice definitely called for dressing up. Niece in law Jen and I had the best time. We sighed, we laughed, we clapped.
"You have bewitched me body and soul and I love, I love, I love you." ?
#JaneAustenThenAndNow
pick(2017) We think of reading as a solitary activity, but in eighteenth century England, reading was also a social one: families read together in the evening, friends read to one other, readers formed clubs to read aloud from novels, histories, and plays. William's study discusses the why, where, who, how, and what of reading in company and it's a fascinating world with very different habits of literary consumption.
Interesting: the 18th century book market saw a demand for “miscellanies,“ collections of choice excerpts from longer works.
Some critics at the time were concerned about the ruin of culture due to the new generation's education through shallow excerpts instead of longer texts. Three hundred years later I share their concern, but maybe it's just history rhyming again.
Fascinating. 3w