‘In the beginning …’

Proper understanding of the period since 1850 requires a beginning at least in the eighteenth century, latterly a time of political unrest. All levels of society feared that the revolutionary fervour publicly recognised in America in 1776, and in France thirteen or so years later, would lead to anarchy in England. It was also a period of rapid social change, and these twin influences had profound impact on the nature of British society throughout the next century.

Acquisition of reading skills was one eagerly espoused change. Initially this was one major result of the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century, and the Lancasterian (or ‘Circulating’) schools. The former inculcated a desire for personal reading of the Scriptures, and the latter provided the means to acquire the skills. But this led to a dearth of reading materials and to the foundation of organisations such as the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804). The BFBS perceived a need to supply Scriptures in English and Welsh and throughout the world, and their methods were to change the book trade dramatically throughout the century. It is not too far fetched to claim that the demands laid on the printing and book trades by the BFBS stimulated the reading habit in Britain:

Supplying Bibles, however, did not satisfy the whole public thirst for reading matter. After Bibles, newspapers were popular, and it was the need to print ever quicker, ever cheaper, ever more copies that drove the change from flat-bed to rotary presses, capable not of hundreds of copies an hour but thousands. By 1908 it took the very latest rotary presses just one hour to produce 50,000 copies of a thirty-two page weekly journal.