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AUTHOR GIVES FASCINATING INSIGHT TO ENGLAND'S LITERARY AWAKENING.(Lifestyle)(Review)(Letter to the Editor)

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From: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, WA)
Date: 19970902
Author:

In 1830, seven years before Victoria ascended to the thone and ``The Pickwick Papers'' was published, there were only 1,100 books published in England. The fiction titles were invariably in the three-volume format that had been de rigeur since Sir Walter Scott's medieval romances. The average press run was 750 to 1,200 copies.

The point is that much of the English population was illiterate, and those who weren't still didn't read much. As Daniel Pool points out in this fascinating new book, ``Only a third of the men and half the women married in Lancashire in 1840 could sign ...

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