Introduction

In opening a study of the history of nineteenth-century reading, a useful point of departure is perhaps the cartographical metaphor that Richard D. Altick employed in introducing his field-defining scholarly enterprise, The English Common Reader.¹ Such a concept, like much in that foundational study, remains a vital and apposite way of approaching research on this topic. Accordingly, where once the map of the nineteenth-century reading landscape charted by book historians constituted little more than an incomplete sketch that delineated some of the area’s principal landmarks, the accumulation of a critical mass of scholarship on this subfield within the past two decades has contributed to a decidedly clearer (but still by no means complete) sense of the breadth and variety of the Victorian reading experience. Thus, this collection has the advantage of emerging at a moment when it is feasible to examine this period’s readers and their reading from the kinds of standpoints that would not have been possible for the initial wave of scholars piloting this recovery endeavour. Accordingly, framing our enterprise within the parameters sketched by Robert Darnton in his seminal 1986 examination of the history of reading, it is questions of why and how that will concern the essays featured in this collection.² First, we wish to probe the reasons why nineteenth-century audiences consumed reading matter. Additionally, the macro- and micro-analysis case studies that essayists present look to juxtapose their reconstructions of these motivations with the actual dividends that consumers can be deemed to have realized from their temporal, monetary, and mental investments in these acts of reading. A parallel and ancillary objective also informs this dimension of proceedings. While it has absolutely been our editorial intention in determining the composition of the volume to reflect the plurality and diversity of the period’s reading landscape, achieving comprehensiveness was not one of our objectives and arguably would be foolhardy even to attempt. Rather, we have particularly looked to illuminate areas of the period’s reading not yet comprehensively explored. Correspondingly, the collection’s second core concern looks to spotlight the heretofore little-examined question of how nineteenth-century readers conducted their reading when such consumption of print culture texts was framed by kindred contemporaneous encounters with content emanating from other media. In foregrounding this latter strand of enquiry, it is our wish to explore the viability of studying nineteenth-century reading in conjunction with affiliated activities like listening and viewing so as to acquire a more complete sense of cultural consumption during this time.