New Reading Histories, Print Culture and the Identification of Change: The Case of Eighteenth-Century England

This article considers the consequences of new reading histories that have pursued the question of reading practices -- how people read texts, rather than just who readers were and what it was that they read. New theoretical considerations widen our appreciation of the difficulty in recovering the history of reading, but they must also confront the limitations and peculiarities of the evidence available. Using eighteenth-century England as a case study, the article reviews recent work -- much from diverse research not usually associated with reading history -- and assesses the potential for future study. Important questions about the relationship between literature, belief and action, about the nature of 'popular' and 'elite' culture, about the archaeology of political and social thought, and about the dissemination and control of ideas, cannot be determined without asking what reading meant. Such enquiry is particularly rewarding in writing the history of the transitional and diverse society of eighteenth-century England. It also reinforces concern that pursuit of new reading histories through an exploration of reading practice can marginalise the evaluation of change by concentrating on an examination of the singular and the synchronic. Only by the broadest research strategies, the article suggests, can new reading history most fully contribute to an understanding of eighteenth-century English social history.