Reading Lives

In this unique book, Gretchen Galbraith examines the role of child literacy in Britain's immense social, economic, and political transformations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon recorded histories of childhood, education, literacy, and literature geared toward children, Galbraith reveals how the British perceived books as a potent influence on the identity of their children.

She also shows how a widespread preoccupation with the leisure reading of middle-class children resonated with debates about the readings assigned in new publicly funded schools for lower-class children. Spanning a range of disciplines, Reading Lives is an insightful look at commonly held concepts of childhood, the vital center that books and reading often occupy, and the changing roles of parental and state authority.