Towheed Shafquat, Owens W.R. (Ed.). The History of Reading. Volume 1. International Perspectives, c. 1500-1990

Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. — 243 p.Little that is commonplace registers in history. Until relatively recently history has been a record of the exceptional, of change, of difference, or of contrast. To reverse the cliché, it’s always been about the elephant in the room, and never about how the room was furnished or its other, less striking occupants. Essential commonplaces such as eating, casual conversations in the street, and the street itself, fudge into a fuzzy background against which sharp change or notable differences are brought into focus. In most history the ordinary is at best out of focus or, more commonly, invisible. The quotidian is never quoted, the ordinary is frequently ignored, and ‘the same old, same old’ is worn out before it is ever recorded.
In most literate societies, reading is usually this sort of prosaic activity. Most of us do it most of the time. It is not necessarily a matter of settling down to spend a few hours with On the Origin of Species or catching up with the latest vogue novel, it is more often a matter of reading a cornflakes packet for want of anything better, or reading a ‘use by’ date on something dubious from the fridge, or a timetable, or a free newspaper, or an email, or an advertisement, or a street name, or a menu, or the instructions on a bottle of aspirin.Readers in the Medieval and Early Modern World
Readers in the Enlightenment and Romantic World
Readers in the Nineteenth-Century World
Readers in the Twentieth-Century World