From Few and Expensive to Many and Cheap

1) In the early nineteenth century, new novels were considered an unaffordable luxury.  It was also unlikely that you would own any pictures to decorate your walls.  The ways of printing images were slow and expensive and therefore were not accessible to people of lower/middle class.  But, ways of printing cheaper images, like wood-engraving and lithography came about and made it increasingly possible for people of all social statuses to have printed images.

Another innovation that made text cheaper and more easily accessible was the innovation of the railway system.  Newspapers and magazines could be transported easily within a few hours.  The train also created a new environment for reading culture.  The train cars were well-lit, better lit than carriages. The growth of literacy was also a defining factor in the spread of text culture.

The invention of copyright law provided a means for authors to make money for their work.  It made writing a profession and therefore created more of a true "market" for book publishing and book sales.  In 1861 the paper duties were finally repealed and it was even more possible for authors to make a profit off of their book sales, and made it even more accessible for people of the lower classes to purchase books.  Chapbooks were one form of text that did not need a price reduction and were always accessible for the worse off.  The printed play was also this way.

Another way people during this time period had access to books was the lending and borrowing method.  People would let their friends borrow books or people would rent them for a time and copy down certain passages in their own notebooks, which led to the production of the stationary trade.  Traveling libraries became very popular for this reason.  Even new booksellers stopped selling new books and started selling old titles that had already been approved by the public.

For most of the nineteenth century, religious texts were the prominent best sellers.  Religious texts were often used to teach children to read.  But eventually the market for how-to books and children's books increased and more specific, secular books came about, such as textbooks, for instruction outside of religion.

2)  I think I liked this reading the most out of all the readings we have had thus far.  I thought it was pretty interesting.  I liked thinking about the people reading in train cars and carriages, it felt very nostalgic/sentimental.  I have always loved Jane Austen and her novels and I love period pieces so reading this felt very much like I was experiencing something like Pride and Prejudice.  Especially the parts about stationary and copying down passages from borrowed books.  That reminded me a lot of all the times you see people in those types of films or stories writing letters to people or scribbling something down in their personal notebook.

3) What is a window tax? It said in the reading (page 301 specifically) that people were limited to how much they read because they only had a certain amount of light because there was a tax on windows. Was it a tax on the window that made it difficult for people to have lots of windows in their house and therefore they had limited sources of light? I had never heard of this until this chapter so I am curious.