From Few and Expensive to Many and Cheap

Summary

For most of the 19th century novels were still an unaffordable luxury to most classes and only the rich could afford to hang pictures on their walls. However, with the advent of the railway system and technologies that made producing images cheaper, books and pictures were commonplace by the 1890s.

The copyright law of 1842 extended copyright to 42 years or 7 years after the author's death, whichever came first. This gave authors a lot more control over their work and they could make a substantial amount of money if their work was popular enough. This caused a surge in manuscript production with amateurs aspiring to make some money. The number of book titles increased substantially during this time.

Newspapers and books were now very affordable and profitable for publishers. They sought to make even more money by charging fees to lend out newspapers and books. This practice led to libraries and more sharing of written knowledge amongst common people. Neighbors would lend each other books or write down important passages in notebooks and create their own collections of information. This led to increase in sales of stationary.

Comment:

I think it's really interesting how involved people of this time were with writing down important pieces of literature and making efforts to borrow books or newspapers in order to be able to read.

Was reading in particular so popular because it was new and cool and there weren't many other types of media around yet? Does the lack of enthusiasm for lesiurely reading in our society today say something about us?

Also, it's crazy to think there was a 93% literacy rate in England in Wales during 1890 when today in 2014 the average literacy rate in Afghanistan is about 30%.