Steel City Readers Reading for Pleasure in Sheffield, 1925-1955

• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Liverpool Liverpool University Press 2023
• Subjects: Sheffield; reading; oral history; working-class; popular literature; thema EDItEUR::1 Place qualifiers::1D Europe::1DD Western Europe::1DDU United Kingdom, Great Britain; thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999; thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBH Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000; thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology; thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history; thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history; thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTD Oral history; thema EDItEUR::W Lifestyle, Hobbies and Leisure::WQ Local and family history, nostalgia::WQH Local history
• Online Access: Open Access: DOAB: description of the publication; Open Access: DOAB, download the publication; Open Access: DOAB, download the publication
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.)
• ISBN: 9781802078589
• Access: Open Access

Steel City Readers makes available, and interprets in detail, a large body of new evidence about past cultures and communities of reading. Its distinctive method is to listen to readers' own voices, rather than theorising about them as an undifferentiated group. Its cogent and engaging structure traces reading journeys from childhood into education and adulthood, and attends to settings from home to school to library. It has a distinctive focus on reading for pleasure and its framework of argument situates that type of reading in relation to dimensions of gender and class. It is grounded in place, and particularly in the context of a specific industrial city: Sheffield. The men and women featured in the book, coming to adulthood in the 1930s and 1940s, rarely regarded reading as a means of self-improvement. It was more usually a compulsive and intensely pleasurable private activity.