In the 19th century, the reading public expanded to embrace new categories of consumers, especially of cheap fiction. These new lower class and female readers frightened liberals, Catholics and republ
The Napoleonic period cannot be interpreted as a single historical 'block'. Bonaparte had many different persona: the Jacobin, the Republican, the reformer of the Consulate, the consolidator of the E
For more than 2,500 years, the book, in a wide range of forms, has been used to document, to educate and to entertain. This book explores the rich history of the book, one of the most efficient, influ
Explores one of the most versatile, useful and enduring technologies ever invented: the book. This title charts the evolution and influence of books around the world, from the cuneiform tablets of anc
Offering a fresh history centred on the reactions and experiences of ordinary readers and writers, Lyons deals with key turning points that occurred throughout the centuries, such as the invention of
Offering a fresh history centred on the reactions and experiences of ordinary readers and writers, Lyons deals with key turning points that occurred throughout the centuries, such as the invention of
02 Martyn Lyons re-assesses European history between the fall of Napoleon and the Crimean War. Refusing to characterize the period as a "Restoration." Lyons presents the struggle of the European monar
This original study examines different incarnations of the Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and romantic 19th-century t
On 9 thermidor Year 2, Robespierre fell; on18 brumaire Year 8, a coup d'état brought Bonaparte to power. This book demonstrates that the interval between these two momentous events was also of crucial importance. Using the findings of recent research, it presents a balanced appraisal of the thermidorean and directorial regimes to the English student. For Jacobin sympathizers thermidor and the Directory represented the betrayal of the revolutionary idea; for Bonapartist propagandists it represented chaos and corruption, and the darker the Directory could be painted, the more Bonaparte's reputation would be flattered. Dr Lyons attempts to dispose of these myths. He stresses the Directory's successes as well as its failures, and emphasizes elements of continuity which link it both with the Jacobin regime and with the Consulate. The regime inherited a heavy burden of war, inflation and food shortages, yet it remained revolutionary in its Republicanism, its anticlericalism, and its desire
From the first scribbling on papyrus to the emergence of the e-book, this wide-ranging overview of the history of the book provides a fascinating look at one of the most efficient, versatile, and endu
As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them, previously barely literate and unaccustomed to writing, began to communicate on paper. This fascinating account explores this surge of ordinary writing, how people met the new challenges of literacy and the importance of scribal culture to the history of individual experience in modern Europe. Focusing on correspondence and other writing genres produced by French and Italian soldiers in the trenches in the First World War, as well as Spanish emigrants to the Americas, the book reveals how these writings were influenced by dialect and oral speech and were oblivious to the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Through their sometimes moving stories, we gain an insight into the importance to ordinary peasants of family, village and nation at a time of rapid social and cultural change.
As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them, previously barely literate and unaccustomed to writing, began to communicate on paper. This fascinating account explores this surge of ordinary writing, how people met the new challenges of literacy and the importance of scribal culture to the history of individual experience in modern Europe. Focusing on correspondence and other writing genres produced by French and Italian soldiers in the trenches in the First World War, as well as Spanish emigrants to the Americas, the book reveals how these writings were influenced by dialect and oral speech and were oblivious to the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Through their sometimes moving stories, we gain an insight into the importance to ordinary peasants of family, village and nation at a time of rapid social and cultural change.
"Between about 1830 and the outbreak of the First World War, print culture, reading, and writing transformed cultural life in Western Europe in many significant ways. Book production and consumption i
Historians, anthropologists, and scholars of communication look at the writing of Europeans who were functionally literate but not literary. Their topics include letters to the Belgian royal family 18
