Print Culture and the Modern World

Primary education was compulsory in the late nineteenth century. Children became an important category of readers. The printing industry now had its hands full by printing school books. A Children's press was set up in France in 1857 which catered solely to books for children. This press published new stories as well as old fairy tales and folk tales.
The Grimm Brothers in Germany compiled traditional folk tales gathered from peasants and the book was published in a collection in 1812. Rural folk tales now had a new form.
Women became important as readers as well as writers. Penny magazines were published exclusively for women. They contained articles on proper behaviour and housekeeping. Novels became popular as women started reading them.
Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Eliot were well known authors. Their writings became important in defining a new type of woman, who had will –power, strength of personality, determination and the power to think.
Lending libraries became popular in the seventeenth century as the literacy rate increased and many took to reading. Books became instruments for educating white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people.
Books themselves in a way increased literacy. Working class people wrote for themselves and used books for self education.
After the working day was gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth century, workers had time for self-improvement and self-expression. They wrote political tracts and autobiographies in large numbers.