Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for the Victorians and Edwardians? What was it assumed that women read, and what advice was given about

A fascinating look at the topos of the woman reader and its functioning in cultural debate between the accession of Queen Victoria and the First World War. The

Her analysis of images of influential women readers (in Harper's), intellectual women readers (in The Cornhill), independent women readers (in Belgravia), and p

This book is a major study of child readers and their reading habits in the period when children's literature first became established.

This innovative text draws on theories and methodologies from the fields of multimodality, ethnography, and literacy studies to explore the sociocultural signif