The proliferation of print enabled English society to gain more readers, but this reading public was caused by the sudden rise in the literacy rate amongst the lower class. As authors such as William Cobbett demand a certain method to be placed upon the act of reading and the type of literature to be read for the people, it suggests their disregard for the potential reading prowess in the emerging lower class readers as well as their attempt to subdue the power the population holds over writers in this post-print era.
Elitist authors and critics who firmly believed there were no literature worthy of enlightening the lower class dissuades the potential of a better educated society through a subtle reinforcement of the class system by instructing …show more content…
However this acknowledgement of the poor gaining a new skill is quickly followed by authors lamenting the lack of literature able to enlighten these new readers. As J.S. Mill states “the proper use of reading is to be subservient to thinking” implying …show more content…
The best example of an author writing to exclude the new reading public is Coleridge where he explicitly states the purpose of his essay is to do so shown when he states “[he appeals] exclusively to men [...] of that ‘sound book learnedness’” (20). However, if other authors participated in this behaviour, a sense of alienation would be felt by the reading public and they would simply turn away from such works and read what they preferred such as the Novel. While this went according to Coleridge 's plan, with only the elite reading his work, he did not consider the power of the reading public. In fact, as stated by Anna Barbauld, novels “are seldom found unopened” and easily remain in popular places such as “the parlour and the dressing-room” in contrast to elite works that an author like Coleridge would produce which “are often gathering dust upon the shelf” (119). This is to say, while novels are looked down upon by many privileged authors and critics, it does not deny the fact that these novels are being read much more than quality of writing that essays provide. Whether the novels are bad or not does not alleviate that they are economically worth more than an essay, and because the demand for them is substantially larger than for people
Elitist authors and critics who firmly believed there were no literature worthy of enlightening the lower class dissuades the potential of a better educated society through a subtle reinforcement of the class system by instructing …show more content…
However this acknowledgement of the poor gaining a new skill is quickly followed by authors lamenting the lack of literature able to enlighten these new readers. As J.S. Mill states “the proper use of reading is to be subservient to thinking” implying …show more content…
The best example of an author writing to exclude the new reading public is Coleridge where he explicitly states the purpose of his essay is to do so shown when he states “[he appeals] exclusively to men [...] of that ‘sound book learnedness’” (20). However, if other authors participated in this behaviour, a sense of alienation would be felt by the reading public and they would simply turn away from such works and read what they preferred such as the Novel. While this went according to Coleridge 's plan, with only the elite reading his work, he did not consider the power of the reading public. In fact, as stated by Anna Barbauld, novels “are seldom found unopened” and easily remain in popular places such as “the parlour and the dressing-room” in contrast to elite works that an author like Coleridge would produce which “are often gathering dust upon the shelf” (119). This is to say, while novels are looked down upon by many privileged authors and critics, it does not deny the fact that these novels are being read much more than quality of writing that essays provide. Whether the novels are bad or not does not alleviate that they are economically worth more than an essay, and because the demand for them is substantially larger than for people