Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to follow historically “the formation of the modern reading public” in England, especially the early stage of its development. Of course “the formation of the modern reading public” is a very complex phenomenon conditioned by various historical, social and cultural factors. This time, my paper is intended to focus on the conditions of elementary education and the expansion of literacy on the reader's side, which are most foundamental of aforementioned factors.
In the first chapter, the conditions of mass elementary education (it became a backbone of the emergence of mass reading public) are considered from an educational point of view in a broad sense, which includes the condition of social education. Here it is explained in view of reading public formation that the most popular “Sunday School” spread rapidly to the public, and that self-made reader emerged and came to form a settled center of reading public. In the second chapter, it is observed that “litercy” expanded in a close connection with the spread of elementary education, by examining problems accompanied by validity of the basic data and “ability to read”.
Through the first and second chapter, it will be made clear that elementary education had been rooted to a considerable extent before the “Elementary Education Act” which was a starting point of public education in England was established in 1870, so that about two thirds of the whole population were literate at the time of the law's official announcement. These two factors, the spread of elementary education and the expansion of literacy which existed from the middle to the end of the nineteenth century, were a great “power” towards the emergence of modern reading public, together with the other factors.
