Question

Outline the changes in technology and society which led to an increase in readers of the novel in eighteenth-century Europe.

Answer 1

• Print made novels to be read widely and become popular quickly.
• Novels produced a number of common interests and a variety of readers.
• Readers were drawn into the story and identified themselves with the lives of fictitious characters. They now could think about issues like love and marriage, proper conduct for men and women.
• Prosperity, due to industrialisation, made new groups join the readership for novels. Besides the aristocratic and gentlemanly classes, new groups of lower-middle-class people such as shopkeepers and clerks joined in.
• The rise in the earnings of authors freed them the from the patronage of aristocrats. They could now experiment with different literary styles. Epistolary novel – Samuel Richardson’s Pamela – written in the 18th century was the first of its kind. It was a story told through letters.
• Books became cheap and even the poor could buy them. Circulating libraries made books easily accessible. Publishers also started hiring out novels. Books could now be read in private or could be heard by more people, while one of them read it out.
• Magazines serialised stories (Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers was the first), illustrated them and sold them cheap.

All these changes increased the number of readers.