Snob Reading

[Drusilla]

When my girls are older, I hope they read Jane Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy and Trollope, but what books would similarly 'pushy mums' have encouraged their children to read before these books were written? :-)

[Hgrove]

In Vanity Fair I seem to remember one of the characters was reading "religious tracts". I also think there were early English grammar books. Liz in Pride and Prej. read books but I can't remember if the author told us what books they were. But actually, I don't think they encouraged their children to read much at all. I think it was more like riding for the boys, embroidery for the girls.

[Hgrove]

sorry they call her Lizzie not Liz in the book I think?

[jno]

I don't think there were a lot of novels before that. Pamela and Tom Jones were very popular; daughters might have been allowed to read the former but I suspect the latter would have been a bit racy. Bluestockings might have read poetry or magazines like The Spectator. But as Hgrove says, intellectual pursuits were mostly male work.

[dotjhawkes]

The play The Rivals by Irish playwrite Richard Sheridan covers this area in alot of detail and it is both amusing and interesting to learn the attitudes towards women who read books in the late 18th century.

[Hgrove]

Yes, as Jno writes, Pamela was written as an educational reading for young ladies, but it was about giving girls a moral education rather than academic.