Penny reading
The penny reading was a form of popular public entertainment that arose in the United Kingdom in the middle of the 19th century, consisting of readings and other performances, for which the admission charged was one penny.[1]
Impact
Under the heading of "rational recreation", the penny reading proved to be accessible and was taken up by working class audiences. It built on the tradition of the penny gaff and "singing saloon". Writing in the mid-1860s, Thomas Wright as itinerant social observer found penny readings "exceedingly popular all over the country".[2]
Australian historian
Origins
The Public Reading Society founded in the 1850s was the vehicle of
Another view places the origin in 1854 in the Midlands. Dispatches for
In 1871, a book review in the Literary World lamented the trend:
As conducted by their originators, Penny Readings were unquestionably useful and attractive without being frivolous: as conducted by some of those gentlemen's imitators, they [have] run riot and become farcical, and have lost almost every philanthropic or praiseworthy element they at first possessed.[12]
Content
An 1887 handbook for
Legacy
While penny readings, at their height in the 1860s, had lost their popularity before 1900, a tradition of poetry recitation continued in niches such as family events and temperance meetings. Winifred Peck found it "ghastly" and associated, negatively, with the provincial.[14]
The
Notes
- ^ s:Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary 1908/Rave Reed
- ISBN 978-0-7190-6027-4.
- ISBN 978-0-521-51631-0.
- ISBN 978-1-135-03122-0.
- ISBN 978-1-135-03122-0.
- ISBN 978-1-56792-363-6.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22401. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-0-7130-0158-7.
- ^ William Harnett Blanch (1875). Ye Parish of Cam̃erwell: A Brief Account of the Parish of Camberwell : Its History and Antiquities. E.W. Allan. p. 210.
- ISBN 978-0-300-14835-0.
- ^ s:Williams, William Mattieu (DNB00)
- ^ The Literary World. 1871. p. 117.
- ^ Johnson, Theodore (1887). "The Parish Guide : a handbook for the use of the clergy and lay-helpers". Internet Archive. London: Wells Gardner, Darton. p. 182. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-87972-233-3.
- ISBN 978-0-299-16924-4.