RT Article
T1 ‘Novel Reading and Insanity': Nineteenth-Century Quaker Fiction Reading Practices
JF Quaker studies
VO 23
IS 1
SP 3
OP 24
A1 Hood, James W.
LA English
PB Liverpool University Press
YR 2018
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1576939677
AB Standard histories of nineteenth-century Quakerism note that fiction reading was prohibited or strongly discouraged in the Religious Society of Friends, and multiple public documents from the period indicate that pronouncements against reading fiction, especially for young people, were ubiquitous until almost the end of the century. However, records found in minutes kept by Quaker-only reading groups or in the library holdings of Quaker reading societies show that, in private or semi-private settings, Quakers were regularly acquiring fiction as early as the 1820s. Through an examination of some of these records and the histories of some Quaker reading groups, this article complicates our historical understanding of how the Religious Society of Friends adapted to a new information technology, engaging a powerful tension between their testimony of integrity and their belief in continuing revelation.
K1 Friends Book Society of Birmingham
K1 Manchester Friends Institute
K1 fiction reading
K1 Information Technology
K1 reading practices
K1 reading societies
DO 10.3828/quaker.2018.23.1.2