Britain's Reading Habits 1946

The following is an excerpt from an article called "Britain Off Duty" by Mark Abrams which appeared in World Off Duty: The Contact Holiday Book, published by Contact Publications Limited in August 1947. It analyses the recreational habits of the British public as revealed in the findings of the White Paper on the National Income (1947), along with a survey of 6,000 Girls' Club members by The National Association of Girls' Clubs.

According to the White Paper on the National Income we spent in 1946 £51 millions on newspapers and £26 millions on magazines. Most of this reading matter is consumed on a family basis, and if we relate the expenditure to the 13,500,000 families in the United Kingdom it works out at 1s 6d per family per week for newspapers and 9d per family per week for magazines. The former sum is sufficient to provide the average family with two papers on Sunday and two papers on all other days.    The magazine figure of 9d per family per week provides, in fact, something more than general family reading. The six popular family weeklies, Radio Times, Picture Post, John Bull, Illustrated, Everybody’s and Leader, have a combined weekly circulation of just over 10,000,000 and between them account for 2d out of the 9d. The other 7d goes largely on the popular women’s weeklies, such as Woman, Woman’s Own, Woman’s Weekly, Miracle, Home Chat, and on the magazines of the middle class—Listener, New Statesman, Punch, Economist, etc. If we translate the weekly 9d into typical figures, it comes out at one family periodical at 3d available usually for either another general magazine or another woman’s magazine.    During 1946 we spent, according to the White Paper, £27 millions on the purchase of books. Not all these books were for leisure reading; the figure includes school texts, technical books, reference books and similar utilitarian publications. If we take £25 millions as the total expenditure on recreational books, we are probably taking an outside figure. On this basis, for leisure purposes the average adult spends 14s per annum on the purchase of books. Buying books, however, is not a working class habit; most books are bought by the middle class and the average adult in this group probably spends as much as 30s per annum on books.    According to the big booksellers, most book buying is done by middle class women; it is heavily concentrated on fiction and its critical mentors tend to be the Sunday Times and the BBC. Their impact is shown in the following list of 1946’s best-sellers—Bright Day (Priestley), Cass Timberlaine (Sinclair Lewis), Private Angelo (Eric Linklater), Lord Hornblower (C. S. Forester), Then and Now (Somerset Maugham), That Lady (Kate O’Brien), A Woman of the Pharisees (Mauriac), The Cruise of the ‘Breadwinner’ (H. E. Bates). In short, most of this middle class bought reading is about or a little above the level of the serialised fiction in such American magazines as Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post.    But not all reading is done by buying books. The middle class woman reader heavily supplements her buying with books borrowed from the subscription libraries. What she borrows follows closely the best seller list with a little time lag and with some excursions into the ‘book of the film’.    Working class reading is based mainly on the public libraries and on the 2d a book libraries. Again the patrons are mainly women and their reading is concentrated on fiction. Their favourite authors (or rather authoresses) are the writers whose work is and was serialised in the popular British women’s magazines—Ruby M. Ayres, Ethel M. Dell, E. W. Savi, Leonora Starr, Berta Ruck, Barbara Cartland, Netta Muskett, Denise Robins. The working class girls covered by the Girls’ Clubs survey already referred to were asked what sort of books they liked reading. According to the report, in every age group, love and adventure take first or second place. In every age group from fourteen to eighteen . . . love stories claim the first place. Crime usually takes third place.    The content and quality of popular British fiction at all income levels is determined primarily by the fact that it is directed at women readers, and, in the words of one successful woman novelist, women, by and large, want reading to leave them ‘pleased, rested, interested, amused, inspired to a more living faith in the beauty of human affection’.

Britain's Book Reading Habits 1945

Here's a 1945 article from FUTURE BOOKS (Industry - Government - Science - Arts) Volume I : Overture, reprinted verbatim:

BRITAIN'S BOOK READING HABITS

“FUTURE” asked : B.I.P.O. answered : Who reads books ? More than half the public—53%.  Young people more than old.  Women more than men.  Middle class more than upper or lower. What are they reading ? Two-thirds of all readers say “FICTION.” Politics are four times more popular than poetry or religion. What will they read next ? Two-thirds don't know.  Most of them who do will go for the same type of book again. War books are declining, politics and social science are gaining in interest. How do people get their books ? Three-quarters are borrowed. Only one reader in five buys his book. “FUTURE” commissioned the British Institute of Public Opinion to survey the country's reading habits.  Two thousand people, selected in correct proportion as to location within the British Isles, income group, age, sex, occupation, so as to be representative of the public at large, were asked : “ What book are you reading at the moment ? ” “ How did you come across it ? ” “ What are you going to read next ? ” Their answers are tabulated in the next column.  The survey did not cover members of the Forces, in whose ranks is an important section of the reading public. Over half the people were able to name the book they were reading !  We cannot be sure about the other half.  They may in fact not be reading books at all—or only just not at the moment—or again they may have resented the whole business of being “surveyed.” Fifty-three per cent provided clear answers to all our questions, and from them it appeared that 35% of all readers preferred fiction.  This proportion is maintained among those who told us what they wished to read next.  Interest in subjects other than fiction covers a wide range : biography, war books, travel, technical books, politics and social science, religion, poetry, etc.  We were interested to find four times as many people voting for politics as for either religion or poetry. (B.I.P.O. classified the answers from the titles which people wrote down on the questionnaire.  There were no leading questions, but they draw attention to one unknown factor concerning the most prominent category “ Fiction ” : it was not possible to break down fiction, as would be desirable, into full-length novels as distinct from threepenny novelettes.) Most people who were reading a book at the moment knew what they wanted to read next.  The overwhelming majority committed themselves to a book of the same type.  The “ fictioners ” were most loyal. Interest in politics and social science seems to be on the increase, while war books appear to be losing favour.  (Presumably they will have a boom again in ten years' time, as happened after the last war.) Oh yes !  Three-quarters of all readers had borrowed their book—half of them from a library ; only one in five had bought his copy.

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING AT THE MOMENT ?

AGE INCOME TOTAL Men Women 21-29 30-49 50 & over Higher Middle Lower % % % % % % % % % DON'T READ DON'T KNOW NO REPLY 47     49 45 35 43 56     37 34 53 FICTION 35 32 43 49 40 32 36 46 35 BIOGRAPHY MEMOIRS 3 2 3 3 3 2 4 5 1 WAR BOOKS 3 2 1 — 2 — 2 1 1 TRAVEL 2 1 1 — 1 1 2 2 1 TECHNICAL  ENCYCLOPÆDIA 3 3 1 3 2 1 5 2 6 POLITICAL SOCIAL SCEINCE 4 8 4 8 6 5 12 8 5 RELIGION 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 — 1 POETRY 1 — — — — — — — — MISCELLANEOUS 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 2

HOW DID YOU COME ACROSS IT ?

PURCHASE 20% LIBRARY 49% LOANED 25% OTHER 6%

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO READ NEXT ?

AGE     INCOME TOTAL Men Women 21-29 30-49 50 & over Higher Middle Lower % % % % % % % % % DON'T READ DON'T KNOW NO REPLY 66 69 64 58 67 70 54 61 72 FICTION 23 18 28 31 22 21 30 28 19 BIOGRAPHY MEMOIRS 2 2 2 1 1 2 4 3 1 WAR BOOKS 1 1 1 1 1 — 1 — — TRAVEL 1 1 — — 1 1 — — 1 TECHNICAL ENCYCLOPÆDIA 1 1 — 1 1 1 2 — 1 POLITICAL  SOCIAL SCEINCE 4 6 3 4 5 3 4 5 4 RELIGION 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 POETRY — — — 1 — — 1 — — MISCELLANEOUS 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 2 1

Advertisement Feature: A Plethora of Mezzanines

A friend of mine, JC, recently started selling her fun home-made earrings online, so I ordered myself a bespoke pair bearing my Saint Evelin avatar. I shall be able to wear them at conferences so that people from this parish might recognise me at a single glance.

I'm an earring now!

Eagle-eyed visitors to JC's Bizzarrea site may notice that I also appear on one of the prêt-à-porter designs. So you too could wear me dangling from your lug-holes!

Children in Need Staff Fancy Dress 2011

Mise-en-scène.

For the last four years, the staff at the library where I work have donned fancy dress for Children in Need. Last year I went as Cheryl Cole, and it was hard to know where to go after that. It was a last-minute rediscovery of my cloche hat last weekend that gave me the inspiration for this year's outfit:

Saint Evelin in the Office with the RFID Scanner. 

Geeky fashion notes: The cloche is a Primark job I picked up in a charity shop, with a feathery fancy from New Look stuck to the side to liven it up. The dress is one of my favourite charity shop finds, a gorgeous lacy number by Berketex. Most of the accessories came from Claire's. I struggled to find some suitably '20s shoes, in the end settling for a pair from New Look which look the part from the front but have a somewhat anachronistically high heel. I took a change of footwear with me in case the tall heels became wearisome, but as it was I saw them out. I also added a cardi (H&M) and a pair of tortoiseshell cats'-eye glasses from Claire's for a dash of vintage (if slightly anachronistic) library chic.

This year we raised £192.50, which, considering it was a reading week at our place, was a pretty healthy sum. More importantly, we had a lot of fun and plenty of home-made cake! 

Taking a few moments in our wonderfully efficient Sorting Area.

CPD23:18,19: A/V+

Succentorship without Sneers is filmed in front of a live studio audience.

Thing 18 of CPD23 gets all A/V on us, and as editor of the (seldom updated) website extravaganza that is A/V Woman Productions, I really ought to be up on that sort of thing. My friends and I were sticking mp3s of our radio show on there as recently as twelve years ago, back in the days of dial-up when one had to be particularly careful about bitrates and file-sizes. I would've cobbled together some audio for you today but I've lent out my microphone. As it is, you can enjoy (above) a quick screencap film I prepared at a pretty crumby bitrate. I did the above using VLC Media Player which is a far better media player than it is a video-capture device, but which serves my needs this evening. Were I wanting to do something a little more impressive and tutorial I would have to dig out something a little more flexible, but tonight this will suffice as lipservice to what is clearly a handy piece of A/V ammunition.

And so we come to Thing 19: a moment to reflect on how my life has changed since starting CPD23...

Without a doubt, this project has helped open up some of the perceived clique-gates that I once felt separated me from my library peers: I've received so many encouraging comments that have empowered me to skip over the troll-bridge and silflay in the verdant sæter of succentorship that lies beyond. With so many excellent CPD23 bloggers out there it became necessary very early on to start making use of a dedicated reader (I went with Google Reader, which was pretty good at the time, though I am not loving that inch of wasted space that accompanies the retrogressive re-design), and as I have begun to gently feel my way within the online library community, I find myself spending more and more time on Twitter as @SaintEvelin where I occasionally even have something to say. I still have some considerable way to go, I realise, but I wouldn't've made it even this far without the gentle prodding of the (19/)23 Things. 

CPD23:17 the_lost_art_of_lecturing.ppt

Action Points for this post: • Blackbored • 2x2" Slide Show Spectacular • The Fuzzy Logic of OHP • Whitebored   • PowerPoint Purgatory   • Prezi Précis • The AJP Method

Blackbored: • Blackboards are so 1820s • My handwriting has    yet to be deciphered • Dust and squeaks • Repetition of effort for    each class

2x2" Slide Show: • Slides are so 1970s • Technically difficult to produce • Require specialist equipment • This sort of thing happens

OHP: • Transparencies are so '60s • Soft focus, low light & filth • Difficult to handle (static;    inversion; sheets falling    off projector)

Whitebored: • Whiteboards are so 1990s • Glare • Ink everywhere • My handwriting... • More expensive and less   dynamic than blackboards

The Tyranny of PowerPoint: • Is to slides what    whiteboards are to    blackboards  • Naff clip-art !!! • Bullet-pointed hell

Prezi précis: (In collaboration with CPD23) Because animated clip-art wasn't quite annoying enough... ZOOOOOM!

The AJP Method: Because if what you're saying is worth saying, it shouldn't require any flashy gimmicks...

CPD23:15,16: Above and Beyond

I have been to two conferences in my library career, and it is fair to say that I would have been aware of neither were it not for them having been brought to my attention by @rachel_s_b. Quite how she finds out about them remains something of a mystery to me. In the case of the former, the fact that she was speaking at it probably had something to do with how she got to find out about it (though raises yet further questions), while the latter was, I believe, a chance discovery on Twitter.

The grapevine has not sounded like this for over a year.

I am not well-connected. My ear is seldom grafted to the grapevine. I joined CILIP over the summer and have received two or three A4-ish magazines from them (that I cannot recall the precise number is telling). I've flicked through them, but one could not call it reading. I have spent more time (three quarters of a bus journey) with the A5-ish little annual from CILIP's Local History group, which was altogether more inviting and had a lovely piece in it about the Godfrey Edition. I'm already looking forward to next year's, and find myself wondering what other group I joined and whether they'll send me anything as appealing. But generally I am not someone who is particularly drawn to such membership publications: I might flick through the National Trust mag if I remember, but the Unison publication is lucky to get opened at all. I am not a member of these organizations for their fine journalism.

Rather, I rely on Twitter to keep me posted of all the latest happenings, though there again I have some considerable blind-spots. Conference season remains something of an enigma. Luckily, I have some good friends to help me out.

Life would be simple if it weren't for Succentorship without Sneers.

So where these conferences come from is a bit of a mystery; and it's a nice surprise when the opportunity arises to actually go along to one. Having had two positive experiences, I am keen to seek out a third. I wonder what it'll be.

It might even be nice to speak at one one day when I'm all grown up.

This brings us, if we walk a bit once we alight, to Thing 16 of CPD23: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published.

I have not had published, and do not anticipate having published, any library-related writing. But you never know. I would be more keen to have a novel or a play published (were I to ever finish one that lasts longer than a minute), though that seems increasingly unlikely in a world where something like Unbound needs to exist. Of course, this here blog has a potential online circulation in excess of most library journals, so *sticks tongue out at library journals, wrinkles nose, and makes like a Sopwith Camel with hands*. I have built it, so perhaps they will come...

And this is the written medium: the one in which I am at my most cosy. Ask me to speak (unscripted) and you are unlikely to have anything so deftly engineered: rather you will be left with a string of semantic fillers and some garbled argument or other. Perhaps it's something to do with being an only child that I'm crap at live conversation, but, by whatever means, I tend to think more at writing pace than speaking pace.

This means that, unless I'm particularly switched on, or particularly full of facts on the matter, I am probably not the ideal advocate in a spoken debate or picket-line confrontation. I'm happier shouting at the radio than talking on it.

Good v Evil.

That's not strictly true. A friend and I used to write, present and perform a part-improvised comedy radio show, and it was great fun until we were thrown off for poking fun at the station's ramshackled infrastructure, mocking an SRN DJ, ironically suggesting that an occasional sponsor were evil, and describing the station controller as ruling with "an iron fist" (something which proved demonstrably accurate). The moral here is not that this is indicative of my unsuitability as an advocate (because I am likely to describe the WI in unfavourable terms or caricature CILIP's leadership tyrannical) but rather that I work better with somebody to hold my hand: the pressure is diluted somewhat, and I don't have to keep rambling away: there is time to marshal ones thoughts as the other speaks. The trouble then is that I don't speak at all: the conversation strays from the point I have been perfecting in my head; my wingman has the base covered (to merrily mix military metaphors).

But advocacy is not limited to local radio slots and confrontations with zealous, intransigent mayors. There are, doubtless, myriad opportunities for me to promote the bibliotechnic cause in print and pixel. Or I could even simply turn up to a campaign event and make a physical show of support. I have a small pocketful of excuses for why I haven't got involved in any of the Save Libraries activities (beyond the odd tweet of support and a petition signature). Here is a (somewhat fluffy) flavour of them:

The only public library of which I am a member is Manchester City. Even there, my status is unregistered and I have yet to pick up my card. My membership is predicated solely on access to the Naxos music collection. Membership of two academic libraries means that I have never felt a need to join a public library. While I make intermittent use of Sheffield City Library as a meeting-place, I am otherwise unaffiliated to the body and would feel a fraud protesting there. That it is an hour away from where I live makes attending the likes of a momentary 'shush-in' or similar something of an inconvenience. As for my local library, no cuts have threatened it, so I have not been called to that more convenient barricade.

 Dani Behr.

Here we see a hypocritical blend of irrelevance and idleness. To reduce it to its starkest terms: they came for the libraries and I did nothing.

Why do I do nothing? Because I'm idle; because I'm not a confident, out-going, go-getting, well-organized political machine and juggler of realms. Mine is not the coffee-morning mentality. I'm an armchair protester just as I am an armchair human. In some ways I blame something in my upbringing (probably in my schooling) that fostered the notion of a meritocracy that would seek for lights under every bushel: that the cream of me would rise to the top of society and be scooped off by the discerning observers of this Brave New World; in short: that I could sit here and eventually have somebody discover my wealth of talents and give me money for sitting here. I don't know who instilled me with this deception (possibly somebody who didn't want me to make anything of my life). In the same mental box is the sentiment which finds exaggerated expression in the words of Jarvis Cocker: "We were brought up on the space race / Now they expect you to clean toilets." My generation were brought up on the abortive race to Mars and were expected to work in telesales, but the principle held, depressingly, and helped generate a good deal of inertia in the graduated me of a decade ago. At that point many of my hopes had had their brains dashed out on the grim rocks of reality (see my post for Things 10 & 11 for a somewhat opaque depiction of the period, and my opening broadside for yet more gore), and this only served to further foster my disinclination to engage with the outside world. It does not seem unreasonable that my reluctance to man the frontier and fight for the right to library is an after-effect of this period of self-imposed insularity. But just as I eventually gritted my teeth and got a job; just as I got myself into Library School; just as I have made some inlanes into the wider library community: so must I do something, no matter how small, to assist in the opposition to those despicable forces that would seek to further overthrow the hard-won advances of the last 66 years (if not the last 666, such is the creeping New Feudalism of the Big Society).

Quack.

Perhaps I need to start small (tiny acorns and all that, eh?). In lieu of any confidence in my ability to harangue with my mouth, perhaps I should begin by writing some panegyric right here on my blog. That would make some kind of sense, would it not? And yet I rather fear that in such cases I would be preaching to the converted: Ned's old echo-chamber reverberating once more. Such thoughts, if extended to paranoid limits, can get one into some trouble: where does the chamber end? The readership of The Guardian seem just as cavernous. Even Skinner's audience in The Times sound a bit resonant. In that regard one can soon argue away the use of such pamphleteering as I might hope to produce. But in the absence of an alternative one must take whatever anechoics one can get. This blog may be a rather cavernous place, but I've sellotaped a bit of egg-box to the wall (above). It will have to do for now.