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What did the Peasants Read? Written and Printed Culture in Rural France, 1815-1914

Today’s educators frequently complain that we do not read enough. In the nineteenth century, the problem was the opposite: workers and peasants were reading too much. Rising levels of popular literacy aroused concern in Catholic circles, and provoked various campaigns for the production and distribution of ’bons livres’ in the countryside. The very devout Eugenie de Gu6rin, on her family’s estate in the Tarn, was horrified in 1837 when a labourer dared to argue with the local cure about the significance of the Council of Trent.’ The peasant reader was a