ABSTRACT
In the Senior Schools private reading goes on at all three ages in every school. Analysis of the books specified by the girls in the three Secondary Schools where private reading is allowed, shows how unsettled is teaching opinion about the value and uses of this practice, and how this practice varies from school to school and inside the same school. It is clear that private reading holds a quite different place in the two sorts of schools: in Senior Schools it is firmly established whereas in the Secondary Schools its position is uncertain. In the Senior Schools quiet reading is a normal practice. In one form every girl had read, or was reading, Silas Marner, and the few who had finished it were provided with Rob Roy. In the girls' Senior Schools, as in the other schools, private reading has a highly equivocal status.
