ABSTRACT

The purpose of this essay is to discuss one aspect of devotional reading across the Reformation period. It refers particularly to reading in popular culture and forms a small part of a larger study on the subject of popular reading across the period c.1400-1600.1 The wider investigation aims to understand more about the processes, practices and experiences of reading in this period, rather than about theories of reading.2 This essay therefore also focuses on practice, and popular practice rather than scholarly practice.3 A focus on the popular involves the analysis of books and texts which were in the widest possible circulation. One of the most readily available kinds of book across the whole of this period (at least as accessible as the controversial vernacular Bible) was the group of various religious texts including prayer books, primers and Books of Hours, which might be categorised as ‘service books’.4 Such books were sometimes available for

1 E. Salter, Popular Reading in English: Evidence and Experience (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2009).