ABSTRACT
In The English Common Reader Richard Altick aims to offer information and sources that could be used to ‘interpret the popular taste of an age’.1 To examine the ‘popular taste of an age’ we need to look at the popular reading material of its readers, while being aware that the traditional view of the Victorian periodical as a passive resource2 has broadened to acknowledge that Victorian periodicals were ‘a (or perhaps the) constitutive medium of a Victorian culture which is now seen as interactive’.3 It should be noted that this chapter focuses on low-priced and nonelite reading materials.
