ABSTRACT
Forms of popular reading and writing in Early Modern England hang together in a dense patchwork made up of vast numbers of varied publications and practices. Everyday writing practices ranged from interpretative annotations in books, to records of family births, deaths and other anniversaries (often written into the blank leaves of bibles), accounts, culinary and medical recipes, letters, prayers, sermon notes and graffiti. The history of such practices is undoubtedly a material history that is centred on the household as a locus of popular textual production as well as a receptacle for text that might be painted on the walls, embroidered onto samplers, graffitied onto furniture or inscribed onto implements. 1 In their heterogeneity, these popular writing practices broadly associated with the household are matched, and perhaps surpassed, by the ever-increasing variety of cheap publications that were offered by the expanding printing press.
