ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I use inscriptive evidence on readers’ preferences, attitudes, and responses to investigate the types of genres, authors, titles, publishers, formats, and bindings most frequently owned by Edwardians. In doing so, I bring to the foreground the book as a site of cultural struggle between dominant and popular culture. I also accentuate how the transmission of culture did not simply move unidirectionally from superior to less-superior groups, but rather was a bidirectional process that had the potential to alter popular consciousness, conceptions of the world, and standards of moral conduct. I also explore the different book formats and binding types owned by Edwardians. Here, inscriptions provide an important testimony of who bought and chose books, how they were mediated to consumers, the speed with which the market for certain book formats moved, and the symbolic functions of material choices as status and power indicators.
