The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe, c.1860–1920

Abstract

As war and mass emigration across oceans increased the distances between ordinary people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of them, previously barely literate and unaccustomed to writing, began to communicate on paper. This fascinating account explores this surge of ordinary writing, how people met the new challenges of literacy and the importance of scribal culture to the history of individual experience in modern Europe. Focusing on correspondence and other writing genres produced by French and Italian soldiers in the trenches in the First World War, as well as Spanish emigrants to the Americas, the book reveals how these writings were influenced by dialect and oral speech and were oblivious to the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Through their sometimes moving stories, we gain an insight into the importance to ordinary peasants of family, village and nation at a time of rapid social and cultural change.

Literacy Skills as Local Intangible Capital: The History of a Rural Lending Library c. 1860 - 1920

“…62 Gra et al 2009Johansson 1972;Johansson 1977;Johansson 2002;Lindmark 2003;Lindmark 2004. 63 Lyons 2010Lyons 2012;Lyons 2013. 64 E.g.…”

“…16 ere were considerable di erences in the individual readers' levels of literacy and their opportunities to exploit their reading skills in practical life. ese di erences partly arose from the di erent ways in which reading literacy was de ned in di erent times and the level of skills 16 Blommaert 2004;Jarlbrink 2010;Lyons 2013;Sulkunen 1999. that those who taught the rural people to read expected them to attain in any particular age. Rather than accepting the idea of a 'triumphal progress' , the success of the library institution in its task of popular enlightenment should be called into question and problematized more o en, for example with regard to the quality of the people's reading and writing skills or their opportunities for using a library.…”

The role and impact of thearchivi della scrittura popolare

“…Work at the archive at the University of Genoa, directed by the historian Antonio Gibelli and containing mainly autobiographical accounts, was particularly important in creating a grassroots history of the 1914-18 war. For a general survey of the work of such archives in creating a 'history from below', see Lyons (2010Lyons ( , 2012. 5 Especially interesting in this genre is the 400-page transcription of the life recounted by a Tuscan woman, Io sò nata a Santa Lucia.…”

Shifting Global Literacy Networks: How Emigration Promotes Informal Literacy Learning in Latvia

“… This process has historical precedent: For example, familial separation due to migration and war in early 20th century Europe prompted people to learn to write letters (Lyons ).…”