Everyone's a Writer Now -- Andrew Crofts
General levels of literacy have been with us in the West for a few centuries. But only the leisured classes, or those whose professions demanded it, spent much of their time writing and reading. For most working people, life was just too short and too busy to be whiling away the hours reading books, let alone writing them. Children left school early in order to go to work in the fields and factories, or as servants, or even down the mines and up chimneys. Literacy was not always encouraged by their masters and employers, who believed it would only put ideas into their heads, and lead to disruption - or possibly even lewd behaviour. As recently as 1960, when Penguin was charged with publishing an obscene book after they brought out an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterleyās Lover by D.H. Lawrence, the prosecuting counsel is on record as asking the jury, āIs it a book that you would even wish your wife or servants to read?ā It was not that long ago that scribes were a...