'David Vincent's history of the teaching of reading and writing, and its cultural implications, shows how, once you take the winning of literacy as a serious issue, it opens up new perspectives on a whole series of major themes. His topics range from family relationships and social mobility, through politics and election broadsides, to the cultural influences of literacy on the working-class generation before that of Richard Hoggart.' The Times Literary Supplement

• l. Introduction; 2. Family; 3. Education; 4. Work; 5. The natural world; 6. Imagination; 7. Politics; 8. Literacy and its uses.