[Xmca-l] Re: Hyper-text

[Andy Blunden]

In the late 1830s-1840s, only 1/6 of the adult male population of 
Britain - those who owned property - had the vote, and the mass of the 
working people of the country organised themselves into a movement known 
as the Chartists. Everything was illegal. It was illegal to have 
meetings of more than 49 people, illegal to elect representatives or to 
correspond with other groups, and in particular, newspapers were subject 
to a "stamp duty" which would make any paper too expensive for an 
ordinary working joe to buy. There were dozens of illegal, unstamped 
papers in circulation, and the prisons filled with people convicted of 
writing for or selling them.
What succeeded despite all this in uniting the Chartists into a powerful 
national movement was the paper "The Northern Star," which registered 
itself and paid the stamp duty which meant that individual workers could 
not afford to buy it, so.... they clubbed together and one would read 
while others worked, or inn-keepers bought a copy and workers came to 
their inn to read it together, or people would come to someone's house 
on a Sunday and read together and in a dozen different ways, by poor 
people reading together to overcome the high cost of the paper, the 
Northern Star became the chief organising instrument of the movement.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


mike cole wrote:
> Fascinating, Henry. thanks. Its difficult for us to remember that reading,
> even after the printing press,was not an individual, isolatable, activity.
> Interesting that we use reading aloud as a gateway activity for  reading
> silently "for oneself" almost as if the ontogeny is recapitulating history.
> mike
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 8:38 AM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> People,
>> I found this in the NY Times this morning:
>>
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/design/a-grolier-club-tribute-to-the-printer-aldus-manutius.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0#
>> <
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/design/a-grolier-club-tribute-to-the-printer-aldus-manutius.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0#
>>     
>> Also, this week we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of
>> Alice in Wonderland.
>>
>> Henry
>>
>>
>>     
>
>
>