Modern Reading Swedish Book Consumption During the Late Nineteenth Century
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Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology Modern Reading Swedish Book Consumption during the Late Nineteenth Century Henning Hansen A dissertation for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor – December 2017 MODERN READING swedish book consumption during the late nineteenth century The past is a foreign country – L. P. Hartley iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 Reading and book consumption in the era of the Modern Breakthrough: Aims and research questions 3 The Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavia 5 Nineteenth-century readers 9 Sources, limitations, and methodology 13 Scope and limitations of the study 16 Source material 17 Social categorisation model 24 Genre classification and book title identification 27 The book and the reader: Theoretical approaches 29 Book history and the sociology of literature 29 The history of reading 32 Book consumption and the history of literature 35 Previous research 37 The Scandinavian Moment in World Literature 43 Structure 45 CHAPTER 2. THE SWEDISH BOOK MARKET AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 47 Socio-economic and demographic changes 47 Literacy rates in the 1800s 50 Manufacturing developments and structural changes to the book market 52 Selling and purchasing books 55 Borrowing books 62 iv CHAPTER 3. THE BOOKSHOP, THE PARISH LIBRARY, AND THE COMMERCIAL LENDING LIBRARY 65 The bookshop 66 Book culture in Gothenburg 66 Gumpert’s bookshop 69 Customers of Gumpert’s bookshop 74 The parish library 78 Book culture in Munka-Ljungby 78 Munka-Ljungby’s parish library 80 The members of the parish library 82 The commercial lending library 85 Book culture in Lund 85 J. A. Sjöblom’s lending library 87 Customers of Sjöblom’s lending library 89 Summary 95 CHAPTER 4. OFFER AND DEMAND: SALES AND LOANS 96 The bookshop 96 The parish library 99 The lending library 107 Summary 111 CHAPTER 5. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL GENRES 114 Fiction 114 The fiction dilemma in Munka-Ljungby 118 “City mysteries,” seductive Paris and other forbidden fruit 120 Religious literature 127 Schoolbooks 135 Magazines and journals 144 The Northeast Passage and The Maiden Tribute: two examples of bookshop bestsellers 150 Nordenskiöld and the Vega expedition 151 The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon and other scandalous publications 155 Summary 163 v CHAPTER 6. THE MODERN BREAKTHROUGH LITERATURE AND ITS READERS 166 In the bookshop 168 The dissemination of Danish and Norwegian Modern Breakthrough literature in Sweden 176 Modern Breakthrough customers in the bookshop 182 In the parish library 194 In the lending library 196 Summary 199 CHAPTER 7. BOOK CONSUMPTION PATTERNS 205 Time to read 205 Linguistic barriers 214 Instalments: To bind, or not to bind 219 Changing tastes: The decline of the parish library and the fall of the lending library 224 Rural and urban readers 230 Peasant neighbours reading: Johannes Persson & Anders Nilsson in Kroppåkra 234 Children reading 243 Women’s reading habits 249 Summary 259 CHAPTER 8. CLOSING REMARKS 264 Accessing books 264 Reading preferences 267 A modern breakthrough in Swedish reading history? 270 Another kind of breakthrough? 273 “The sources fail us” 275 BIBLIOGRAPHY 277 LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 298 APPENDIX 302 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Whatever they may do, PhD students do not write books” (if I may para- phrase Roger Stoddard). At least not without great help and support. Now that I have come to the end of this journey, I would therefore like to express my gratitude to all who I have encountered along the way. First of all, I would like to thank the entire SCANMO research group, consisting of my supervi- sors, Narve Fulsås and Tore Rem, and my PhD colleague Maria Purtoft, as well as my other colleagues at UiT – the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). I am also grateful to all the librarians and archivists at the Royal Danish Li- brary, the Regional State Archives in Gothenburg, Lund University Library, and the Central Archive of Ängelholm, who have been most helpful during the months I spent in the archives. A special thank you to Ebba for all the help in the archives. From August 2014 to January 2015, I was a visiting scholar at the Har- vard University History Department, which was a truly inspiring experience. I would like to thank Ann Blair and Ann Kaufmann for making my stay possi- ble, and Hannah Marcus, Meredith Quinn, Stephen Mitchell, and the entire Book History Writers’ Group for giving valuable feedback and making the time at Harvard so memorable. During the autumn of 2016 and early spring of 2017, I was a visiting schol- ar at my alma mater, the Division of Book History at Lund University. My warmest thanks to Henrik Horstbøll, Kristina Lundblad, Ragni Svensson, Arina Stoenescu, and, last but not least, Maria Simonsen, for welcoming me, and for all the kind feedback and support I have received over the years. I am also grateful to the entire Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences for making me feel at home. I am indebted to all those who have read the thesis, in various stages of the working process. In particular, I would like to thank Gunnel Furuland and vii Jens Bjerring-Hansen who read a draft version of the thesis and offered many kind words of encouragement at a working seminar in 2015. Special thanks goes to Marie Léger-St-Jean, whose great help and efforts have stretched way beyond the dire task of proofreading the text – thank you, my friend. (Any remaining imperfections are all mine!) During these years, I have attended several conferences and events arranged by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publish- ing (SHARP), in Canada, France, and China. To be able to present my work at the conferences, as well as to have the opportunity to mingle and exchange ideas with fellow book historians, has been of the utmost importance to me. For me, as a book historian, this scholarly organization has become something like “my intellectual home,” as a fellow SHARP member once put it. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all my friends and family. Thank you, Johannes, for the layout, Kerstin, Poul, and Ida-Maria for the reading and for invaluable and loving support. Tack! Lund, December 2017 Henning Hansen chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Dear Mr Sjöblom! I am sorry to trouble you again! This time, I want to borrow a few good, preferably new books for one or two months, perhaps 8 or 10, or 12 of them. We are staying here in Ryd for the summer. My husband will take the train here early next week, could you perhaps have a porter bring the books to the station? Anna Printzen, Ryd, 29 June 1893. Mr Sjöblom! My wife has probably already sent [you] a request to borrow a few books. I write to inform you that I will take the train from Malmö at 08:10 on Tuesday morning [4 July] and it will stop by Lund at 08:40, and I am wondering if [you] would be so kind as to send a few books to the train, so I can take them with me. Erikus Printzen, Malmö, 2 July 1893. 1 We have no way of knowing what books Jacob Albert Sjöblom, the proprietor in Lund of an antiquarian bookshop doubling as commercial lending library, sent to the railway station on the morning of 4 July 1893. 2 Nor did his custom- ers Mrs and Mr Printzen know what to expect. Anna Printzen only stated that she wanted some “good, preferably new” books, and it would probably be safe to assume that she was expecting to get something that would be entertaining, since Sjöblom’s library specialised in fiction. Anna Printzen seems to have had confidence in the library proprietor and his literary choices. Sjöblom, on his part, had to be familiar with contemporary literature and the reading tastes of his customers to be able to satisfy requests like this one. From what we know, Anna Printzen was a returning customer, and she 1. Frantz Erikus ”Erik” (von) Printzen (1862–1939) and Anna Charlotta Printzen, born An- dersson (1868–1942). The archive of Jacob Albert Sjöblom, Lund University Library. Any translations from Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are my own, unless otherwise stated. 2. In this study, the term ”commercial lending library” refers to a profit-driven library that rents out books to the public, corresponding to circulating library in an Anglo-Saxon context, cabinets de lecture in a French context, and Leihbibliothek in a German context. The Swedish term is kommersiellt lånebibliotek. 2 1. introduction seems to have been pleased with Sjöblom’s services. Erikus Printzen, an assis- tant professor and one of the founding members of Malmö Velocipede Club, and his wife Anna, were respectively thirty and twenty-five years old at the time, and they were expecting their third child. Like many others of the more well to do classes, the couple left the city in order to spend the summer in the countryside, and it is easy to imagine that the eight to twelve books Anna Printzen required were going to serve as her summer reading. The letters from Mrs and Mr Printzen give us glimpses from a bygone era. Thanks to both cheaper and quicker postal services, letters were written by the tens of millions each year in Sweden by the end of the nineteenth centu- ry. 3 The rather informal tone in the letters from the Printzen couple and the fact that they were written within short notice point to the spontaneity and efficiency made possible by a transforming media landscape. 4 These particular letters also bear witness to how the relation between text and readers had un- dergone fundamental change.