I will report on ‘Revealing the Reader: A Symposium’ in my next blogpost.

The Whizz-bangs were a popular British military concert party.

I’ll also be giving a paper at ‘Revealing the Reader’ History of Reading symposium organised by Monash University’s Centre for the Book on Australian soldiers’ reading in the First and Second World Wars.

I am looking forward to both.

As a historian, I was interested in some of the digital initiatives being undertaken to present a range of historical data, sources, and research to the public. But I also found those scholars who made the point that it is necessary for historians (especially academic historians) to consider how the computer and the internet are challenging and reshaping the way people engage with and understand history – and thus need to consider the challenges to our historical scholarship and practice – particularly thought-provoking. Some years ago I studied amateur historians in the US West at the end of the 19^th century, and considered how the rise of a professionally trained generation of historians challenged their primacy within state historical societies. These professionals increasingly took over the writing of history. I wonder if there is a new shift in the nature of historical practice and production, insofar as the internet and digital forms will be the main way that people will engage with, and read, history. As one paper-giver suggested, academic historians are not engaging with these issues (or asserting their presence on the internet) as much as they might (and perhaps should).

There were many other thought-provoking issues raised at the conference. As a book historian who has studied the way people have historically engaged with print – from both the publishing and production end, and from the audience and reader end – the conference reminded me of just how rapidly these processes and practices are shifting. How we make sense of all this and learn to adapt will be the challenge of the future.

Some digital history initiatives:

Invisible Australians

A History of Aboriginal Sydney

Bound for South Australia

Dictionary of Sydney

Latest scholarship on Digital Humanities:

Digital Humanities Quarterly

See http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409427322

Boredom is the Enemy: the Intellectual and Imaginative Lives of Australian Soldiers in the Great War and Beyond

It is being published by Ashgate and will available as both an eBook and in hard copy from January.

Information about my book is available here. It is cheaper to purchase it directly from the publisher than elsewhere. SHARP members can also get a discount on all Ashgate titles.

 As we move into the brave new world of digital books and the domination of the internet and digital media in our day-to-day life, Martyn Lyons’ new book A History of Reading and Writing in the Western World, provides us with some much-needed historical perspective. His final chapter argues that we may well be experiencing the greatest revolution in reading and writing since humans first learned to read and write; however, as Lyons’ history repeatedly suggests, ‘revolutions’ in the past (such as Gutenberg’s invention of print) have not always been as revolutionary as we might assume.

Martyn Lyons, a historian of the book based at the University of Sydney and a specialist in French history, has written an accessible, brief account of the history of reading and writing from the ancient world to the present. He provides an insightful synthesis of existing scholarship on the history of reading, writing and the book, and takes into account a variety of historiographical debates. His book is a valuable introduction to anyone interested in the topic, and a useful summary of the main areas of scholarship and contention in the history of the book. It should be noted, however, that his focus tends to be on the 18^th and 19^th century and France and the UK, more than anything. This perhaps reflects both his own interests, as well as existing scholarship.

One of the important contributions that this book makes to our thinking about the history of the book is that by focusing on the history of reading and writing, it shifts our perspective to the writers and readers in history. He also focuses on actual readers, rather than a theoretical reader, and this makes his study valuable as social history. We can see the ways in which ‘ordinary’ people engaged in the activities of reading and writing, and what these activities meant to them in their day-to-day existence. This perspective also reminds us that reading and writing existed before the printed book, and will continue after the advent of e-books, even if our engagement with these activities might shift in nature and form.

Lyons begins his book with a quick look at the ancient and medieval world, before shifting to Gutenberg and the printing revolution. He then moves through the Reformation and Renaissance, before moving on to the modern period, which he examines in some detail. All along, Lyons is concerned with capturing the range of reading and writing activity – ‘ordinary’ people and popular culture get much attention. He studies women and workers at some length. Lyons also assesses the impact of technologies, such as the industrialization of printing, on the way people have read and written.

One clear historical trend has been the democratization of reading and writing, which came to fruition in the twentieth century in the Western world. The digital revolution has perhaps amplified this democratizing trend, but as Lyons suggests in his final chapter, the non-Western world still has very high rates of illiteracy (in some areas of the world, this is in fact increasing rather than decreasing) and the digital divide is much in evidence (for some countries, any print books would be welcome).

While the book engages in some of the politics of literacy, reading and access to books, his limited focus prevents him from engaging in some of the broader political dimensions of the history of reading and writing. Notably, there is no real mention of colonialism – although Western countries, engaged in the project of empire through much of the period under examination, used literacy, education and print as a means of ‘knowing’ and subjugating colonial populations, as well as attempting to undermine and end traditional societies.

On the whole, however, Lyons’ book is a significant contribution to the history of the book and an excellent starting point for those interested in knowing more about the subject.

            Hench’s book focuses on American publishers and the various efforts they made to mobilise books for the war. Organisations such as the Council of Books in Wartime turned books into ‘weapons in the war of ideas’. Efforts were made both at home and abroad to use books in the fight against fascism and, once liberation in Europe began, to make books (including American books in translation) to liberated populations. Re-education of Germans, including POWs, was also attempted, through publishers’ series such as the Bücherreihe Neue Welt series. A crucial and important part of Hench’s story is how American publishers were able to make inroads into the global publishing market.

            Holman’s book tells the story of the British publishers. In Britain, the pressures on the publishing industry was much greater: the Blitz wiped out book supplies and publishers’ offices (on one night alone in 1940, over a million books were lost); paper supplies were short; and as both Hench and Holman make clear, British firms were wary of the American threat to their global markets. Both books explore the sometimes tense relationship between British and American publishers.

            Both books explore the audiences for these books: the American GI catered for by the specially produced Armed Services Editions; the German POW given Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque to read; the British soldiers reading Penguin books through Forces Book Club; African soldiers reading British books, learning English and using it to call for greater political equality. Books are deeply political, as these two histories show us.

            What both these excellent books with their extensive archival research reveal is the significant role that publishers played in the Allied war effort. They helped to shape the ideological dimension of the war, setting up the Allies as fighters for democracy and liberty by contrast to the book-burning Nazis. They championed the value of the book in education and entertainment and were able to use this essential role in the war effort as a means to expand their markets, consolidate the idea that books were central to healthy democracies and showed to their respective governments the value of the publishing industry to the state.

John B. Hench, Books as weapons: propaganda, publishing and the battle for global markets in the ear of World War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010)

Valerie Holman, Print for victory: book publishing in England 1939-1945 (London: The British Library, 2008).

 In the First World War, much of what was read or requested tended to be escapist fare with sentimental and adventure novels pre-dominating. Most choices were guided by factors such as availability and familiarity. A favourite genre with pre-war readers and soldiers was the adventure-thriller. This might include the spy adventures of John Buchan (1875-1940), the crime thrillers of William LeQueux (1864-1927) or the romance thrillers of Anthony Hope (1863-1933). Beyond the adventure-thriller genre, a number of other genres and authors appealed to soldiers. Nat Gould was perhaps troops’ favourite or, at least, most requested author. Soldiers also took an interest in reading sentimental novels. Hall Caine (1853-1931) and Charles Garvice (1850-1920), for example, were authors frequently mentioned in both official requests and in private letters and diaries of soldiers. A further illustration of the appeal of sentimental writing is found in the popularity of American novelist Jean Webster (1876-1916). Webster was the author of two popular novels, Daddy Long Legs (1912) and Dear Enemy (1915); both are mentioned in several Australian soldiers’ accounts of their wartime reading. Australian officer John Gilbert Jacob chose to read Daddy Long Legs because a nursing sister recommended it. Alf Stewart read Daddy Long Legs in May 1917 and noted it as ‘a very pretty and novel kind of book.’(Diary entry in Margaret Willmington, Willmington, Alfred Robert Morison Stewart, p. 251)

The appeal of these books operated at various levels. Many offered escapism in their popular, usually easy-to-read narratives. They often dealt with personal quests by heroes – which might have appealed both in terms of the identification with individual heroism (of which there was little opportunity for pursuing in the impersonal machine of trench warfare) and in terms of the triumph of the human spirit (good defeating evil). Books with a romantic or sentimental plot or sub-plot likely also touched a chord with many soldiers missing family and loved ones.

For individual readers, serious literature often sat alongside the reading of more popular novels. Reg Telfer, for example, kept detailed lists of books he bought, many purchased on leave in England. His list included War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Nana by Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant’s short stories, John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps and O. Henry’s Cabbages and Kings. (Reg Telfer, Dad’s War – Diaries 1915-1919 (C. Taplin, 1996), p. 157) Another list, which recorded all the books he purchased from bookseller E.G. Miles in London while on leave in 1917, included volumes by Zola, George Bernard Shaw, Balzac, Haggard, Kipling, Twain, C.J. Dennis, Arthur Conan Doyle and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

In World War II, the most consistently popular libraries with Australian soldiers were Circulating Box Libraries (CBLs) and Pocket Libraries, both of which contained a lot of fictional material, and which included popular genres such as detective fiction and Westerns. One Education Officer reported that for his library, ‘nine out of ten men come looking for light reading’ and the ‘tenth man seeks a good class novel, or a popular work on current affairs’. (AES Newsletter, (March 1945), p. 6)

What books did servicemen read and reflect upon in this war? From evidence available beyond AES library lists, many appear to have engaged in a range of reading from various Penguins to Gone with the Wind. Leslie Harold Sullivan, pilot and avid filmgoer, was a regular reader. His letters home indicate he was bored a lot of the time, with films, newspapers, magazines and books filling up his free time. In March 1945, he turned his attention to Margaret Mitchell’s popular historical romance Gone with the Wind. In just two days, he read ‘all 600 pages of it, and found it hard to put down’. (Sullivan, Not to be Shot At, p. 151) Through early 1942, soldier Norman McCall Tulloh read a variety of books while stationed in Darwin and with time on his hands, including a Western, a book by Jerome K. Jerome, The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel and some of a Reader’s Digest. (Tulloh Papers, Australian War Memorial) Second AIF soldier Ken Sillcock preferred more serious reading. In North Africa in 1941, he read the non-fiction New Ways of War, pleased that it echoed his own criticisms of the army; in April 1942, on the way back to Australia, he read Conrad and Dickens ‘as a change from some of the inferior detective and wild west yarns that have been about.’ (Sillcock Papers, Australian War Memorial)

Australian soldiers in Vietnam found various opportunities to read as evidenced in their diaries and letters, but few comment or reflect on what they read. David Bradford, a doctor in Vietnam, was sent a variety of books from friends and family, including detective and spy novels, and books by writers such as P.G. Wodehouse (of whom he was a fan) and John Buchan (who he described as ‘that dreadful old imperialist’.) (Bradford, Gunners’ Doctor, pp. 37, 63, 87) Later in the war, Bradford wrote home to his father thanking him for all the books and other presents sent to him while overseas: ‘The books particularly have been a real help on this operation – I’ve done a lot of reading.’ (p. 193)

Further Reading:

 See my articles, ‘Australian Soldiers and the World of Print during the Great War’ in M.E. Hammond and S. Towheed (eds.) Publishing in the First World War: Essays in Book History Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2007, pp. 93-109 and ‘Finding “Another Great World”: Australian Soldiers and Wartime Libraries’, Library Quarterly Vol. 76, No. 4, October 2006, pp. 420-437 (special edition ‘Retrieving Readers: the Library Experience’) pp. 420-437. I also explore the reading experiences of Australian soldiers in my forthcoming book, Boredom is the Enemy: the Imaginative and Intellectual Worlds of Australian Soldiers in the Great War and Beyond (Ashgate).

A history of reading and readers in wartime offers a particularly useful way of looking at how particular contexts can shape our reading practices and experiences. The evidence left by servicemen in particular through their letters, diaries and memoirs allows us some insight into a group of what we might call “ordinary” readers who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.

Why did soldiers turn to reading in the context of military life and war? One of the primary motivations was boredom. As David Goodhart wrote in his memoir of the Second World War, ‘It has been said that life in the Army is made up of months of extreme boredom followed by moments of extreme fear. And although that does not state the case, it does get somewhere near it.’ (p. 48) Goodhart’s sentiment is expressed in a range of other sources from those who have experienced war. Boredom was a product of the average soldier’s situation and varied depending on their job and location; such boredom was not just about the lack of anything to do, but was also a product of many men failing to find meaning in what they did while in the army or other service.

One important function of reading in the context of war was that it could help facilitate psychological resilience and endurance. The psychological impact of war and combat has been well documented, and increasingly scholars have been trying to examine the various factors that enabled some soldiers to maintain a measure of psychological resilience in the debilitating context of combat. One part of this was the link reading made between men and home. Soldiers often read to connect themselves to home, unsurprisingly a phenomenon common across the wars. Letters from home were always the most cherished: John Raws wrote home in 1916 to a friend that letters were ‘such a comfort’ and frankly admitted that ‘the horrors [of the war] one sees and the neverending shock of the shells is more than can be borne.’ (Raws Papers, Australian War Memorial) In the Second World War and the Vietnam War, little changed: Philip John Hurst, a Lance Bombardier in the artillery in WWII, was wounded in the Greek campaign, and when eventually receiving a collection of mail, he remembers the thrill he felt: ‘No mail for eight weeks and then a flood. My loved ones had not forgotten me but had kept waiting and hoping to hear from me … I took days to read it all.’ (Hurst Papers, Australian War Memorial) When Australian postal workers went on strike in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War, soldiers were very angry. James ‘Ned’ Kelly commented that ‘[m]ail from home was regarded as sacred … [it] was a boost to the spirit in a world where killing took priority.’ The postal strike, he thought, was ‘hitting way below the belt.’ (D.J. Dennis, One Day at a Time: a Vietnam Diary, p. 70) There were few soldiers in Vietnam who did not consider mail from home as vital.

Newspapers too helped reinforce this connection to home and were an essential part of Australian soldiers’ reading. First AIF soldier Bob Bice recorded his thrill in reading papers from his home town of Nowra, writing in a letter that ‘[a] person far from home finds even the advertisements of his home town very interesting reading.’ (Lee Mills (ed.), Letters from the Front 1914-1918). Jack Ison avidly read newspapers from Dubbo, commenting, ‘Why they make a man wish he was home, and not trying to calculate the depth of the Flanders mud…’ (Letter 17 October 1917, Jack Ison, Dear Da… Letters from the Great War 1914-18, written by and concerning Jack Ison, 1565 3^rd Battalion AIF – KIA 10/11/17). Reading and receiving books could also often connect soldiers to home. Soldiers requested Australian reading material whenever they could. C.J. Dennis’ The Sentimental Bloke and other volumes were overwhelmingly popular in the First World War. One Victorian soldier returning from war presented his copy of Ginger Mick to Dennis himself and told him it had been through the hands of all his comrades. ‘He passed over a copy of Ginger Mick. It was broken-backed, dog-eared, and heavily stained by the mud of the Somme, but all its pages were still intact’. (Alec Chisholm, Life and Times of CJ Dennis) Receiving a book from home (whether it was Australian or not) helped to remind soldiers of what they had left behind and what they were fighting for. Many soldiers received books sent directly from family and friends at home and would often share their reading experiences with those at home. Soldier C. Grenville noted receiving ‘a book of views of Perth’ from his mother and reflected in his letter home to her, ‘Its great to have a look at the dear old City even if it is only on paper. Time has flown, fancy it is just about a year and nine months since I left WA. Hope it is not that long before I return’. (Letter 22 November 1916, Boans to the Battlefields: a Collection of Letters written by Boans staff and Friends During the First World War 1914-1918, p. 51)

In the Second World War, Len Williams, a RAAF pilot, regularly read magazines and newspapers sent to him by his parents. While he does not comment on which magazines were sent to him, they were, he noted in a letter to his father, ‘very welcome’. (Letter to his father, 2 December 1941, K. Williams (ed.), Letters to Mother from a WWII RAAF Pilot, p. 81) Geoffrey William Hassell, another pilot with the RAAF, thanked his parents for a parcel of books from home commenting, ‘[s]ome books about home will sure be a happy change after the eternal Steinbeck, Du Maurier, etc’; he was particularly keen to read some good books about Australia. (Letter 10 March 1945, Geoffrey William Hassell, An Unfinished Diary of Impressions, p. 70)

Newspapers, even though usually over a week old or more by the time they reached soldiers serving in Vietnam, were important as connections to home and as sources of news from Australia. Peter Thornton Murray asked his wife to send newspaper cuttings to him, commenting that he was keen to ‘know what the public are being told’. (Letter 5 April 1968, Papers of Peter Thornton Murray, Australian War Memorial) He noted that his men usually only received newspapers that were three to four weeks old and so the cuttings were appreciated. In May 1968, Murray was putting the cuttings up on the common noticeboard. ‘[T]he lads enjoy reading them’, he wrote home, ‘[k]eeps everyone in the picture on the war. We only know what is happening on the local scene and it is particularly interesting to see how the papers report our doings.’ For Frank Benko, also serving in 1968, news from home was unsettling as it became clear there was a growing anti-Vietnam War movement. (F. Benko, 730 and a Wakey, p. 270) By contrast to previous wars, where news often provided a positive means of conveying support from home to troops serving abroad, Benko’s experience suggests that the divided sentiment about the war conveyed in newspapers became a source of concern for Australian troops in Vietnam and possibly had some impact on their morale.

Continued: What novels did soldiers read in wartime?

Details about the conference can be found here.