Gaining Literacy and Numeracy

This chapter assesses the shift from mass illiteracy to collective literacy and numeracy in the Georgian era. It argues that the numbers of both men and women who were literate and numerate decisively overtook the numbers of the illiterate and innumerate—which happened without state prompting. The chapter also peeks at how printed books began to wield a new cultural hegemony in Britain with the ending of rigorous press censorship. The power of writing and print culture was becoming steadily more predominant. The eighteenth century was a brilliant period in British poetry. The chapter underlines that the older oral traditions of verse were transformed into print, and older oral traditions of storytelling were transmuted into the birth of the novel. Georgians were simultaneously galvanised by the mixing of new creativity and traditional know-how via spreading literacy and numeracy.