Penny reading

[2] Australian historian Joy Damousi documented the criticism by Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin of this passive consumption of literature through reading aloud, fitting as it did into Victorian culture and in particular poetry recitation.

They were significant as a way forward for the Mechanics' Institutes set up in the early Victorian period, where they became a staple activity, along with smoking concerts and study for scientific qualifications.

Dispatches for The Times from the Crimean War, by William Howard Russell, were read in public in Hanley by Samuel Taylor, a manual worker who was a Mechanics' Institute secretary and later involved in the Staffordshire Sentinel newspaper.

From the market square, Taylor moved to the town hall, and in 1856 to a fuller programme of patriotic readings, with music and the national anthem; from free admittance to a penny charge to cut down great demand.

[13] While penny readings, at their height in the 1860s, had lost their popularity before 1900, a tradition of poetry recitation continued in niches such as family events and temperance meetings.