Back in the 19th century, when the manufacture of paper and the printing press was drastically improved, literacy rates increased at a rapid pace. Because everyone was reading, and everything was being read, people believed this drastic rise in reading was an epidemic! People named this new “disease”: Reading Mania.
Because the price of books took a drop in the 19th century, the everyday man and woman had just as much access as the wealthy. Literacy began to lose its prestige and would no longer be associated with high status. Members of traditional reading classes believed that there should be a hierarchy in who should be given information. They believed the common folk would ruin literature, literally the most bourgeois thing to be freaked out about.
You might be wondering, how exactly has everything become so cheap? Wood pulp and straw. This cheap paper was typically used for mass-market books being sold at crazy low prices. There was a couple different variations of mass media being spread such as:
- Penny dreadfuls: Gothic stories sold for a penny
- Pulp magazines: Made out of wood-pulp paper
- Yellow backs: Books bounded with yellow strawboard and covered with bright yellow glazed slips. Sold from sixpence to a shilling.
It wasn’t costly to produce these types of media, therefore they were an excellent medium for artists and authors to experiment with taboo, controversial, and peculiar subject matters. But because unusual themes were explored, the audience of young children who read these cheap books were exposed to violence and crime. The suicide and murders committed by young boys were blamed on the books. Those committing crimes who also enjoyed penny dreadfuls were thought to be a “victim” of the books. Interesting how this is similar in today’s world where a movie like “Joker” was deemed dangerous by critics who believed it will inspire gun violence and is an ode to incel white men.
Sources:
https://slate.com/technology/2017/08/the-19th-century-moral-panic-over-paper-technology.html
http://www.frankfuredi.com/article/the_medias_first_moral_panic
https://library.princeton.edu/special-collections/topics/yellow-back-collection
https://www.pulpmags.org/contexts/essays/what-is-pulp-anyway.html