In this article, the thesis of the eighteenth-century reading revolution is contrasted with the results of recent research in administrations of booksellers. According to the thesis, the eighteenth-century reading public was expanding rapidly, especially in the middle class. The new readers were particularly interested in the novel, as this genre allowed them to escape from their confined daily life, and reflected their moral code. However, recent research in administrations of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century booksellers in the Netherlands does not confirm this view. The vast majority of middle-class book buyers did not buy novels at all; they preferred 'functional' books: books related to their profession or job, church books, school books, books with practical general information, and booklets on local events. The few purchasers of the alleged bourgeois genres nearly all belonged to the social or intellectual elite. It was the same public that joined the reading societies. In fact, the so-called revolution was a very slow evolution, and the many anecdotes about 'reading fever' and 'novel devouring' even in the lower classes seem to come forth from concern about potential developments rather than from actual observations.© 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
