Literacy and Education

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate levels of reading ability in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Ireland, providing an initial context for the reception of the cheap printed books. To begin, however, two fundamental distinctions need to be made. In the first place, there is a difference between the history of literacy on the one hand, and the history of educational institutions on the other. In the second place, within the broad category of literacy itself we need to distinguish between reading ability, which is our primary concern, and writing ability.