Railway Reading.

The introduction of passenger railways provided an opportunity for the development of inexpensively produced hooks. This article shows how these hooks significantly influenced what people read, how they obtained what they read, and how they read. The reading material ranged from pamphlet novels to cheap books that were marketed specifically for rail passengers, distributed in railway stations and on trains. The newsboys who marketed these hooks used their own strategies to make passengers into readers. Finally, the article examines how railway travel influenced the reading process.