| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Christopher Hilliard. To Exercise Our Talents: The Democratization of Writing in Britain. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2006. Pp. 390. $29.95.

Perhaps the urge to write for publication is a rather mysterious impulse. To express oneself? To leave some words behind that might survive? To make a contribution to thought, society, progress? To make some money and to spend time doing something that might not be tedious or physically exhausting? To be creative in a way that one can continue as long as one is interested? These questions are prompted by reading this superb study of the vast expansion of the act of writing by more and more members of the middle, lower-middle, and working class in Britain. Such developments, as in the case of others in the latter half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth, represented both the growth of skilled amateur activities and the expansion of professionalism. In the world of writing, as elsewhere, the British displayed their proclivity to form organizations.

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