Table of Contents

Part 1 Door to the world of writing; the social history of elementary schools. Part 2 The written word is gaining ground slowly in the peasant culture. Part 3 Writing and reading capacities of the nobility. Part 4 The lower layer of nobility; the petty nobleman living in an oral world. Part 5 The culture of well-to-do noblemen; libraries and their proprietors. Part 6 Outlook in space and time Conclusion

About the Author

István György Tóth was Associate Professor of History at the Central European University, Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Reviews

"This book is a model study of scrupulous rigor in its numerically minded social analysis, of challenging methodological innovation in its approach to the problem, and of marvelous insight into the social and cultural meaning of early modern literacy and illiteracy."
*American Historical Review*

"István Tóth is fully versed in the literature and provides a model of sensitive analysis and interpretation of the place of the written word in central European culture, from the peasantry on up tthrough the landed gentry and various levels of nobility... the depth of research, the felicity of the prose, the picaresque anecdotes, and the many insights into the nature of early-modern central European cultural and intellectual life should be enough to interest most scholars of the place and period in this book."
*Journal of Modern History*

"This book's great strength lies in careful analysis of rich archival evidence, impressively documented in footnotes..."
*Libraries & Culture*

"The author successfully combines quantitative research together with qualitative study of the place of reading among different social groups and by doing so, provides extremely valuable insights into religious life in different social groups.... The book is well translated and it has an index. The quantitative data does not disturb the flow of the description, and the colorful descriptions the author cited make this a very enjoyable read."
*Religious Studies Review*

"...offers a fascinating view of trends in literacy in Hungary in, basically, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but with some earlier material on the aristocracy and some later information on the peasants."
*Slavic Review*

"The present work was first published in Hungarian in 1996 ... It is now published by CEU Press in not only flawless English but also under a quite different and rather more earnest title... may serve as an excellent introduction not only to the study of Hungarian literacy but also to the social history of the early modern period."
*Slavonic and East European Review*

"...a very well documented work, with abundant maps, tables."
*Ungarn - Jahrbuch, Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Hungarologie*