It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read
and what one
shouldn't. More than half of modern culture
depends on what one shouldn't read.
The Importance of Being Ernest (1895)
"Fast" literature refers to both the speed at which it was produced and the sensational subject matter that was often its focus. The advent of the rotary
printing press, mass-produced wood pulp paper, and a large population of functionally literate readers
combined to create an ephemeral "literature" of the British middle and working classes throughout the 1800s.
At the end of the 18th century, Thomas Bewick's large-scale boxwood engraving began a new era in illustration.
His experiments were
followed by a variety of offset printing techniques and daguerreotype photography.
By the middle of the 19th century, new techniques for illustration increased the number of readers by offering elaborate cover
and interior illustrations that reiterated written narratives. The widespread availability of illustrations and other images
at this time was a revolution. Never before had so many had access to so much visual information beyond their immediate community.
Many of these illustrations focused on women. This focus was sometimes used to inspire awe, pity, or to
arouse good people to good work. Often these illustrations were used to arouse readers in other ways.
Publishers and booksellers were imprisoned on obscenity charges stemming from images
in this collection.
Social issues were
explicitly detailed in reform tracts from suffragettes
as well as salacious images in tales of "fallen
In other cases, opinions were embedded in postures or portraits, and became ways
to communicate expectations to and assumptions about various groups.
The fast literature from the Lilly Library's London Lowlife Collection spans the
last three decades of the 1800s and originated in "Londoniana" from Michael Sadleir's extensive collection of
Mr. Sadleir wrote, "...the formation and possession of the assemblage of London periodicals, chapbooks...
crime sheets...and what not has a flavour no other of my collections possesses." He found the collecting of
them "tests of patience and intelligence of the collector...collecting in its noblest form."
As Louis James noted in Fiction for the Working
Man 1830-1850, of the thousands of newspapers, penny magazines, chapbooks,
pamphlets, broadsheets and other ephemera that came from new printing presses and machine-made paper, only a sampling
The featured illustrations are divided into several catagories, indicated by links provided at the top of
The pointer at the bottom of each page moves through the exhibition as well.
For further information about this collection, contact
the Lilly Library via the link provided below.