Reading and Writing: Literacy in France from Calvin to Jules Ferry

This welcome translation makes available in English the first volume of Furet and Ozouf's massive study of the alphabetisation of French society. Beginning with an analysis of Louis Maggiolo's survey of marriage signatures in some 16,000 villages in 1689-90, 1786-90, 1816-20 and 1872-6, the authors trace 'the access of an entire society to written culture' (p. 9). Thereafter, they draw upon further national data on schooling and literacy in the nineteenth century, together with the regional studies contained in their untranslated second volume, to explore the development of elementary schooling in France, the growth of literacy among the peasantry, the distinctive experience of the cities and the special problems of non-French-speaking regions. [Keith Wrightson]