Again, inhabitants of “the house of the poor man” were advised that in practicing similar forms of family social reading, they could rise to the status of the upper classes.

I beg leave to add, this is a pleasure for the poor man’s house, and for this I love it. The poor man, if educated, is one day placed almost on a level with the prince, in respect to the best part of literary wealth. Let him ponder the suggestion, and enjoy the privilege. [emphases in original] (Mothers’ Magazine, 1848, p. 98)

Literacy advice to parents written in the first half of the Nineteenth Century presented considerable diversity in the paths to literacy a child could follow and much contestation over the timing, purposes, and methods for literacy instruction that should define this path. In the Rousseau-inspired advice of Martineau and Cobbett, reading and writing were represented as desirable, but not central aspects of domestic learning. This reflected the place of literacy in social life in early nineteenth-century Britain and North America. Indeed, Vincent (1989) argued that although literacy would become more widespread as the Nineteenth Century progressed, it also “had to compete for the child’s limited time with a wide range of skills which had equal or greater priority” (p. 56). Vincent cited Cobbett, who, in another of his works, observed that it was possible to “earn a great deal of money, and bring up families very well, without ever knowing how to read” (Cobbett, 1831, in Vincent, 1989, p. 59).

Later in the Nineteenth Century, the growing influence of industrialization upon gender divisions of labour in the domestic sphere, as well as the effects of universal schooling and a growing social reform movement, provided a context for literacy advice that was not only more prominent in child-raising advice texts, but was more precise and prescriptive in the roles and responsibilities mothers should assume in promoting reading. This advice is considered in part two of this chapter.