Dangerous Potential of Reading

The development of a mass readership a mass market for books and a prominent status of reading and readers is reflected in the central role of literacy reading and books in the lives of protagonists in nineteenth-century American and French literature. In this book Ana-Isabel Aliaga-Buchenau examines the destabilizing role of reading in the works of Frederick Douglass Horatio Alger Emile Zola Louisa May Alcott and Gustave Flaubert. This book-the first to study nineteenth-century protagonists across lines of nationality class and gender-demonstrates the empowering effects of reading for Douglass Alger's Ragged Dick Zola's Etienne Alcott's Jo and Flaubert's Emma.