‘The Appreciative Understanding of Good Books’: The Listener,Literary Advice and the 1930s Reader

Abstract

This article examines the cultural impact of BBC adult education magazine the Listener during its first decade of existence, from 1929 until 1939. It looks closely at the range of literary advice articles that encouraged middle-class readers to expand their cultural horizons – each week contributors offered tips for reading modernist texts, locating affordable books, understanding the classics and publishing one's own material. The article also locates this magazine within the broader context of self-improvement among white-collar suburbanites and the highbrow snobbery that was directed their way by figures such as Virginia Woolf and Q. D. Leavis.