Penny reading for the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot at Aldershot, 1871
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
A penny reading is a form of popular public entertainment that arose in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, consisting of readings and other performances, for which the admission charged was one penny.[1]
The Public Reading Society, established by Charles John Plumptre and Serjeant Edward William Cox in the 1850s, was the first to provide penny readings for the public.[2] An 1887 handbook for parish priests suggests a programme of around fifteen items, “instrumental pieces, songs, glees, recitation, and readings”, recommending variety. It notes that “Comic songs should, as a rule, be avoided”.[3]
Penny readings were at the height of their popularity in the 1860s, but by 1871 a book review in The Literary World lamented that:[4]
As conducted by their originators, Penny Readings were unquestionably useful and attractive without being frivolous: as conducted by some of those gentlemen’s imitators, they [have] run riot and become farcical, and have lost almost every philanthropic or praiseworthy element they at first possessed.