Literacy and Written Culture in Early Modern Central Europe

The early sixteenth century up to the end of the eighteenth century, the period of the Early Modern Age in Europe, saw a veritable revolution in cultural history. In the Middle Ages, it was deemed natural that only a select few knew how to read and write. By the late eighteenth century, however, about fifty per cent of the male population in the most developed regions of Europe was able to gather information by reading newspapers, and the number of those capable of conductin correspondence in wr…