Abstract

This article reviews the thirty year history of The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (1979). I reflect on The Literacy Myth and the critical concept of “the literacy myth” that it proposed on the occasion of the book’s thirtieth anniversary, a special and also a sobering moment. On the one hand, I speak to its broad influence in a number of fields of study; I also consider some of the criticisms encountered. On the other hand, I discuss what I think are its principal weaknesses and limits. The success of The Literacy Myth may be determined at least in part by the extent to which it stimulates new research and thinking that begin to supplant it. After considering the relevance and value of its general arguments for both persisting and newer questions and issues, I reframe my conclusions about social myths and in particular “the literacy myth.”

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