Why and how our reading tastes changed

Have you ever wondered why books disappear, novels are reissued under new titles and authors fall out of fashion? Join Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press for an illustrated talk to unpick the mysteries of changing literary taste in twentieth-century British fiction, and hear some unfortunate truths about the publishing industry. The collapse of the three-decker novel, the rise of the cheap series, and the passion for escapism all affected what and how our grandparents read for pleasure. A selection of Handheld Press books will be available for sale after the talk.

Dr Kate Macdonald is a literary historian and a publisher. She is a former university lecturer and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. She set up Handheld Press in 2017 to bring forgotten fiction and lost authors back into print and to publish new biographies and memoirs. Handheld Press is based in Bathampton; Kate’s great-great-grandmother Catherine Wale ran a milliner’s establishment on George Street.