„Gdyby nasze dzieci umiały czytać i pisać…". Edukacja czytelnicza dzieci wiejskich w Królestwie Polskim w drugiej połowie XIX wieku
If our children could read and write…": Reading Education of Rural Children in the Kingdom of Poland in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on identifying the factors that informed the popularisation of reading among children and young adults in the Russian Partition – in the Kingdom of Poland – during the second half of the 19th century. The author discusses both institutional and non-institutional determinants of this phenomenon. Institutional factors included the poor state of elementary schools in the region at the time, limited access to libraries and bookstores, and censorship, which affected the framing of content. Non-institutional barriers stemmed primarily from the harsh living conditions of local communities, which had limited material resources and a weak symbolic foundation, as well as from the social mechanisms shaping their worldview, within which the need to educate children was not yet recognised. The source material draws on contemporary leading press, periodicals intended for rural readers, and selected testimonies from peasant memoirists.

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