Posted by Peter Ceresole on August 07, 2003 at 21:17:02 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Intrusions of Real Life posted by Peter H on August 07, 2003 at 19:04:28:
I suspect that the books appealed across classes.
I'm sure you're right. But originally, weren't they all in hardback? I don't think they were ever issued in cheap editions until paperbacks came along- quite late in their case. And that would have made them relatively expensive. In the '50s, the poor were relatively much better off than in the '30s. And grammar schools were fiercely elitist.
But the books would have been available in libraries. Maybe I was too categorical. But they still feel to me as though they would have had their main market in bourgeois families- like mine.