{"id":846,"date":"2018-02-27T11:40:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T11:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=846"},"modified":"2018-02-27T21:48:24","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T21:48:24","slug":"read-for-victory-public-libraries-and-book-reading-in-a-british-naval-port-city-during-the-second-world-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=846","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Read for Victory\u2019: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal <em>Cultural and\u00a0Social History o<\/em>n the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/14780038.2018.1427360\">here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract:\u00a0<\/strong>In 1942 a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city\u2019s inhabitants to \u2018read for victory\u2019, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country\u2019s political and civic elites to encourage the nation\u2019s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified during the Second World War. The public library service was utilized by civic leaders, library officials and publishing trade personnel to aid the country\u2019s war effort. The article argues that negative attitudes regarding mass reading tastes remained largely static, despite recognition that the conflict drew people to the written word for relaxation and escapism. Using the naval city of Portsmouth as a case-study, this article charts the activities of the city\u2019s public library authorities and the borrowing habits of its readers to reveal that while many people borrowed books in order to distract themselves from the conflict, the city\u2019s strategic importance ensured that many citizens also read in order to facilitate their preparedness for war service, whether that be on the home front or overseas. The article argues that while, in common with national trends, many of Portsmouth\u2019s citizens used libraries to obtain books to help distract them from the war, many remained eager to make use of the service for educational purposes, unlike the majority of the nation\u2019s library users, whose interest in this aspect of library provision rapidly waned as the war progressed. The article concludes that the public library service was viewed as a central plank in the war effort and that library officials worked continuously to ensure that it remained so.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal Cultural and\u00a0Social History on the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click\u00a0here. Abstract:\u00a0In 1942 a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city\u2019s inhabitants to \u2018read for victory\u2019, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country\u2019s political and civic elites to encourage the nation\u2019s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[26,214,14,159,40,39,22,32,15,80,79,61,98],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new_publications","tag-archives","tag-civilian-morale","tag-history","tag-leisure","tag-literature","tag-local-history","tag-maritime","tag-portsmouth","tag-primary-sources","tag-public-libraries","tag-reading","tag-second-world-war","tag-twentieth-century"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/The_Royal_Navy_during_the_Second_World_War_A23246-e1539022174441.jpg?fit=620%2C300","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-dE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}