Obraz kobiety-czytelniczki z prowincji litewsko-białoruskiej w listach do wileńskich księgarzy Zawadzkich

ENA collective portrait of the nineteenth-century reader from the province of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania can be effectively reconstructed with the use of the materials from the so-called "Zawadzki family archive". The archive contains a vast amount of correspondence addressed to the printing and book-selling company owned by this famous family. The most interesting part of this collection are mail orders sent by female readers from the six northeast governorates of the Russian Empire. This correspondence testifies to a steady increase in the number of female readers in the nineteenth century and confirms their autonomy in choosing books or articulating specific requests. Moreover, it also documents the diversity of their needs, tastes and reading habits.