Representative readers: political agency, reading history, and the case of Matthew Charlton

Abstract

Continuing public interest in the question of what politicians read reveals a belief in reading as a potential vector of political agency. This article uses historical library loan records to examine this potential in relation to the reading of the Australian politician Matthew Charlton (1866–1948). It considers Charlton’s reading of E. Phillips Oppenheim’s 1903 novel A Prince of Sinners to argue that popular fiction can provide frameworks for thinking about the quite serious undertakings its readers are making — or would like to make — elsewhere in their lives. It also points to the limits of claims based on evidence of historical reading practices. It warns against an atemporal approach to historical readers, as readers’ circumstances change across their reading lives, and challenges assumptions about ‘ordinary’ readers and affective or non-ideological uses of fiction, as ‘lay’ readers can hold political power, and their sense of how best they might use that power to effect change can be mediated by what they read.