Steel City Readers in Wadsley between the Wars

At the heart of Mary Grover’s forthcoming book about Sheffield reading between the wars are 65 interviews with men and women across Sheffield. All reading communities differ but the pattern of reading in Wadsley was unique. Residents had an unusually wide range of jobs. Little mesters in small workshops, ganister miners, people working in Middlewood Hospital, gamekeepers and, of course, poachers, all lived alongside each other and the wealthy factory owners, some of whom had their mansions on the smoke-free hills, so close to their industries. The reading histories of our Wadsley interviewees were very different from each other and some of them influenced each other. For example, local historian and vicar, the Rev Kirk Smith, inspired a life-long love of history in Winnie, whose father looked after railway horses and who preferred racing novels to any other sort of book.

In partnership with Reading Sheffield

Refreshments provided.