Come, Bright Improvement!: The Literary Societies of Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

Despite late 20th-century predictions of the imminent death of print
culture, book clubs have become a rapidly growing trend in our society.
As an alternative to solitary literary study, book clubs provide both
cultural and educational enrichment, as well as the opportunity to
socialize with like-minded individuals. Yet, as Heather Murray points
out in Come, Bright Improvement!, this construction of reading as a
public and social experience is by no means new: the book club’s
origins as a cultural, educational, and social institution have their
roots in early 19th-century literary societies. Murray’s text examines
the traditions, evolution, and social impact of these societies within
the historical context of 19th-century Ontario colonial culture.

Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including society
constitutions and minute books, newspaper accounts, and personal
memoirs—Murray studies the many facets of early literary societies.
Her thorough analysis contributes to a compelling argument for the vital
role that the societies played in the cultural, educational, and even
political life of the small towns and rural communities of Upper Canada.
She charts the progress of several representative groups, from men’s
debating clubs and women’s literary circles to the popular Chautauqua
Societies, showing how they mirrored the trends and movements of
19th-century Ontario society. She also introduces a new element to the
critical discourse

of reader-response theory: she considers the impact of public and social
reading on the development of the discipline of literary studies. As a
result, the book is both an excellent resource for history students and
researchers, and a well-calculated challenge to literary scholars to
continue an intriguing and promising discourse. The Resource Guide alone
will be an invaluable asset to scholars of book history.