James Collinson: The Writing Lesson. Sotheby's (2008-11-19). Retrieved on 2 November 2018. "There was a movement in the 1840s and 50s that aimed for universal literacy, acknowledging that prospects for personal and professional advancement would always be limited for any individual who could not read or write. The popularity of Charles Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), in which at the end of chapter three the heroine Little Nell attempts to teach her friend Kit Nubbles to write, may have encouraged a view that it was the duty of the more fortunate and privileged members of society to assist others who had not had the same opportunities. Collinson, who was himself the son of a bookseller and who therefore is likely himself to have placed a particular value on the ability of people of all sorts to read, was clearly seeking to illustrate the missionary zeal with which the middle-classes attempted to spread literacy. The painter's personal commitment to the doctrine which held that an ability to read and write was an essential qualification for social improvement is testified by the fact that in three of his principal paintings of the 1850s, Answering the Emigrant's Letter, of 1850, The Emigration Scheme (Lord Lloyd-Webber collection), of 1852, and the present painting The Writing Lesson, he has consistently shown adults depending on the abilities of their children to read and write for knowledge of and communication with the outside world."
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