Books for Idle Hours

“A fascinating study” of the nineteenth-century roots of beach books and summer reads—and the public disapproval that failed to stop the enjoyment of them ( New England Quarterly ). The publishing phenomenon of summer reading, often focused on novels set in vacation destinations, started in the nineteenth century, as both print culture and tourist culture expanded in the United States. As an emerging middle class increasingly embraced summer leisure as a marker of social status, book publishers