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"In the early modern period, printing was the only means of disseminating a text or message reliably to a large number of people. Print could serve all kinds of purposes, ranging from religious education to scientific debate, from state propaganda to open political subversion, from proclamations and the reporting of news to the provision of entertaining fictional reading. But the printing industry was also one of the most complex, labour-intensive and investment-dependent sectors of the early modern economy, involving a huge range of very specialised and skilled manual labour as well as a range of associated trades (see Figure 1). It required considerable infrastructure, management and marketing skills, and was subject to severe market fluctuations with high risks. These conflicting pressures were not matched by any substantial technological change in the printing industry from the middle of the fifteenth century right through to the Napoleonic period. So despite gaining a solid footing in the economies of many large prosperous cities, the increase in the use of print for particular purposes was unsteady, and its geographic spread surprisingly uneven"

This article argues that basic reading skills in eighteenth-century Denmark became more widespread at all social levels than hitherto assumed. Even though Denmark was on the periphery of the European Enlightenment, government policies from the 1730s were influenced by Pietist educational aspirations and substantial efforts were made to ensure their implementation. Evidence concerning parish schools is reviewed, and detailed episcopal visitation records are used to illustrate both the expectations of the authorities and the thoroughness of actual inspection procedures. Various kinds of material (other than signature evidence) are used to cast light on literacy and the use of print both in rural communities and amongst the urban poor, including women as well as men, by the last decades of the century. Judging from the most commonly available published material, however, the Danish government had little to fear from potential subversion through the printed word.