By the mid-18th century, the printing of cheap 'penny chapbooks' helped:

1. syllabus discusses penny chapbooks in Britain. 2. Chapbooks — small, cheap pocket-size books — were sold by petty pedlars in 17th-18th century England. 3. They spread reading among common people, including the working class, well before universal schooling. _Source: syllabus History India and the Contemporary World - II, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World", §Mass Reading ¶1_