‘This is a truly important study...The value of the 65 in-depth interviews conducted by the Reading Sheffield team cannot be overstated...Their meanings will be much richer when they are framed by the histories of industry, culture and education in the city which Steel City Readers will provide.‘ (Alison Light, author of 'Common People', 2014)

Why are we raising money for this book?

'Steel City Readers' is based on a unique oral history project set up by the community history group, Reading Sheffield. It asked 65 people (you can see photos of two - Margaret Young above and Julia Banks below - on this page, as well as the cover design for the book) in the northern English city of Sheffield about the books they read for pleasure between 1925 and 1955.

Their memories are at the heart of the book. Mary Grover writes about the compulsion to read when there seemed little to be gained from such an unprofitable pursuit, about the reading environment from home to school to library, about the push and pull of gender and class in reading choices.

What will this sum enable us to do?

The innovative Liverpool University Press (LUP) wants to publish the book this year. In keeping with our interviewees’ tributes to the benefits of free access to public libraries, LUP is offering us the chance to make 'Steel City Readers' freely available for anyone, anywhere, to download from the internet to read. This is known as an Open Access Licence. To make it possible, we must raise £10,000 to help LUP pay for editing, proofreading and design and to compensate them for the loss of print sales. LUP will also print paperback copies of the book.

Why is 'Steel City Readers' important?

LUP’s reviewer, Alison Light, praises Mary Grover for having done ‘a superb job organising and making sense of the interviews, illuminating the meaning of reading in individual lives as well as giving us insights into the local and national contexts’. She judges the book to be important and readable, and expects it to appeal to general readers, anyone interested in cultural and social heritage, people who manage and work in libraries, and literary scholars and oral historians.

This is a broad readership. The pleasure of reading and the necessity of free access to knowledge through books were central to the experience of so many of the Reading Sheffield interviewees. It is fitting that Steel City Readers should be published via this exciting route, allowing the book to be read online for free.

What will we do with the money we raise?

We will invest £10,000 to make the Open Access Licence possible.

We will buy paperback copies of the book to give as a thank you to Reading Sheffield’s interviewees and their families.

We will tell as many groups and organisations as possible about the book, through a launch, social media, public talks, our website etc.

What else are we doing to raise the money? Everything else we can think of! An auction of art, book sales, sponsored ‘readathons’, tea parties and bake sales, public talks, seeking donations from charities, grant-making bodies and Sheffield businesses, and much more.

Keeping in touch

We will regularly update this page, our website (Reading Sheffield) and social media ( www.facebook.com/readsheffield/ and @readsheffield).

If you’re interested in Reading Sheffield’s work, why not get in touch and join (subscription £10 a year)?

Thanks for reading this appeal and for your donations.