Michael Hoover wrote:
>
> several hundred thousand copies of paine's _common sense_ were sold
> within months of publication, guesstimates are that up to three times
> as many folks may have read the pamphlet as copies were passed
> around, recall seeing figure suggesting that about 750,000 folks may
> have read _common sense_ during initial year of its appearance in
> print, if so, that would have been about 25% of mid-1770s population...
>
> also recall reading that literacy rates among both men and women in
> pennsylvania were above 50%, but then, memory may not serve me
> very well... mh
Also -- in the 18th & 19th c. reading aloud of texts in groups, interspaced with discussion of what was being read, was far more common than today. From some experimenting in a study group here back in the 1970s we discovered that the less 'literate' members of the group could keep up on the discussion of rather complex texts if they had an audio tape to follow along with their reading. Intelligent non-literate people of the colonial period would undoubtedly have been able to participate intelligently in political discussion on the basis of hearing texts read aloud.
Carrol