Een nieuw publiek voor patriotse samenspraken? Popular political periodicals and the reader revolution

The first political periodicals were published during the Patriot period (1780-1787). Following Engelsing, historians thought that this indicated a reader revolution as more and morereaders arose from the different social classes, and read a greater variety of publications. However, many critics argued that the sales of books showed that such a revolution had never takenplace. Nevertheless, cheap political periodicals, for which no administrative records were kept,indicate that their readers were not well educated. As this article will show, this is true of thepatriot periodicals Louw en Krelis and Grietje en Diewertje, both dialogues, that presented politicalnews to the man or woman in the street. These examples shed new light on the proposition thata reader revolution occurred at the end of the 18th century.